Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINTH.

The Coun­try in the El­bow of the Niger.–A Fan­tas­tic View of the Hom­bori Moun­tains.–Kabra.–Tim­buc­too.–The Chart of Dr. Barth. –A De­cay­ing City.–Whith­er Heav­en wills.

Dur­ing this dull Mon­day, Dr. Fer­gu­son di­vert­ed his thoughts by giv­ing his com­pan­ions a thou­sand de­tails con­cern­ing the coun­try they were cross­ing. The sur­face, which was quite flat, of­fered no im­ped­iment to their progress. The doc­tor’s sole anx­iety arose from the ob­sti­nate north­east wind which con­tin­ued to blow fu­ri­ous­ly, and bore them away from the lat­itude of Tim­buc­too.

The Niger, af­ter run­ning north­ward as far as that city, sweeps around, like an im­mense wa­ter-​jet from some foun­tain, and falls in­to the At­lantic in a broad sheaf. In the el­bow thus formed the coun­try is of var­ied char­ac­ter, some­times lux­uri­ant­ly fer­tile, and some­times ex­treme­ly bare; fields of maize suc­ceed­ed by wide spaces cov­ered with broom-​corn and un­cul­ti­vat­ed plains. All kinds of aquat­ic birds–pel­icans, wild-​duck, king­fish­ers, and the rest–were seen in nu­mer­ous flocks hov­er­ing about the bor­ders of the pools and tor­rents.

From time to time there ap­peared an en­camp­ment of Touaregs, the men shel­tered un­der their leather tents, while their wom­en were bus­ied with the do­mes­tic toil out­side, milk­ing their camels and smok­ing their huge-​bowled pipes.

By eight o’clock in the evening the Vic­to­ria had ad­vanced more than two hun­dred miles to the west­ward, and our aero­nauts be­came the spec­ta­tors of a mag­nif­icent scene.

A mass of moon­beams forc­ing their way through an open­ing in the clouds, and glid­ing be­tween the long lines of falling rain, de­scend­ed in a gold­en show­er on the ridges of the Hom­bori Moun­tains. Noth­ing could be more weird than the ap­pear­ance of these seem­ing­ly basaltic sum­mits; they stood out in fan­tas­tic pro­file against the som­bre sky, and the be­hold­er might have fan­cied them to be the leg­endary ru­ins of some vast city of the mid­dle ages, such as the ice­bergs of the po­lar seas some­times mim­ic them in nights of gloom.

“An ad­mirable land­scape for the ‘Mys­ter­ies of Udolpho’!” ex­claimed the doc­tor. “Ann Rad­cliffe could not have de­pict­ed yon moun­tains in a more ap­palling as­pect.”

“Faith!” said Joe, “I wouldn’t like to be strolling alone in the evening through this coun­try of ghosts. Do you see now, mas­ter, if it wasn’t so heavy, I’d like to car­ry that whole land­scape home to Scot­land! It would do for the bor­ders of Loch Lomond, and tourists would rush there in crowds.”

“Our bal­loon is hard­ly large enough to ad­mit of that lit­tle ex­per­iment–but I think our di­rec­tion is chang­ing. Bra­vo!–the elves and fairies of the place are quite oblig­ing. See, they’ve sent us a nice lit­tle south­east breeze, that will put us on the right track again.”

In fact, the Vic­to­ria was re­sum­ing a more norther­ly route, and on the morn­ing of the 20th she was pass­ing over an in­ex­tri­ca­ble net­work of chan­nels, tor­rents, and streams, in fine, the whole com­pli­cat­ed tan­gle of the Niger’s trib­utaries. Many of these chan­nels, cov­ered with a thick growth of herbage, re­sem­bled lux­uri­ant mead­ow-​lands. There the doc­tor rec­og­nized the route fol­lowed by the ex­plor­er Barth when he launched up­on the riv­er to de­scend to Tim­buc­too. Eight hun­dred fath­oms broad at this point, the Niger flowed be­tween banks rich­ly grown with cru­cif­er­ous plants and tamarind-​trees. Herds of ag­ile gazelles were seen skip­ping about, their curl­ing horns min­gling with the tall herbage, with­in which the al­li­ga­tor, half con­cealed, lay silent­ly in wait for them with watch­ful eyes.

Long files of camels and ass­es laden with mer­chan­dise from Jenne were wind­ing in un­der the no­ble trees. Ere long, an am­phithe­atre of low-​built hous­es was dis­cov­ered at a turn of the riv­er, their roofs and ter­races heaped up with hay and straw gath­ered from the neigh­bor­ing dis­tricts.

“There’s Kabra!” ex­claimed the doc­tor, joy­ous­ly; “there is the har­bor of Tim­buc­too, and the city is not five miles from here!”

“Then, sir, you are sat­is­fied?” half queried Joe.

“De­light­ed, my boy!”

“Very good; then ev­ery thing’s for the best!”

In fact, about two o’clock, the Queen of the Desert, mys­te­ri­ous Tim­buc­too, which once, like Athens and Rome, had her schools of learned men, and her pro­fes­sor­ships of phi­los­ophy, stretched away be­fore the gaze of our trav­ellers.

Fer­gu­son fol­lowed the most minute de­tails up­on the chart traced by Barth him­self, and was en­abled to rec­og­nize its per­fect ac­cu­ra­cy.

The city forms an im­mense tri­an­gle marked out up­on a vast plain of white sand, its acute an­gle di­rect­ed to­ward the north and pierc­ing a cor­ner of the desert. In the en­vi­rons there was al­most noth­ing, hard­ly even a few grass­es, with some dwarf mi­mosas and stunt­ed bush­es.

As for the ap­pear­ance of Tim­buc­too, the read­er has but to imag­ine a col­lec­tion of bil­liard-​balls and thim­bles–such is the bird’s-​eye view! The streets, which are quite nar­row, are lined with hous­es on­ly one sto­ry in height, built of bricks dried in the sun, and huts of straw and reeds, the for­mer square, the lat­ter con­ical. Up­on the ter­races were seen some of the male in­hab­itants, care­less­ly loung­ing at full length in flow­ing ap­par­el of bright col­ors, and lance or mus­ket in hand; but no wom­en were vis­ible at that hour of the day.

“Yet they are said to be hand­some,” re­marked the doc­tor. “You see the three tow­ers of the three mosques that are the on­ly ones left stand­ing of a great num­ber– the city has in­deed fall­en from its an­cient splen­dor! At the top of the tri­an­gle ris­es the Mosque of Sanko­re, with its ranges of gal­leries rest­ing on ar­cades of suf­fi­cient­ly pure de­sign. Far­ther on, and near to the Sane-​Gun­gu quar­ter, is the Mosque of Si­di-​Yahia and some two-​sto­ry hous­es. But do not look for ei­ther palaces or mon­uments: the sheik is a mere son of traf­fic, and his roy­al palace is a count­ing-​house.”

“It seems to me that I can see half-​ru­ined ram­parts,” said Kennedy.

“They were de­stroyed by the Fouil­lanes in 1826; the city was one-​third larg­er then, for Tim­buc­too, an ob­ject gen­er­al­ly cov­et­ed by all the tribes, since the eleventh cen­tu­ry, has be­longed in suc­ces­sion to the Touaregs, the Son­rayans, the Mo­roc­co men, and the Fouil­lanes; and this great cen­tre of civ­iliza­tion, where a sage like Ahmed-​Ba­ba owned, in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, a li­brary of six­teen hun­dred manuscripts, is now noth­ing but a mere half-​way house for the trade of Cen­tral Africa.”

The city, in­deed, seemed aban­doned to supreme ne­glect; it be­trayed that in­dif­fer­ence which seems epi­dem­ic to cities that are pass­ing away. Huge heaps of rub­bish en­cum­bered the sub­urbs, and, with the hill on which the mar­ket-​place stood, formed the on­ly in­equal­ities of the ground.

When the Vic­to­ria passed, there was some slight show of move­ment; drums were beat­en; but the last learned man still lin­ger­ing in the place had hard­ly time to no­tice the new phe­nomenon, for our trav­ellers, driv­en on­ward by the wind of the desert, re­sumed the wind­ing course of the riv­er, and, ere long, Tim­buc­too was noth­ing more than one of the fleet­ing rem­inis­cences of their jour­ney.

“And now,” said the doc­tor, “Heav­en may waft us whith­er it pleas­es!”

“Pro­vid­ed on­ly that we go west­ward,” added Kennedy.

“Bah!” said Joe; “I wouldn’t be afraid if it was to go back to Zanz­ibar by the same road, or to cross the ocean to Amer­ica.”

“We would first have to be able to do that, Joe!”

“And what’s want­ing, doc­tor?”

“Gas, my boy; the as­cend­ing force of the bal­loon is ev­ident­ly grow­ing weak­er, and we shall need all our man­age­ment to make it car­ry us to the sea-​coast. I shall even have to throw over some bal­last. We are too heavy.”

“That’s what comes of do­ing noth­ing, doc­tor; when a man lies stretched out all day long in his ham­mock, he gets fat and heavy. It’s a lazy­bones trip, this of ours, mas­ter, and when we get back ev­ery body will find us big and stout.”

“Just like Joe,” said Kennedy; “just the ideas for him: but wait a bit! Can you tell what we may have to go through yet? We are still far from the end of our trip. Where do you ex­pect to strike the African coast, doc­tor?”

“I should find it hard to an­swer you, Kennedy. We are at the mer­cy of very vari­able winds; but I should think my­self for­tu­nate were we to strike it be­tween Sier­ra Leone and Por­tendick. There is a stretch of coun­try in that quar­ter where we should meet with friends.”

“And it would be a plea­sure to press their hands; but, are we go­ing in the de­sir­able di­rec­tion?”

“Not any too well, Dick; not any too well! Look at the nee­dle of the com­pass; we are bear­ing south­ward, and as­cend­ing the Niger to­ward its sources.”

“A fine chance to dis­cov­er them,” said Joe, “if they were not known al­ready. Now, couldn’t we just find oth­ers for it, on a pinch?”

“Not ex­act­ly, Joe; but don’t be alarmed: I hard­ly ex­pect to go so far as that.”

At night­fall the doc­tor threw out the last bags of sand. The Vic­to­ria rose high­er, and the blow-​pipe, al­though work­ing at full blast, could scarce­ly keep her up. At that time she was six­ty miles to the south­ward of Tim­buc­too, and in the morn­ing the aero­nauts awoke over the banks of the Niger, not far from Lake De­bo.