Signs of vegetation—a French author’s flight of fancy—magnificent country—the kingdom of Adamawa—Speke and Burton’s exploring linked to Barth’s—the Atlantika Mountains—the Benue River—the town of Yola—Mt. Bagélé—Mt. Mendif.
From the moment they set out, our travelers made excellent time; it took them a while to leave that desert so nearly fatal to them.
Around 9:15 in the morning, they glimpsed a few signs of vegetation, grass floating on this sea of sand and informing them, as it had Christopher Columbus, that land was nearby; green shoots poked up timidly between the stones, which themselves would become the reefs of this ocean.
On the horizon there were rolling hills, not yet very high; blurred by the mist, their outlines were dimly taking shape; things were getting less monotonous.
The doctor greeted this new region with delight, and like a seaman on watch, he was on the verge of calling:
“Land ho!”
An hour later the landmass lay under his eyes, still wild-looking but less flat, less bare, a few trees outlined against the gray sky.
“Are we in civilized country?” the hunter said.
“Civilized, Mr. Dick? Well, so to speak; I don’t see any people yet.”
“It won’t be long,” Fergusson replied, “at the rate we’re traveling.”
“Are we still in Negro country, Mr. Samuel?”
“Still, Joe, but coming up on Arab country.”
“Arabs, sir, real Arabs with camels?”
“No, without camels; those animals are scarce, not to say unknown, in these regions; we need to go a few more degrees north to find them.”
“What a shame!”
“Because if the wind reversed direction, they’d be helpful to us.”
“How so?”
“Sir, it’s an idea that just came to me: we could harness ’em to the gondola and get ’em to tow us. What do you think?”
“My poor Joe, somebody else had that idea before you; a very witty French author* made use of it … in a work of fiction, it’s true. His travelers are in a balloon hauled along by camels; enter a lion who devours the camels, swallows the tow rope, and hauls the balloon in their place; then he’s devoured in turn, etc. As you can see, the whole thing’s an outlandish flight of fancy and has nothing in common with our method of propulsion.”
A bit mortified to hear that his idea wasn’t original, Joe tried to think of an animal that might have devoured the lion; but he didn’t come up with one and went back to inspecting the countryside.
A lake of middling expanse spread out under his eyes, with a natural amphitheater formed by hills that hadn’t yet earned the right to be called mountains; there were many fertile, winding valleys, also a hopelessly tangled assortment of the most varied trees; oil palms towered over the whole works, sporting fifteen-foot leaves on their stems, which were dotted with sharp thorns; red cotton trees filled the passing breezes with their delicate, fluffy seed; screw pines, which Arabs call kenda, perfumed the air with their lively aroma up to the zone where the Victoria was traveling; papaya trees with hand-shaped leaves, skunk trees that supply Sudan with chestnuts, baobab trees, and banana trees rounded out the luxuriant flora of these intertropical districts.
“Superb country!” the doctor said.
“Here come the animals,” Joe added. “Humans can’t be far behind.”
“Gad, what magnificent elephants!” Kennedy exclaimed. “Any way to get in a little hunting?”
“And how, my dear Dick, could we halt in such a strong air current? No, you’ll have to resign yourself to being tantalized! You’ll make up for it later.”
In fact there was plenty to arouse a hunter’s imagination; Dick’s heart gave a leap in his chest, and his fingers tightened over the butt of his Purdey rifle.
The country’s fauna was on a par with its flora. Wild oxen wallowed in the heavy grass, their entire bodies vanishing inside it; the most enormous gray, black, and yellow elephants swept through the forests like a cyclone, breaking, chewing, trashing, marking their progress with total devastation; waterfalls and streams ran northward down the wooded slopes; families of hippopotamus bathed in them noisily, while twelve-foot manatees sprawled over the banks, their bodies fish-shaped, their round udders swollen with milk and raised to the sky.
It was a complete, one-of-a-kind menagerie inside a marvelous greenhouse, where countless birds and a thousand colors shimmered through the treelike plants.
All this natural abundance told the doctor that he had reached the superb kingdom of Adamawa.
“We’re converging on modern discoveries,” he said. “I’ve rejoined the interrupted trail of travelers in our era; we’ve had a piece of luck, my friends; we’ll be able to connect the efforts of Captains Burton and Speke with the exploring of Dr. Barth; we’ve moved on from the two Englishmen to the Hamburg scholar, and we’ll soon arrive at the farthest point reached by that daring scientist.”
“It seems to me,” Kennedy said, “that there’s a huge stretch of country between these two exploring parties, judging from how far we’ve come.”
“It’s easy to calculate; take the map and find the longitude of Lake Victoria’s southern tip, the point reached by Speke.”
“It’s roughly 37°.”
“What about the town of Yola that Barth got to, which we’ll raise this evening—what’s its position?”
“About longitude 12°.”
“So that leaves 25 degrees between the two; at 60 miles per degree, that makes 1,500 miles.”1
“A nice little jaunt,” Joe noted, “for folks who’ll be on foot.”
“But they’ll manage it. Livingstone and Moffat are still heading inland; they’ve discovered Lake Malawi, which isn’t very far from Lake Tanganyika, Burton’s find; these immense regions will certainly be explored before the turn of the century. But I’m sorry the wind’s taking us so much to the west,” the doctor added, checking his compass. “I wanted to head north again.”
After a twelve-hour run, the Victoria reached the boundaries of Nigritia. Shuwa Arabs, who were the first to populate this land, were putting their migrant flocks out to graze. With an estimated elevation of some 7,800 feet, the huge summits of the Atlantika Mountains rose above the horizon, mountains where Europeans still haven’t set foot. Their western slopes see to it that the waters in this part of Africa all run off into the ocean; they are the Mountains of the Moon for this district.
Finally a true river appeared under our travelers’ eyes, and thanks to the immense anthills nearby, the doctor identified it as the Benue River, that major tributary of the Niger that natives have nicknamed “Wellspring of the Waters.”
“This river,” the doctor told his companions, “will one day become the natural connecting link with Nigritia’s interior; under the command of one of our gallant captains, the steamboat Pleiad has already ascended to the town of Yola; you can see that we’re in charted territory.”
Working in the fields, many slaves were busy raising sweet sorghum, a type of grain that’s a basic ingredient in their menus; when the Victoria appeared and shot past like a meteor, they watched her with dazed astonishment. In the evening she pulled up forty miles outside Yola, and ahead of her in the distance stood the two sharp pinnacles of Mt. Mendif.
The doctor tossed out his anchors and hitched up to a tall treetop; but a very harsh wind jostled the Victoria until she keeled over sideways, sometimes leaving the gondola in a tremendously precarious position. Fergusson didn’t shut his eyes that night; often he was on the verge of cutting his mooring line and running before the wind. Finally the storm died down, and the shakes and shivers of their lighter-than-air vehicle were no longer a cause for concern.
The next day they had a more moderate wind, but it took the travelers far from the town of Yola, which had been newly rebuilt by Fula tribesmen and which Fergusson was keen on seeing; nevertheless he had to resign himself to heading north, and even a little east.
Kennedy proposed that they lay over in these hunting grounds; Joe claimed that their need for fresh meat was getting urgent; but the country’s savage customs, the population’s attitudes, and a few gunshots fired the Victoria’s way encouraged the doctor to keep on going. At this point they were crossing a region that was the setting for arson and mass murder, for furious battles that never cease, for conflicts where sultans stake their very kingdoms in the thick of the most appalling bloodshed.
The many populous villages had long huts, which stretched between great pasturelands of heavy grass scattered with violet flowers; looking like huge beehives, these shacks were protected by spiked fences. The wild hillsides recalled the “glens” in the Scottish Highlands, as Kennedy kept pointing out.
Despite his efforts, the wind took the doctor straight northeast toward Mt. Mendif, which vanished up into the clouds; the lofty summits of these mountains separate the Niger and Lake Chad basins.
A peak soon appeared, eighteen villages clinging to its flanks like a litter of babies to their mama’s bosom—it was Mt. Bagélé, a magnificent sight for eyes that look down and take in the whole picture; they would see that the ravines were covered with fields of rice and peanuts.
At three o’clock the Victoria hovered in front of Mt. Mendif. They couldn’t dodge around it, they had to rise over it. By increasing his temperature to 180°,2 the doctor gave his balloon an added lifting power of nearly 1,600 pounds; she climbed more than 8,000 feet. This was the highest altitude they had attained during the journey, and the temperature dropped so sharply, the doctor and his companions had to wrap themselves in their bedclothes.
Fergusson descended in a hurry because the balloon’s envelope was strained to the breaking point; but he had time to note the mountain’s volcanic origin, its extinct craters that now were only deep chasms. Huge accumulations of bird droppings made Mendif’s flanks look like limestone, and they offered enough manure for all the soil in the United Kingdom.
At five o’clock, sheltered from southerly winds, the Victoria gently skirted the mountain slopes and halted in a wide glade far from any dwellings; the instant she touched down, they took pains to secure her firmly, and Kennedy set out over the sloping plain, shotgun in hand; before long he was back with half a dozen wild duck and a species of snipe, which showcased Joe’s talents at their best. They enjoyed that meal and slept soundly the whole night through.
* Monsieur Méry.
