The Niger
Quick crossing—sensible decisions—caravans—constant cloudbursts—Gao—the Niger—Golbéry, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Gray—Mungo Park—Laing—René-Auguste Caillié—Clapperton—John and Richard Lander.
The day of May 17 was serene and totally uneventful; the desert was back again; a moderate wind led the Victoria to the southwest; she didn’t veer either right or left; her shadow drew a perfectly straight line over the sand.
Before setting out, the doctor took care to replenish his water supply; he was afraid that he might not be able to touch down in these regions, which were teeming with Aulliminden Tuaregs. The mesa rose 1,800 feet above sea level, sinking lower to the south. Our travelers cut across the route from Agadez to Murzuk—a route often pummeled by the feet of camels—and arrived that evening in latitude 16° and longitude 4° 55′, having covered 180 long, monotonous miles.
During that day Joe fixed their last pieces of game, which required only minimal preparation; he served up quite a tasty supper of snipe shish kebab. The wind was blowing well, so the doctor decided to continue on through the night, which featured a radiant moon that was nearly full. The Victoria climbed to an altitude of 500 feet, and during the sixty-odd miles of this nighttime crossing, she wouldn’t have troubled the gentle slumber of a baby.
On Sunday morning the wind changed direction again; it blew to the northwest; a few crows flew through the air, and a flock of vultures soared closer to the horizon, fortunately keeping their distance.
The sight of those birds led Joe to compliment his master on his idea of using two balloons.
“Where would we be,” he said, “with just one envelope? This second balloon is like a ship’s lifeboat; in case of a wreck, we can still use it to get to safety.”
“You’re right, my friend; only I’m a trifle worried about my lifeboat; it isn’t as good as the vessel herself.”
“What do you mean?” Kennedy asked.
“I mean that our new Victoria isn’t as good as the old one; whether her fabric is starting to wear through, or her gutta-percha is melting from the heat of the coil, I’m aware that she’s definitely leaking gas; so far it’s nothing major, but it adds up in the long run; we’re tending to lose altitude, and to stay aloft, I have to work harder to make the hydrogen expand.”
“Bloody hell!” Kennedy said. “I don’t see any way to fix that.”
“There isn’t any, my dear Dick; which is why we’d be wise to press on and avoid halting even at night.”
“Are we still far from the coast?” Joe asked.
“Which coast, my boy? If only we knew where chance will guide us; all I can tell you is that Timbuktu still lies 400 miles to the west.”
“And how long will it take us to get there?”
“If the wind doesn’t lead us too far astray, I figure on coming into town toward Tuesday evening.”
“Then we’ll arrive quicker than that caravan,” Joe said, pointing to a long line of animals and men winding through the middle of the desert.
Fergusson and Kennedy leaned over the side and saw a huge array of all sorts of creatures; there were more than 150 camels, the type that tote a 500-pound load from Timbuktu to Tafilet for twelve gold mutkals;1 under the tail each carried a little bag to catch its excrement, the only campfire fuel you can count on in the desert.
These Tuareg camels are the species of choice; they can go three to seven days without water and two without food; the speed of these dromedaries is greater than a horse’s, and they intelligently obey the voice of the khabir, the caravan guide. They are known locally by the name mehari.
These were the details the doctor gave his companions as they studied that community of men, women, and children, who were walking carefully over sand that was in semimotion, sand barely held in place by a few thistles, shriveled weeds, and puny shrubs. The wind erased their footprints almost immediately.
Joe asked how Arabs managed to find their way in the desert and reach the wells scattered over those immense wastes.
“Arabs,” Fergusson answered, “have been given a marvelous path-finding instinct by nature; where a European would lose his bearings, they never hesitate; a nondescript rock, a pebble, a tuft of grass, a different shade of sand are enough to point them the right way; during the night they steer by the polestar; they don’t go over two miles per hour and rest during the blazing noonday heat; you can gather from this how long they take to cross the Sahara, a desert more than 900 miles wide.”
But the Victoria had already vanished before the astonished eyes of those Arabs, who must have envied her speed. By evening she had crossed longitude 2° 20′,* then that night she traveled another degree and a fraction.
The weather changed completely on Monday; rain fell with great intensity; they had to bear up under this deluge and the added weight it gave the balloon and gondola; this ongoing cloudburst explained the marshes and swamps that exclusively make up the country’s surface; plant life reappeared thereabouts, along with mimosa, baobab, and tamarind trees.
This was the Songhai Empire, its villages topped by upside-down roofs like Armenian hats; there were few mountains but just enough hills to form ravines and preserves where guinea fowl and snipe crisscrossed in the air; here and there an impetuous stream cut across the routes; the natives cross over by clinging to a creeper that stretches from one tree to another; the forests gave way to jungles bustling with gators, hippopotamuses, and rhinoceroses.
“We’ll soon come in sight of the Niger,” the doctor said. “The region changes as it nears a big river. These moving roadways, as they’re aptly called, brought vegetation with them initially, just as they’ll bring civilization later on. Thus the seeds of Africa’s leading cities have been sown along the banks of the Niger’s 2,500-mile course.”
“You know,” Joe said, “that reminds me of the pious bloke who felt it was so thoughtful of Providence to always run rivers through big towns!”
At noon the Victoria passed over a hamlet, Gao, an assemblage of rather squalid shacks that used to be a teeming metropolis.
“This is where Barth crossed the Niger coming back from Timbuktu,” the doctor said. “It’s a river that has been famous since ancient times, the Nile’s rival, a river of heavenly origin according to pagan superstitions; like the Nile it has captured the attention of geographers down through the ages; and even more than the Nile, its exploration has cost many lives.”
The Niger flowed between its two well-separated banks; its waters rolled southward with distinct force; but our fast-moving travelers could barely catch its intriguing contours.
“I wanted to tell you about this river,” Fergusson said, “and already we’ve left it behind! Under the names of Dhiouleba, Mayo, Egghirreou, and Quorra among others, it runs through an immense stretch of country, almost rivaling the Nile in length. These names quite simply mean ‘river’ in the different regions it crosses.”
“Did Dr. Barth take this route?” Kennedy asked.
“No, Dick; after leaving Lake Chad, he traveled through the chief towns in Bornu and cut across the Niger at Say, four degrees below Gao; then he went deep into those unexplored regions found in the Niger bend, and after eight months of additional exertions, he made it to Timbuktu—which we ourselves will reach in under three days, with a wind as brisk as this.”
“Did anybody discover the Niger’s source?” Joe asked.
“Quite a while ago,” the doctor answered. “Many exploring parties were motivated to scout out the Niger and its tributaries, and I can list the main ones for you. From 1749 to 1758,2 Adanson inspected the river and visited Gorée Island; from 1785 to 1788 Golbéry and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire traveled over the deserts of Senegambia and went as far up as the country of the Moors, who murdered Saugnier, Brisson, Adams, Riley, Cochelet, and so many other unfortunates. Then came the famous Mungo Park, Sir Walter Scott’s friend and also Scottish himself. Sent in 1795 by the Royal African Society of London, he reached the Bambara Empire, sighted the Niger, covered 500 miles with a slave trader, scouted out the Gambia River, and after going back to England in 1797, he left again on January 30, 1805, along with his brother-in-law Anderson, the draftsman Scott, and a crew of hired hands; he reached Gorée Island, took on a detachment of thirty-five soldiers, and sighted the Niger again on August 19; but by that point, due to exhaustion, hardships, ill-treatment, foul weather, and the country’s unsanitary conditions, no more than eleven Europeans were left out of forty; on November 16 Mungo Park’s final letters reached his wife, and a year later a peddler from those parts stated that on December 23, when the unfortunate Park reached Bussa on the Niger, his small craft overturned in the river’s waterfalls, and he himself was slaughtered by the natives.”
“And his dreadful fate didn’t keep explorers away?”
“Quite the contrary, Dick; because by that point they had to do more than scout out the river, they had to recover the traveler’s papers. In 1816 London organizers put together an expedition in which Major Gray took part; it arrived in Senegal, entered Fouta Djallon, visited the Fula and Mandingo peoples, then went back to England without accomplishing anything further. In 1822 Major Laing explored all of west Africa bordering on England’s possessions, and he was the first to reach the Niger’s headwaters; according to his records, the wellspring of this immense river is less than two feet across.”
“No problem to jump over,” Joe said.
“Excuse me? No problem?” the doctor countered. “If we’re to believe tradition, any individual attempting to jump across that spring is immediately swallowed up; anybody who tries to draw water out of it feels an invisible hand push him back.”
“And is it acceptable to not believe tradition?” Joe asked.
“It’s acceptable. Five years later it was Major Laing’s destiny to cross the Sahara, to enter Timbuktu, and a few miles farther to be garroted by the Oulad-Shiman,3 who tried to force him to turn Muslim.”
“Another life lost!” the hunter said.
“It was at this juncture that a valiant young man of slender means undertook to carry out the most amazing journey of the modern era; I’m referring to the Frenchman René-Auguste Caillié. After various attempts in 1819 and 1824, he again left the Rio Nuñez on April 19, 1827; he arrived in Timé on August 3, so exhausted and ill that he couldn’t resume his journey until January 1828, six months later; then, protected by his oriental clothing, he joined a caravan, reached the Niger on March 10, entered the town of Djenné, and boated down the river as far as Timbuktu, where he arrived on April 30. Paul Imbert, another Frenchman, may have seen that intriguing town in 1670, likewise the Englishman Robert Adams in 1810; but René-Auguste Caillié would be the first European to bring back exact information; on May 4 he left this queen city of the desert; on the 9th he inspected the very place where Major Laing was murdered; on the 19th he arrived in Araouane, then left that mercantile town to run a thousand dangers in the huge wastes lying between Sudan and Africa’s northernmost regions; finally he got to Tangier and on September 28 set sail for Toulon; in nineteen months, despite 180 days of illness, he’d crossed Africa west to north. By Jove, if Caillié had been born in England, he would have been honored as the most courageous traveler of modern times, the equal of Mungo Park! But in France his achievements weren’t fully appreciated.”*
“He was a bold companion,” the hunter said. “And what happened to him?”
“He died from his exertions at age thirty-nine; the Paris Geographical Society thought it had done enough by awarding him a cash prize in 1828; England would have given him the highest honors! Meanwhile, as he was carrying out this marvelous journey, an Englishman had envisioned the same undertaking and was attempting it with just as much courage if not quite as much luck. This was Captain Clapperton, Denham’s companion. In 1829 he went back to Africa, landing on the west coast in the Bight of Benin; he picked up the trails of Mungo Park and Laing, in Bussa recovered the records of Park’s death, and on August 20 arrived in Sokoto, where, held captive, he breathed his last in the arms of his loyal assistant Richard Lander.”
“And what happened to this Lander?” Joe asked with great interest.
“He managed to get back to the coast and then home to London, bringing along the captain’s papers and an accurate report of his own journey; then he offered to help the government finish scouting out the Niger; he joined forces with his brother John, the second child of poor Cornwall parents, and from 1829 to 1831 these two men went back down the river from Bussa to its mouth, describing it village by village, mile by mile.”
“So both brothers escaped the usual fate?” Kennedy asked.
“Yes, during that expedition at least—because in 1833 Richard undertook a third journey to the Niger and was struck down near the river’s mouth by a bullet from an unknown musket. So you see, my friends, this country we’re crossing has witnessed the noblest kinds of dedication, for which, all too often, death has been the reward!”
* Using the meridian of Paris as longitude 0°.
* Dr. Fergusson speaks from an Englishman’s viewpoint and perhaps is exaggerating; nevertheless we must acknowledge that out of France’s travelers, René-Auguste Caillié didn’t enjoy the fame his dedication and courage deserved.