The countryside in the Niger bend—phantasmagoric view of the Hombori Mountains—Kabra—Timbuktu—Dr. Barth’s ground plan—loss of glory—wherever heaven wants.
During that bleak Monday Dr. Fergusson was happy to give his companions a thousand details on the region they were crossing. The terrain was fairly level and offered no obstacles to their progress. The doctor’s only worry came from that bloody northeasterly wind, which was blowing furiously and took him farther from the latitude of Timbuktu.
After running north to that town, the Niger curves around like an immense jet of water and falls back into the Atlantic Ocean, fanning out at the delta; the countryside in this bend is quite varied, sometimes luxuriantly fertile, sometimes exceptionally barren; cornfields give way to undeveloped plains, which turn into wide expanses covered with broom.1 Numerous flocks of all sorts of aquatically inclined birds (pelican, teal, kingfisher) live along the banks of the streams and backwaters.
Now and again they saw a campsite of Tuaregs taking refuge under their animal-skin tents, while their wives were outside attending to chores, milking the camels, and puffing up a storm as they smoked their pipes.
Toward eight in the evening, the Victoria had gone some 200 miles farther west, at which point our travelers witnessed a magnificent sight.
A few shafts of moonlight had made their way through a rift in the clouds, glided between the streaks of rain, and fallen on the Hombori mountain chain. Nothing could have looked more eerie than those basaltic peaks; their phantasmagoric profiles stood out against the darkening sky; you would have sworn they were the fabled ruins of some immense town in the Middle Ages, the same thing ice barriers suggest to an amazed onlooker during a dark night in the polar seas.2
“That’s scenery out of The Mysteries of Udolpho,” the doctor said.3 “Ann Radcliffe couldn’t have cut those mountains into a more frightening shape.”
“Cor,” Joe replied, “I wouldn’t take an evening stroll by myself in that spooky country! Look here, master, if it wasn’t so heavy, I’d pack the whole landscape off to Scotland. It would look spiffy on the shores of Loch Lomond, and tourists would flock there in droves.”
“Our balloon isn’t big enough for that dream to come true. But it seems to me we’re changing direction. Good! The hobgoblins in this locality are kindly souls; they’re blowing a little southeasterly breeze that will put us back on track.”
In essence the Victoria was resuming a course more to the north, and on the morning of the 20th, she passed over a hopelessly tangled network of channels, streams, and rivers, the whole mishmash of the Niger’s tributaries. Covered with dense weeds, several of these channels looked like lush meadows. There the doctor picked up the route Barth took when he boated down the river to Timbuktu. The Niger was 4,800 feet wide at this point, flowing between two banks rich in leafy vegetables and tamarind trees; herds of gazelle were leaping about, their annulated horns4 blending with the tall weeds where gators lay silently in wait.
Loaded with merchandise from Djenné, long lines of donkeys and camels plunged under the lovely trees; soon an amphitheater of low houses appeared in a curve of the river; all the fodder gathered thereabouts lay heaped on their terraces and roofs.
“It’s Kabra!” the doctor exclaimed delightedly. “It’s the harbor for Timbuktu; the town isn’t five miles from here!”
“So you’re happy, sir?” Joe asked.
“Ecstatic, my boy.”
“Well, this too shall pass.”
By two o’clock, in fact, the queen city of the desert was unfolding beneath our travelers’ eyes—secretive Timbuktu, which used to have its schools of learned men and its chairs of philosophy just like Athens and Rome.
Fergusson tracked its tiniest details on the ground plan drafted by Barth himself, confirming the German’s exceptional accuracy.
The town forms a huge triangle drawn on an immense plain of white sand; its apex points north and pierces a corner of the desert; nothing’s nearby, just a few grasses, some dwarf mimosas, and some scrawny shrubs.
As for Timbuktu’s appearance, imagine a pile of marbles and dice; that’s the bird’s-eye view; the streets are pretty narrow and lined with one-story houses of sunbaked brick plus huts of straw or reeds, the first square, the second cone-shaped; a few townspeople were negligently reclining on the terraces, draped in bright robes, lance or musket within reach; however no women were out at that time of day.
“But they’re said to be beautiful,” the doctor added. “You’ll notice the three towers of the three mosques—they’re all that remain of a great many. The town has definitely deteriorated since its glory days! Sankore Mosque stands at the peak of the triangle, its rows of hallways supported by arches of classic design; farther on, near the Sanegungu quarter, are Sidi Yahya Mosque and a few two-story houses. Don’t go looking for palaces or monuments. The sheik is a mere peddler, and his royal home is a trading post.”
“Seems like those ramparts have just about collapsed,” Kennedy said.
“They were destroyed by Fula tribesmen in 1826; at that time the town was over a third larger, because, since the eleventh century, Timbuktu has been universally lusted after and has belonged consecutively to Tuareg, Songhai, Moroccan, and Fula invaders; in the sixteenth century a local scholar such as Ahmad Baba al Masufi could own a library of sixteen hundred manuscripts, but today this great hub of civilization is nothing more than a commercial warehouse for central Africa.”
In fact the town seemed to have lapsed into total indifference; it radiated that negligence so widespread in cities on their last legs; its outskirts were cluttered with immense trash heaps, the only things standing out from the terrain aside from the marketplace hill.
As the Victoria went by, she aroused a little activity below, a drumbeat or two; but the last scholar in the place barely had time to study this new phenomenon; driven off by the desert wind, our travelers continued to follow the river’s winding course, and soon Timbuktu was nothing more than one of their trip’s fleeting memories.
“And now,” the doctor said, “we’ll go wherever heaven wants!”
“Provided it’s to the west,” Kennedy shot back.
“Phooey!” Joe commented. “Even if we backed up all the way to Zanzibar, or crossed the ocean to America, I wouldn’t feel a bit alarmed!”
“First we must be able to, Joe.”
“And what’s keeping us from being able to?”
“Gas, my boy; our balloon’s lifting power has noticeably decreased, and we’ll need to do some major economizing if we’re to make it to the coast. I’ll even have to drop some ballast. We’re too heavy.”
“That’s what comes of just twiddling your thumbs, master! If you lie down and loaf all day like a slacker in a hammock, you’ll fill out and get overweight. This is a lazy man’s journey that we’re on, and when we get back, they’ll find us big and fat.”
“More choice thoughts from Joe,” the hunter replied. “But let’s see how it all works out; do we know what heaven has in store for us? Our journey’s still far from over. Where do you figure we’ll come down on the African coast, Samuel?”
“I’d be hard pressed to answer you, Dick; we’re at the mercy of highly variable winds; but ultimately I’d feel lucky if I landed between Sierra Leone and Portendick; that’s a stretch of country where we’ll meet up with friends.”
“And it’ll be a pleasure to shake hands with ’em; but are we at least heading the way we want?”
“Not really, Dick; look at the magnetic needle on our compass; we’re running south and going up the Niger toward its headwaters.”
“A first-rate opportunity to discover ’em,” Joe remarked. “Too bad somebody already has. Does that mean we couldn’t find new ones in a pinch?”
“No, Joe; but don’t worry, I honestly don’t expect to go that far.”
At nightfall the doctor dropped his last bags of ballast; the Victoria climbed again; the burner was going full blast but could barely keep him aloft; by that point he was sixty miles south of Timbuktu, and the next morning he woke up over the banks of the Niger, not far from Lake Debo.