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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.
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