Works of Jules Verne/Five Weeks in a Balloon/Chapter 39
CHAPTER XXXIX
TIMBUCTOO
During the monotony of the journey on Monday, Doctor Ferguson took pleasure in giving his companions many details respecting the country they were passing over. The flat ground offered no obstacle to their progress. The only care the doctor had was caused by the northeast wind, which blew strongly, and carried them away from Timbuctoo.
The Niger, having turned towards the north as far as that town, curves roundly, and falls into the Atlantic in a great stream. In the bend the country is very varied—sometimes of luxurious fertility, sometimes of great barrenness—uncultivated plains succeed fields of maize, which, in their turn, are followed by vast heath-covered tracts. All kinds of aquatic birds, pelicans, teal, kingfishers, live in hundreds on the borders of the torrents and pools. A Touareg camp appeared from time to time, in which the women did the work and milked their camels and smoked like so many chimneys.
The "Victoria," at eight o'clock P. M., had got more than 200 miles to the west, and the travelers were then witnesses to a magnificent sight. Some of the moon's rays were bursting through the clouds, and glinting among the raindrops, fell upon the chain of Mount Hombori. Nothing could be more strange than those crests of basaltic appearance. Their profiles stood out in fantastic outlines against the cloudy sky—they might be likened to the legendary ruins of a town of the middle ages, or, as in dark nights, the icebergs of the Frozen Ocean appear to the astonished beholder.
"There is a site for the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,'" said the doctor; "Mrs. Radcliffe could not have depicted these mountains under a more terrible aspect."
"Faith," replied Joe, "I should not care to walk at night alone in this ghostly country. If it were not so heavy we might carry all this place into Scotland. It would do very well on the border of Loch Lomond, and tourists would rush in hundreds to see it."
"Our balloon is not large enough to admit of your idea being carried into execution. But it seems to me that our direction is changing. All right; the sprites of the place are rather amiable in sending us a breeze from the south-east, and putting us in a proper direction."
In fact the "Victoria" then resumed her route more to the north, and on the morning of the 20th it passed above the network of canals, torrents, and rivers, a concatenation of the tributaries of the Niger. Many of these canals were covered by thick grass like prairie grass. Here the doctor found out Barth's route when he embarked to descend to Timbuctoo. Of great breadth, at this point the Niger flows between its banks rich with crucifers and tamarinds; gazelles bounded away in troops, plunging their long curled horns into the high grasses, where the alligators lay watching silently for their prey.
Long files of asses and camels, loaded with goods from Jeuné, were forcing their way under the thick trees. An amphitheater of small houses appeared at the bend of the river; on the roofs and terraces was collected all the provender received from the neighboring districts.
"There is Kabra," cried the doctor, joyfully. "It is the port of Timbuctoo, the town is not five miles distant."
"Are you satisfied now, sir?" asked Joe.
"Delighted, my lad."
"So much the better," said Joe.
In two hours, the "Queen of the Desert," the mysterious Timbuctoo—which at one time possessed, like Rome and Athens, its professors and philosophers—unfolded itself before the travelers' eyes.
Ferguson perceived that Barth's plan of it was correct in its minutest detail. The town describes a vast triangle upon a plain of white sand. The apex is towards the north. There is nothing in the neighborhood but a little grass, some mimosas, and stunted trees.
As for the appearance of Timbuctoo, its streets were narrow, and bordered with one-storied houses made of bricks, and huts of straw and reeds; the former of a conical shape, the latter square. Over the terraces some of the inhabitants were lazily extended, robed in gaudy colors, lance or musket in hand.
No women, however, were visible at that hour.
"But it is said they are beautiful," added the doctor. "Do you see the three towers of the three mosques, which are all that are left of a great number. The town is much divested of its former splendor. At the apex of the triangle rises the Mosque of Sankore, with its ranges of galleries supported by arcades of a very pure style. Further on is the quarter of Saua Gungu, the mosque of Sidi Yahia, and some two-storied houses. There are no palaces nor monuments. The sheik is only a trader, and his residence, a shop."
"It appears to me," said Kennedy, "that there are some broken ramparts."
"They were destroyed by the Foullanes in 1826, when the town was larger by a third; for Timbuctoo, from the eleventh century, was an object coveted generally, and belonged successively to the Touaregs, to the Sourayens, to the Marocuins, and Foullanes; and this great center of civilization, where a savant named Ahmed Baba possessed, in the sixteenth century, a library of 1,600 manuscripts, is now nothing but a warehouse for the commerce of Central Africa.
The town appears to be given up to carelessness; it is impregnated with the supineness which is epidemic with decaying cities. Great heaps of rubbish were piled up in the outskirts, and these, with the market hill, formed the only undulations of the ground.
As the "Victoria" passed by there was some little movement; the drums were beaten, but scarcely had the last learned man had time to observe this novel phenomenon when the travelers, impelled by the wind from the desert, were wafted along the river, and Timbuctoo was nothing more than a souvenir of their rapid journey.
"Now," said the doctor, "Heaven may guide us where it pleases."
"Provided it be towards the west," replied Kennedy.
"Well," said Joe, "if it should happen to us to be sent back the way we have come, and to cross the ocean to America, that would not trouble me."
"We must first have the power to do so, Joe."
"And how is that wanting?"
"Gas, my boy, gas. The ascensional force of the balloon is sensibly diminishing; and we shall have to use great care to reach the coast. I shall even be compelled to throw out ballast. We are too heavy."
"Such are the results of doing nothing, sir. By lying here all day, like a sluggard, in a hammock, we get fat and heavy. It is a lazy journey; and when we return we shall find ourselves very stout."
"These are remarks worthy of Joe," replied Kennedy.
"But wait until the end: how do you know what Heaven has in store for us? We are still a long way from the termination of our journey. Where do you expect to touch the coast, Samuel?"
"I should be puzzled to answer, Dick; we are at the mercy of variable winds, but I shall consider it fortunate if we reach Sierra Leone or Portendick. We may meet friends in those neighborhoods."
"And glad to shake hands with them; but are we following the desired route?"
"Scarcely, Dick; look at the compass; we are tending south towards the sources of the Niger."
"We shall have a capital opportunity to discover them then, if they have not been already explored," said Joe. "Is it the etiquette not to find any more of them?"
"No, Joe; but be easy. I hope not to go so far."
At nightfall the doctor threw out the last sacks of ballast. The "Victoria rose; the blow-pipe, although in full action, could scarcely maintain her. She was then at sixty miles to the south of Timbuctoo, and next day saw the travelers on the borders of the Niger, not far from Lake Debo.