Chapter 29

Signs of Vegetation.--The Fantastic Notion of a French Author.--A Magnificent Country.--The Kingdom of Adamova.--The Explorations of Speke and Burton connected with those of Dr. Barth.--The Atlantika Mountains.--The River Benoue.--The City of Yola.--The Bagele.--Mount Mendif.

From the moment of their departure, the travellers moved with great velocity. They longed to leave behind them the desert, which had so nearly been fatal to them.

About a quarter-past nine in the morning, they caught a glimpse of some signs of vegetation: herbage floating on that sea of sand, and announcing, as the weeds upon the ocean did to Christopher Columbus, the nearness of the shore--green shoots peeping up timidly between pebbles that were, in their turn, to be the rocks of that vast expanse.

Hills, but of trifling height, were seen in wavy lines upon the horizon. Their profile, muffled by the heavy mist, was defined but vaguely. The monotony, however, was beginning to disappear.

The doctor hailed with joy the new country thus disclosed, and, like a seaman on lookout at the mast-head, he was ready to shout aloud:

“Land, ho! land!”

An hour later the continent spread broadly before their gaze, still wild in aspect, but less flat, less denuded, and with a few trees standing out against the gray sky.

“We are in a civilized country at last!” said the hunter.

“Civilized? Well, that’s one way of speaking; but there are no people to be seen yet.”

“It will not be long before we see them,” said Ferguson, “at our present rate of travel.”

“Are we still in the negro country, doctor?”

“Yes, and on our way to the country of the Arabs.”

“What! real Arabs, sir, with their camels?”

“No, not many camels; they are scarce, if not altogether unknown, in these regions. We must go a few degrees farther north to see them.”

“What a pity!”

“And why, Joe?”

“Because, if the wind fell contrary, they might be of use to us.”

“How so?”

“Well, sir, it’s just a notion that’s got into my head: we might hitch them to the car, and make them tow us along. What do you say to that, doctor?”

“Poor Joe! Another person had that idea in advance of you. It was used by a very gifted French author--M. Mery--in a romance, it is true. He has his travellers drawn along in a balloon by a team of camels; then a lion comes up, devours the camels, swallows the tow-rope, and hauls the balloon in their stead; and so on through the story. You see that the whole thing is the top-flower of fancy, but has nothing in common with our style of locomotion.”

Joe, a little cut down at learning that his idea had been used already, cudgelled his wits to imagine what animal could have devoured the lion; but he could not guess it, and so quietly went on scanning the appearance of the country.

A lake of medium extent stretched away before him, surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, which yet could not be dignified with the name of mountains. There were winding valleys, numerous and fertile, with their tangled thickets of the most various trees. The African oil-tree rose above the mass, with leaves fifteen feet in length upon its stalk, the latter studded with sharp thorns; the bombax, or silk-cotton-tree, filled the wind, as it swept by, with the fine down of its seeds; the pungent odors of the pendanus, the “kenda” of the Arabs, perfumed the air up to the height where the Victoria was sailing; the papaw-tree, with its palm-shaped leaves; the sterculier, which produces the Soudan-nut; the baobab, and the banana-tree, completed the luxuriant flora of these inter-tropical regions.

“The country is superb!” said the doctor.

“Here are some animals,” added Joe. “Men are not far away.”

“Oh, what magnificent elephants!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Is there no way to get a little shooting?”

“How could we manage to halt in a current as strong as this? No, Dick; you must taste a little of the torture of Tantalus just now. You shall make up for it afterward.”

And, in truth, there was enough to excite the fancy of a sportsman. Dick’s heart fairly leaped in his breast as he grasped the butt of his Purdy.

The fauna of the region were as striking as its flora. The wild-ox revelled in dense herbage that often concealed his whole body; gray, black, and yellow elephants of the most gigantic size burst headlong, like a living hurricane, through the forests, breaking, rending, tearing down, devastating every thing in their path; upon the woody slopes of the hills trickled cascades and springs flowing northward; there, too, the hippopotami bathed their huge forms, splashing and snorting as they frolicked in the water, and lamantines, twelve feet long, with bodies like seals, stretched themselves along the banks, turning up toward the sun their rounded teats swollen with milk.

It was a whole menagerie of rare and curious beasts in a wondrous hot-house, where numberless birds with plumage of a thousand hues gleamed and fluttered in the sunshine.

By this prodigality of Nature, the doctor recognized the splendid kingdom of Adamova.

“We are now beginning to trench upon the realm of modern discovery. I have taken up the lost scent of preceding travellers. It is a happy chance, my friends, for we shall be enabled to link the toils of Captains Burton and Speke with the explorations of Dr. Barth. We have left the Englishmen behind us, and now have caught up with the Hamburger. It will not be long, either, before we arrive at the extreme point attained by that daring explorer.”

“It seems to me that there is a vast extent of country between the two explored routes,” remarked Kennedy; “at least, if I am to judge by the distance that we have made.”

“It is easy to determine: take the map and see what is the longitude of the southern point of Lake Ukereoue, reached by Speke.”

“It is near the thirty-seventh degree.”

“And the city of Yola, which we shall sight this evening, and to which Barth penetrated, what is its position?”