“Positively,” said Joe, “this is where I’ll have to retire to when I get old!”
About ten o’clock in the morning the atmosphere cleared up, the clouds parted, and the country beneath could again be seen, the Victoria meanwhile rapidly descending. Dr. Ferguson was in search of a current that would carry him more to the northeast, and he found it about six hundred feet from the ground. The country was becoming more broken, and even mountainous. The Zungomoro district was fading out of sight in the east with the last cocoa-nut-trees of that latitude.
Ere long, the crests of a mountain-range assumed a more decided prominence. A few peaks rose here and there, and it became necessary to keep a sharp lookout for the pointed cones that seemed to spring up every moment.
“We’re right among the breakers!” said Kennedy.
“Keep cool, Dick. We shan’t touch them,” was the doctor’s quiet answer.
“It’s a jolly way to travel, anyhow!” said Joe, with his usual flow of spirits.
In fact, the doctor managed his balloon with wondrous dexterity.
“Now, if we had been compelled to go afoot over that drenched soil,” said he, “we should still be dragging along in a pestilential mire. Since our departure from Zanzibar, half our beasts of burden would have died with fatigue. We should be looking like ghosts ourselves, and despair would be seizing on our hearts. We should be in continual squabbles with our guides and porters, and completely exposed to their unbridled brutality. During the daytime, a damp, penetrating, unendurable humidity! At night, a cold frequently intolerable, and the stings of a kind of fly whose bite pierces the thickest cloth, and drives the victim crazy! All this, too, without saying any thing about wild beasts and ferocious native tribes!”
“I move that we don’t try it!” said Joe, in his droll way.
“I exaggerate nothing,” continued Ferguson, “for, upon reading the narratives of such travellers as have had the hardihood to venture into these regions, your eyes would fill with tears.”