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laugh.
The Victoria, by this time, had risen to the height of one thousand feet,
and the black hung to the rope with desperate energy. He had become
completely silent, and his eyes were fixed, for his terror was blended with
amazement. A light west wind was sweeping the balloon right over the town,
and far beyond it.
Half an hour later, the doctor, seeing the country deserted, moderated the
flame of his cylinder, and descended toward the ground. At twenty feet above
the turf, the affrighted sorcerer made up his mind in a twinkling: he let
himself drop, fell on his feet, and scampered off at a furious pace toward
Kazeh; while the balloon, suddenly relieved of his weight, again shot up on
her course.
CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.
Symptoms of a Storm.The Country of the Moon.The Future of the African
Continent.The Last
Machine of all.A View of the Country at Sunset. Flora and Fauna.The
Tempest.The Zone of
Fire.The Starry Heavens.
"See," said Joe, "what comes of playing the sons of the moon without her
leave! She came near serving us an ugly trick. But say, master, did you
damage your credit as a physician?"
"Yes, indeed," chimed in the sportsman. "What kind of a dignitary was this
Sultan of Kazeh?"
"An old halfdead sot," replied the doctor, "whose loss will not be very
severely felt. But the moral of all this is that honors are fleeting, and we
must not take too great a fancy to them."
Five Weeks in a Balloon
CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.
58
"So much the worse!" rejoined Joe. "I liked the thingto be worshipped!Play
the god as you like! Why, what would any one ask more than that? Bytheway,
the moon did come up, too, and all red, as if she was in a rage."
While the three friends went on chatting of this and other things, and Joe
examined the luminary of night from an entirely novel point of view, the
heavens became covered with heavy clouds to the northward, and the lowering
masses assumed a most sinister and threatening look. Quite a smart breeze,
found about three hundred feet from the earth, drove the balloon toward the
northnortheast; and above it the blue vault was clear; but the atmosphere
felt close and dull.
The aeronauts found themselves, at about eight in the evening, in thirtytwo
degrees forty minutes east longitude, and four degrees seventeen minutes
latitude. The atmospheric currents, under the influence of a tempest not
far off, were driving them at the rate of from thirty to thirtyfive miles an
hour; the undulating and fertile plains of Mfuto were passing swiftly beneath
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them. The spectacle was one worthy of admirationand admire it they did.
"We are now right in the country of the Moon," said Dr. Ferguson; "for it
has retained the name that antiquity gave it, undoubtedly, because the moon
has been worshipped there in all ages. It is, really, a superb country."
"It would be hard to find more splendid vegetation."
"If we found the like of it around London it would not be natural, but it
would be very pleasant," put in Joe.
"Why is it that such savage countries get all these fine things?"
"And who knows," said the doctor, "that this country may not, one day,
become the centre of civilization?
The races of the future may repair hither, when Europe shall have become
exhausted in the effort to feed her inhabitants."
"Do you think so, really?" asked Kennedy.
"Undoubtedly, my dear Dick. Just note the progress of events: consider the
migrations of races, and you will arrive at the same conclusion assuredly.
Asia was the first nurse of the world, was she not? For about four thousand
years she travailed, she grew pregnant, she produced, and then, when stones
began to cover the soil where the golden harvests sung by Homer had
flourished, her children abandoned her exhausted and barren bosom. You next
see them precipitating themselves upon young and vigorous Europe, which has
nourished them for the last two thousand years. But already her fertility is
beginning to die out; her productive powers are diminishing every day.
Those new diseases that annually attack the products of the soil, those
defective crops, those insufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality
that is rapidly wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we
already see the millions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as a
source of help, not inexhaustible indeed, but not yet exhausted. In its turn,
that new continent will grow old; its virgin forests will fall before the
axe of industry, and its soil will become weak through having too fully
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