"Every thing has gone well thus far," said he.
"Very well indeed!" assented Kennedy.
"Come, now, Mr. Kennedy, are you sorry that you
came with us?"
"I'd like to see anybody prevent my coming!"
It was now four o'clock in the afternoon. The Victoria
had struck a more rapid current. The face of the
country was gradually rising, and, ere long, the barometer
indicated a height of fifteen hundred feet above the level
of the sea. The doctor was, therefore, obliged to keep
his balloon up by a quite considerable dilation of gas, and
the cylinder was hard at work all the time.
Toward seven o'clock, the balloon was sailing over the
basin of Kanyeme. The doctor immediately recognized
that immense clearing, ten miles in extent, with its villages
buried in the midst of baobab and calabash trees.
It is the residence of one of the sultans of the Ugogo
country, where civilization is, perhaps, the least backward.
The natives there are less addicted to selling members of
their own families, but still, men and animals all live
together in round huts, without frames, that look like
haystacks.
Beyond Kanyeme the soil becomes arid and stony, but
in an hour's journey, in a fertile dip of the soil, vegetation
had resumed all its vigor at some distance from Mdaburu.
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