Even the ravines were seen to
be covered with fields of rice and of arachides.
By three o'clock the Victoria was directly in front of
Mount Mendif. It had been impossible to avoid it; the
only thing to be done was to cross it. The doctor, by
means of a temperature increased to one hundred and
eighty degrees, gave the balloon a fresh ascensional force
of nearly sixteen hundred pounds, and it went up to an
elevation of more than eight thousand feet, the greatest
height attained during the journey. The temperature of
the atmosphere was so much cooler at that point that the
aeronauts had to resort to their blankets and thick coverings.
Ferguson was in haste to descend; the covering of the
balloon gave indications of bursting, but in the meanwhile
he had time to satisfy himself of the volcanic origin of the
mountain, whose extinct craters are now but deep abysses.
Immense accumulations of bird-guano gave the sides of
Mount Mendif the appearance of calcareous rocks, and there
was enough of the deposit there to manure all the lands in
the United Kingdom.
At five o'clock the Victoria, sheltered from the south
winds, went gently gliding along the slopes of the mountain,
and stopped in a wide clearing remote from any habitation.
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