Jules Verne · 1863 · overland

The book that launched Jules Verne's Voyages extraordinaires in 1863. Dr. Samuel Fergusson and two companions attempt the first crossing of Africa by air, drifting in a hydrogen balloon from Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean to the Senegal coast on the Atlantic, over a source of the Nile, Lake Chad and Timbuktu, surviving storms, attacks and near-disaster along the way.

1. 1
   Zanzibar

   Dr. Samuel Fergusson, his friend the hunter Dick Kennedy, and his servant Joe set out from the island of Zanzibar in the Victoria, a hydrogen balloon of Fergusson's own clever design, meaning to cross the whole unknown breadth of Africa from east to west by air, a feat no traveller has ever attempted.

2. 2
   Source of the Nile

   Drifting west over the highlands, the Victoria sails above the great lake the explorers have long sought, and Fergusson settles one of the age's burning questions by identifying it as a source of the Nile. Below them spread regions no European has mapped, lakes and forests and the smoke of distant villages, all seen from the safety of the air.

3. 3
   Lake Chad

   Across the heart of the continent the balloon carries them, over jungle and savanna and the broad waters of Lake Chad, through storms and over hostile country where they are shot at, becalmed, and nearly brought down. Joe at one point leaps overboard to lighten the failing balloon and is given up for lost before a daring rescue.

4. 4
   Timbuktu

   Westward still, the Victoria passes over the Niger and the fabled city of Timbuktu, the balloon slowly losing its lift as the gas leaks away and the apparatus falters. The travellers throw overboard everything they can spare, fighting for every mile as the great river country gives way to the dry lands of the west.

5. 5
   Saint-Louis

   With the balloon all but spent, the three men make a final desperate dash across the Senegal River, scrambling from the sinking Victoria as it fails beneath them, and are plucked to safety by a French outpost. They reach Saint-Louis on the Atlantic coast at last, the first men ever to cross Africa from sea to sea.