Jules Verne

“ After two days' row the canoes came in sight of Eboe, at a spot where the stream divides into three "rivers" of great width, with marshy level banks covered with palm-trees. An hour later one of the boatmen, a native of Eboe, cried, "There is my country." Here fresh difficulties awaited the travellers. Obie, king of Eboe, a young man with a refined and intelligent countenance, received the white men with cordiality. His dress, which reminded his visitors of that of the King of Yarriba, was adorned with such a quantity of coral that he might have been called the coral king. ”

“ After crossing Africa from Badagry to Boussa, escaping all the dangers of navigating the Niger, getting free from the hands of so many rapacious chiefs, to be shipwrecked six day's journey from the sea, to be made slaves of or condemned to death just on the eve of making known to Europe the results of so many sufferings endured, so many dangers escaped, so many obstacles happily surmounted! ”

“ The vessels were at once put about and slowly steered in an easterly direction, the wind having fallen.
"We were thus enabled," says D'Urville, "to gaze at our leisure upon the wonderful spectacle spread out before our eyes. Severe and grand beyond expression it not only excited the imagination but filled the heart with involuntary terror, nowhere else is man's powerlessness more forcibly brought before him.... A new world displays itself to him, but it is a motionless, gloomy, and silent world, where everything threatens the annihilation of human faculties. ”

“ The interior of the town was found as desolate in appearance as the approach to it. Having been set fire to by each party that had successively been victorious, Conception was nothing more than a heap of ruins, amongst which loitered a little remnant of scantily clothed inhabitants, the wretched residuum of a once flourishing population. Grass was growing in the streets, the bishop's palace and the cathedral were the only buildings still standing, and these, roofless and gutted, would not be able much longer to resist the dilapidating influence of the climate. ”

“ All hearts sunk with despair; shipwreck and death seemed inevitable. Freycinet alone, after a brief instant of hesitation, recovered his self-command. It was impossible that land could be ahead. He, therefore, kept on his northerly course, bearing a little east, and the correctness of his calculations was soon verified. On the next day but one the weather grew calmer; observations were taken, and as they proved the vessel to have run a great distance from the Bay of Good Success, the commander had to choose between a detention off the coast of South America, or off the Falkland Islands. ”

“ On every side rise the sharp points of rocks, bare of vegetation, round which surge the restless waves, and against which dash enormous floating icebergs, with a noise like thunder. Vessels are in perpetual danger in these latitudes, and the eleven days passed under sail by Weddell in surveying minutely the islands, islets, and rocks of this archipelago, were a time of ceaseless exertion for the crew, who were throughout in constant danger of their lives. ”

“ These people lead a miserable life. They feed upon the half-raw flesh of seals and walruses hunted by themselves, or on that of whales flung up by the waves on the beach. The dog is the only domestic animal they possess, and they treat it badly enough, although the poor creatures are very affectionate and render them great services, now towing along their canoes, now dragging their sledges over the snow. ”

“ Three vessels had perished in the very roadstead of Santa Cruz, and two others thrown upon the coast had gone to pieces. Torrents swollen by a tremendous downpour had destroyed gardens, walls, and buildings, laid waste plantations, all but demolished one fort, swept down a number of houses in the town, and rendered several streets impassable. Three or four hundred persons had met their deaths in this convulsion of nature, and the damage done was estimated at several millions of piastres. ”

“ We never experienced a more stinging sense of our own humbleness and imbecility than on such occasions, and never had we greater need of patience and lowliness of spirit. In most African towns and villages we have been regarded as demigods, and treated in consequence with universal kindness, civility, and veneration; but here, alas, what a contrast! we are classed with the most degraded and despicable of mankind, and are become slaves in a land of ignorance and barbarism, whose savage natives have treated us with brutality and contempt. ”

“ The eighteenth century, ushering in our own, rectified received errors, and surveyed minutely alike continents and archipelagoes; in a word brought to perfection the work of its predecessors. The same task has occupied modern explorers, who pride themselves on not passing over in their surveys the smallest corner of the earth, or the tiniest islet. With a similar enthusiasm are imbued the intrepid navigators who penetrate the ice-bound solitudes of the two poles, and tear away the last fragments of the veil which has so long hidden from us the extremities of the globe. ”

“ Looking at them squatting down, standing or walking, with their long hair flowing down their backs, one would take them for the women of a harem rather than savages used to enduring the inclemency of the weather and to struggle for existence. Stretched upon skins with their dogs and horses about them, their chief amusement is to catch the vermin with which they swarm. They hate walking so much that they mount horses just to go down and pick up shells on the beach a few yards off. ”

“ These unfortunate people are afflicted with the terrible scourge of leprosy, which is so prevalent that at least a tenth part of the population are infested with the disease. The cause of this dreadful malady must be sought in the insalubrity of the climate, the miasma from the marshes, which are overflowed with sea-water every flood tide, the neighbourhood of the burial-places, which are badly kept, and perhaps also to the consumption of shell-fish which these natives devour greedily.
All the houses, whether inland or on the coast, are built on piles. ”

“ The city, which has no other name than the Eboe country, is situated on an open plain; it is immensely large, contains a vast population, and is the capital of a kingdom of the same name. It has, for a series of years, been the principal slave-mart for native traders from the coast, between the Bonny and Old Calabar rivers; and for the production of its palm-oil it has obtained equal celebrity. Hundreds of men from the rivers mentioned above come up for the purpose of trade, and numbers of them are at present residing in canoes in front of the town. ”

“ Bilma is their chief city, and the residence of their sultan.
On the arrival of the travellers at Bilma, the sultan, escorted by a number of men and women, came out to meet the strangers. The women were much better-looking than those in the smaller towns; some of them had indeed very pleasant faces, their white, regular teeth contrasting admirably with their shining black skins, and the three "triangular flaps of hair, streaming with oil." Coral ornaments in their noses, and large amber necklaces round their throats, gave them what Denham calls a "seductive appearance." ”

“ Great quantities of ice, covered with mud, rock, and stone, presented themselves at the edge of the barrier, in close proximity of the land; from these our specimens were obtained, and were quite as numerous as could have been gathered from the rocks themselves. The land, covered with snow, was distinctly seen in many places, and between them such appearances as to leave little or no doubt in my mind of it being a continuous line of coast, and deserving the name bestowed upon it of the Antarctic Continent, lying as it does under that circle. ”

“ The explorers were struck with the beauty of the neighbourhood watered by the Winnipeg. That river, whose course is frequently broken by picturesque rapids and waterfalls, flows between two perpendicular granite walls crowned with verdure. The beauty of the scenery, succeeding as it did to the monotony of the plains and savannahs they had previously traversed, filled the explorers with admiration.
The exploration of the Mississippi, which had been neglected since Pike's expedition, was resumed in 1820 by General Cass, Governor of Michigan. ”

“ Thanks to them, we form an intimate acquaintance with a whole world, with an extremely advanced civilization, with manners, habits, and customs differing essentially from our own. How strange it seems to hold in our hands the accounts of the steward of some great lord or governor of a province, or to read such romances as those of Setna and the Two Brothers, or stories such as that of the Predestined Prince. ”

“ Is it less grand than that of our predecessors, that it has not yet succeeded in inspiring any great writer of fiction? To dwell upon it ourselves would be to exceed the limits we laid down for our work. We meant to write the History of the Discovery of the World, and we have written it. ”

“ The population of this town is a curious mixture of races, and our travellers met with Europeans engaged in the chief branches of commerce; Armenian and Arabian merchants, and Chinese; some planters, others following the various trades demanded by the requirements of the population. The Malays, who seemed out of place in an advancing civilization, either led a life of servitude, or slept away their time in indolence and misery whilst the Hindus, expelled from their country for crime, practised the indescribable trades which in all great cities alone save the scum from dying of starvation. ”

“ The Niger, or as the natives call it, the Joliba, or Quorra, is not connected with the Nile, and does not lose itself in the desert sands or in the waters of Lake Tchad; it flows in a number of different branches into the ocean on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, at the point known as Cape Formosa. The entire glory of this discovery, foreseen though it was by scientific men, belongs to the Brothers Lander. The vast extent of country traversed by the Niger between Yaoorie and the sea was completely unknown before their journey. ”

“ How rich in lessons of every kind is this history of twenty centuries of exploration. Let us cast a glance behind us and enumerate the main features of the progress made in this long series of years. If we take the map of the world of Hecatæus, who lived 500 years before the Christian era, what do we see? When it was published the known world did not extend beyond the basin of the Mediterranean, and the whole, with a terribly distorted outline, is represented only by a very small portion of southern Europe, the interior of Asia, and part of North Africa ”

“ One circumstance which much surprised travellers was the apparent homogeneity of race throughout the whole of this immense continent. Take the aborigines at the Bay of Sharks, or in the land of Endracht, or by the Swan River, or at Port Jackson, and the same complexion, and the same kind of hair, the same features, the same physique, all prove indisputably that they have sprung from one common origin. ”

“ Tonga Tabou is of madreporic formation, with a thick covering of vegetable soil, favourable to an abundant growth of shrubs and trees. The cocoa-tree, the stem of which is slenderer than elsewhere, and the banana-tree here shoot up with wonderful rapidity and vigour. The aspect of the land is flat and monotonous, so that a journey of one or two miles will give as fair an impression of the country as a complete tour of the island. ”