Five Weeks in a Balloon
CHAPTER I
RECEPTION OF DR. FERGUSON
N the 14th of January, 1862, there was a very large attendance of the members of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 3 Waterloo Place. The President, Sir Francis M———, made an impromptu communication to his colleagues in a speech frequently interrupted by applause. This rare specimen of oratory ended at length with some grandiloquent phrases, in which patriotism was displayed in well-rounded sentences, thus:
"England has always appeared at the head of all other nations in the way of geographical discovery. (Hear, hear.) Doctor Samuel Ferguson, one of her glorious children, will not disgrace the land of his birth. (No, no.) If his attempt succeed (It will, it will!) it will bind together in a complete form the isolated maps of the African continent. If it fail (Never, never!) it will remain at least on record as one of the boldest conceptions of the human mind." (Loud applause.)
"Hurrah, hurrah!" shouted the assembly, quite electrified by these stirring words.
"Hurrah for the undaunted Ferguson!" cried one of the members, more enthusiastic than the rest.
The enthusiasm then rose to a high pitch. The name of Ferguson was in every mouth, and there is no reason to believe that it lost anything in its emancipation from the British throat. The whole assembly was in a ferment.
Yet there were present in that assembly a number of individuals grown old in travel: bold explorers, whose wandering disposition had led them to all parts of the world. All of them, either physically or morally, had escaped shipwreck, fire, the tomahawk of the Indian, the club of the savage, the stake, or Polynesian cannibals. But nothing could still the throbbing of their breasts dur-
181
