I Will do!"

At the moment the population of Timbuktu were crowding onto the
squares and roads and the terraces built like amphitheaters. In the
rich quarters of Sankere and Sarahama, as in the miserable huts at
Raguidi, the priests from the minarets were thundering their loudest
maledictions against the aerial monster. These were more harmless
than the rifle-bullets; though assuredly, if the aeronef had come to
earth she would have certainly been torn to pieces.

For some miles noisy flocks of storks, francolins, and ibises
escorted the "Albatross" and tried to race her, but in her rapid
flight she soon distanced them.

The evening came. The air was troubled by the roarings of the
numerous herds of elephants and buffaloes which wander over this
land, whose fertility is simply marvelous. For forty-eight hours the
whole of the region between the prime meridian and the second degree,
in the bend of the Niger, was viewed from the "Albatross."

If a geographer had only such an apparatus at his command, with what
facility could he map the country, note the elevations, fix the
courses of the rivers and their affluents, and determine the
positions of the towns and villages! There would then be no huge
blanks on the map of Africa, no dotted lines, no vague designations
which are the despair of cartographers.

In the morning of the 11th the "Albatross" crossed the mountains of
northern Guinea, between the Sudan and the gulf which bears their
name. On the horizon was the confused outline of the Kong mountains