Five Weeks in a Balloon

Samuel Ferguson returned to England about 1850, and, more than ever possessed by the demon of discovery, he spent the intervening time, until 1853, in accompanying Captain McClure on the expedition that went around the American Continent from Behring’s Straits to Cape Farewell. And Done Into English By “William Lackland.” CONTENTS PUBLISHERS’ NOTE. “Five Weeks in a Balloon” is, in a measure, a satire on modern books of African travel. 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. It shifted abruptly from south to north, but finally the Victoria was carried away by it toward the west.