Five Weeks in a Balloon the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern-day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern-day Central African Republic as a desert,
John Lee Lee the will of his uncle Major Edward Lee (d.17 January 1819) of Orleigh, he inherited several estates including Orleigh. Under the terms of the bequest he adopted the surname Lee by royal licence dated 21 March 1825. He let Orleigh to his brother-in-law William Speke of Jordans near Ilminster (father of the River Nile explorer John Hanning Speke (1827–1864)) and made his own residence at Dillington. In 1830 he was elected one of the Members of Parliament for Wells, and held the seat until 1837. Lee married twice. His first marriage was in 1834 to Jessy Edwards-Vaughan (died 1836), the