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,
PS Speke PS Speke PS "Speke" was a British stern wheel paddle steamer in Uganda. She was built for the Uganda Railway in 1910 to operate on Lake Kyoga and the Victoria Nile. First and second class passengers travelled aboard the steamer but she also pushed a barge or lighter on which cargo and third class passengers travelled. "Speke" was bought initially to operate part of what eventually became a rail, ship and road route between the Uganda Railway and Lake Albert. The first stage of this route was the Busoga Railway between Jinja and Lake Kyoga. The original lakeside terminus for