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 Hanning Speke source) and thus also reversing himself from the position he took in the letter to Norton Shaw. In that same letter to Shaw, Burton had also stated that Speke would present his findings to the RGS as he was prevented from traveling as he was in poor health and would be in England a short time after Speke. Jeal concludes that Burton's claim of a promise from Speke to not go to the RGS was improbable. The jealousies and accusations between the two men got ever greater, further inflamed by their respective circles of friends and people who stood to