Édouard Riou's Balloon Victoria Over Africa — Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1863

A hydrogen balloon blazes like a second sun against the African sky, its gas-filled envelope striped dark above a blinding luminous corona of rigging lines — villagers below scatter or freeze in awe before their thatched huts, dwarfed by the great baobab and the impossible flying machine overhead. This is the moment of first contact between Western aerial technology and the African interior, the Victoria carrying Dr. Fergusson on Jules Verne's visionary adventure across the continent.