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THE DOMINION OF THE AIR

The Story of Aerial Navigation

by Rev. J. M. Bacon

"He that would learn to fly must be brought up to the constant practice of it from his youth, trying first only to use his wings as a tame goose will do, so by degrees learning to rise higher till he attain unto skill and confidence."

So wrote Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, who was reckoned a man of genius and learning in the days of the Commonwealth. But so soon as we come to inquire into the matter we find that this good Bishop was borrowing from the ideas of others who had gone before him; and, look back as far as we will, mankind is discovered to have entertained persistent and often plausible ideas of human flight. And those ideas had in some sort of way, for good or ill, taken practical shape. Thus, as long ago as the days when Xenophon was leading back his warriors to the shores of the Black Sea, and ere the Gauls had first burned Rome, there was a philosopher, Archytas, who invented a pigeon which could fly, partly by means of mechanism, and partly also, it is said, by aid of an aura or spirit. And here arises a question. Was this aura a gas, or did men use it as spiritualists do today, as merely a word to conjure with?

Four centuries later, in the days of Nero, there was a man in Rome who flew so well and high as to lose his life thereby. Here, at any rate, was an honest man, or the story would not have ended thus; but of the rest--and there are many who in early ages aspired to the attainment of flight--we have no more reason to credit their claims than those of charlatans who flourish in every age.

In medieval times we are seriously told by a saintly writer of folks who created clouds which rose to heaven by means of "an earthen pot in which a little imp had been enclosed." We need no more. That was an age of flying saints, as also of flying dragons. Flying in those days of yore may have been real enough to the multitude, but it was at best delusion. In the good old times it did not need the genius of a Maskelyne to do a "levitation" trick. We can picture the scene at a "flying seance." On the one side the decidedly professional showman possessed of sufficient low cunning; on the other the ignorant and highly superstitious audience, eager to hear or see some new thing--the same audience that, deceived by a simple trick of schoolboy science, would listen to supernatural voices in their groves, or oracular utterances in their temples, or watch the urns of Bacchus fill themselves with wine. Surely for their eyes it would need no more than the simplest phantasmagoria, or maybe only a little black thread, to make a pigeon rise and fly.

It is interesting to note, however, that in the case last cited there is unquestionably an allusion to some crude form of firework, and what more likely or better calculated to impress the ignorant! Our firework makers still manufacture a "little Devil." Pyrotechnic is as old as history itself; we have an excellent description of a rocket in a document at least as ancient as the ninth century. And that a species of pyrotechny was resorted to by those who sought to imitate flight we have proof in the following recipe for a flying body given by a Doctor, eke a Friar, in Paris in the days of our King John:--

"Take one pound of sulphur, two pounds of willowcarbon, six pounds of rock salt ground very fine in a marble mortar. Place, when you please, in a covering made of flying papyrus to produce thunder. The covering in order to ascend and float away should be long, graceful, well filled with this fine powder; but to produce thunder the covering should be short, thick, and half full."

Nor does this recipe stand alone. Take another sample, of which chapter and verse are to be found in the MSS. of a Jesuit, Gaspard Schott, of Palermo and Rome, born three hundred years ago:--

"The shells of hen-eggs, if properly filled and well secured against the penetration of the air, and exposed to solar rays, will ascend to the skies and sometimes suffer a natural change. And if the eggs of the larger description of swans, or leather balls stitched with fine thongs, be filled with nitre, the purest sulphur quicksilver, or kindred materials which rarify by their caloric energy, and if they externally resemble pigeons, they will easily be mistaken for flying animals."

Thus it would seem that, hunting back in history, there were three main ideas on which would-be aeronauts of old exercised their ingenuity. There was the last-mentioned method, which, by the way, Jules Verne partly relies on when he takes his heroes to the moon, and which in its highest practical development may be seen annually on the night of "Brock's Benefit" at the Crystal Palace. There is, again, the "tame goose" method, to which we must return presently; and, lastly, there is a third method, to which, as also to the brilliant genius who conceived it, we must without further delay be introduced. This may be called the method of "a hollow globe."

Roger Bacon, Melchisedeck-fashion, came into existence at Ilchester in 1214 of parentage that is hard to trace. He was, however, a born philosopher, and possessed of intellect and penetration that placed him incalculably ahead of his generation. A man of marvellous insight and research, he grasped, and as far as possible carried out, ideas which dawned on other men only after centuries. Thus, many of his utterances have been prophetic. It is probable that among his chemical discoveries he re-invented gunpowder. It is certain that he divined the properties of a lens, and diving deep into experimental and mechanical sciences, actually foresaw the time when, in his own words, "men would construct engines to traverse land and water with great speed and carry with them persons and merchandise." Clearly in his dreams Bacon saw the Atlantic not merely explored, but on its bosom the White Star liners breaking records, contemptuous of its angriest seas. He saw, too, a future Dumont circling in the air, and not only in a dead calm, but holding his own with the feathered race. He tells his dream thus: "There may be made some flying instrument so that a man sitting in the middle of the instrument and turning some mechanism may put in motion some artificial wings which may beat the air like a bird flying."

But he lived too long before his time. His ruin lay not only in his superior genius, but also in his fearless outspokenness. He presently fell under the ban of the Church, through which he lost alike his liberty and the means of pursuing investigation. Had it been otherwise we may fairly believe that the "admirable Doctor," as he was called, would have been the first to show mankind how to navigate the air. His ideas are perfectly easy to grasp. He conceived that the air was a true fluid, and as such must have an upper limit, and it would be on this upper surface, he supposed, as on the bosom of the ocean, that man would sail his air-ship. A fine, bold guess truly. He would watch the cirrus clouds sailing grandly ten miles above him on some stream that never approached nearer. Up there, in his imagination, would be tossing the waves of our ocean of air. Wait for some little better cylinders of oxygen and an improved foot-warmer, and a future Coxwell will go aloft and see; but as to an upper sea, it is truly there, and we may visit and view its sun-lit tossing billows stretching out to a limitless horizon at such times as the nether world is shrouded in densest gloom. Bacon's method of reaching such an upper sea as he postulated was, as we have said, by a hollow globe.

"The machine must be a large hollow globe, of copper or other suitable metal, wrought extremely thin so as to have it as light as possible," and "it must be filled with ethereal air or liquid fire." This was written in the thirteenth century, and it is scarcely edifying to find four hundred years after this the Jesuit Father Lana, who contrived to make his name live in history as a theoriser in aeronautics, arrogating to himself the bold conception of the English Friar, with certain unfortunate differences, however, which in fairness we must here clearly point out. Lana proclaimed his speculations standing on a giant's shoulders. Torricelli, with his closed bent tube, had just shown the world how heavily the air lies above us. It then required little mathematical skill to calculate what would be the lifting power of any vessel void of air on the earth's surface. Thus Lana proposed the construction of an air ship which possibly because of its picturesquesness has won him notoriety. But it was a fraud. We have but to conceive a dainty boat in which the aeronaut would sit at ease handling a little rudder and a simple sail. These, though a schoolboy would have known better, he thought would guide his vessel when in the air.

So much has been claimed for Father Lana and his mathematical and other attainments that it seems only right to insist on the weakness of his reasoning. An air ship simply drifting with the wind is incapable of altering its course in the slightest degree by either sail or rudder. It is simply like a log borne along in a torrent; but to compare such a log properly with the air ship we must conceive it WHOLLY submerged in the water and having no sail or other appendage projecting into the air, which would, of course, introduce other conditions. If, however, a man were to sit astride of the log and begin to propel it so that it travels either faster or slower than the stream, then in that case, either by paddle or rudder, the log could be guided, and the same might be said of Lana's air boat if only he had thought of some adequate paddle, fan, or other propeller. But he did not. One further explanatory sentence may here be needed; for we hear of balloons which are capable of being guided to a small extent by sail and rudder. In these cases, however, the rudder is a guide rope trailing on earth or sea, so introducing a fresh element and fresh conditions which are easy to explain.

Suppose a free balloon drifting down the wind to have a sail suddenly hoisted on one side, what happens? The balloon will simply swing till this sail is in front, and thus continue its straightforward course. Suppose, however, that as soon as the side sail is hoisted a trail rope is also dropped aft from a spar in the rigging. The tendency of the sail to fly round in front is now checked by the dragging rope, and it is constrained to remain slanting at an angle on one side; at the same time the rate of the balloon is reduced by the dragging rope, so that it travels slower than the wind, which, now acting on its slant sail, imparts a certain sidelong motion much as it does in the case of a sailing boat.

Lana having in imagination built his ship, proceeds to make it float up into space, for which purpose he proposes four thin copper globes exhausted of air. Had this last been his own idea we might have pardoned him. We have, however, pointed out that it was not, and we must further point out that in copying his great predecessor he fails to see that he would lose enormous advantage by using four globes instead of one. But, beyond all, he failed to see what the master genius of Bacon saw clearly--that his thin globes when exhausted must infallibly collapse by virtue of that very pressure of the air which he sought to make use of.

Early progress in any art or science is commonly intermittent. It was so in the story of aeronautics. Advance was like that of the incoming tide, throwing an occasional wave far in front of its rising flood. It was a phenomenal wave that bore Roger Bacon and left his mark on the sand where none other approached for centuries. In those centuries men were either too priest-ridden to lend an ear to Science, or, like children, followed only the Will-o'-the-Wisp floating above the quagmire which held them fast. They ran after the stone that was to turn all to gold, or the elixir that should conquer death, or the signs in the heavens that should foretell their destinies; and the taint of this may be traced even when the dark period that followed was clearing away. Four hundred years after Roger's death, his illustrious namesake, Francis Bacon, was formulating his Inductive Philosophy, and with complete cock-sureness was teaching mankind all about everything. Let us look at some of his utterances which may help to throw light on the way he regarded the problem we are dealing with.

"It is reported," Francis Bacon writes, "that the Leucacians in ancient time did use to precipitate a man from a high cliffe into the sea; tying about him, with strings, at some distance, many great fowles; and fixing unto his body divers feathers, spread, to breake the fall. Certainly many birds of good wing would beare up a good weight as they flie. And spreading of feathers, thin and close, and in great breadth, will likewise beare up a great weight, being even laid without tilting upon the sides. The further extension of this experiment of flying may be thought upon."

To say the least, this is hardly mechanical. But let us next follow the philosopher into the domain of Physics. Referring to a strange assertion, that "salt water will dissolve salt put into it in less time than fresh water will dissolve it," he is at once ready with an explanation to fit the case. "The salt," he says, "in the precedent water doth by similitude of substance draw the salt new put in unto it." Again, in his finding, well water is warmer in winter than summer, and "the cause is the subterranean heat which shut close in is the more, but if it perspire it is the less." This was Bacon the Lord. What a falling off--from the experimentalist's point of view--from Bacon the Friar! We can fancy him watching a falcon poised motionless in the sky, and reflecting on that problem which to this day fairly puzzles our ablest scientists, settling the matter in a sentence: "The cause is that feathers doe possess upward attractions." During four hundred years preceding Lord Verulam philosophers would have flown by aid of a broomstick. Bacon himself would have merely parried the problem with a platitude!

At any rate, physicists, even in the brilliant seventeenth century, made no material progress towards the navigation of the air, and thus presently let the simple mechanic step in before them. Ere that century had closed something in the nature of flight had been accomplished. It is exceedingly hard to arrive at actual fact, but it seems pretty clear that more than one individual, by starting from some eminence, could let himself fall into space and waft himself away for some distance with fair success and safety, It is stated that an English Monk, Elmerus, flew the space of a furlong from a tower in Spain, a feat of the same kind having been accomplished by another adventurer from the top of St. Mark's at Venice.

We have now to return to the "tame goose" method, which found its best and boldest exponent in a humble craftsman, by name Besnier, living at Sable, about the year 1678. This mechanical genius was by trade a locksmith, and must have been possessed of sufficient skill to construct an efficient apparatus out of such materials as came to his hand, of the simplest possible design. It may be compared to the earliest type of bicycle, the ancient "bone shaker," now almost forgotten save by those who, like the writer, had experience of it on its first appearance. Besnier's wings, as it would appear, were essentially a pair of double-bladed paddles and nothing more, roughly resembling the double-paddle of an old-fashioned canoe, only the blades were large, roughly rectangular, and curved or hollowed. The operator would commence by standing erect and balancing these paddles, one on each shoulder, so that the hollows of the blades should be towards the ground. The forward part of each paddle was then grasped by the hands, while the hinder part of each was connected to the corresponding leg. This, presumably, would be effected after the arms had been raised vertically, the leg attachment being contrived in some way which experience would dictate.

The flyer was now fully equipped, and nothing remained for him save to mount some eminence and, throwing himself forward into space and assuming the position of a flying bird, to commence flapping and beating the air with a reciprocal motion. First, he would buffet the air downwards with the left arm and right leg simultaneously, and while these recovered their position would strike with the right hand and left leg, and so on alternately. With this crude method the enterprising inventor succeeded in raising himself by short stages from one height to another, reaching thus the top of a house, whence he could pass over others, or cross a river or the like.

The perfecting of his system became then simply a question of practice and experience, and had young athletes only been trained from early years to the new art it seems reasonable to suppose that some crude approach to human flight would have been effected. Modifications and improvements in construction would soon have suggested themselves, as was the case with the bicycle, which in its latest developments can scarcely be recognised as springing from the primitive "bone-shaker" of thirty-three years ago. We would suggest the idea to the modern inventor. He will in these days, of course, find lighter materials to hand. Then he will adopt some link motion for the legs in place of leather thongs, and will hinge the paddle blades so that they open out with the forward stroke, but collapse with the return. Then look on another thirty-three years--a fresh generation--and our youth of both sexes may find a popular recreation in graceful aerial exercise. The pace is not likely to be excessive, and molestations from disguised policemen--not physically adapted, by the way, to rapid flight--need not be apprehended.

One of the best tests of Besnier's measure of success is supplied by the fact that he had pupils as well as imitators. First on this list must be mentioned a Mr. Baldwin, a name which, curiously enough, twice over in modern times comes into the records of bold aerial exploits. This individual, it appears, purchased a flying outfit of Besnier himself, and surpassed his master in achievement. A little later one Dante contrived some modification of the same apparatus, with which he pursued the new mode of progress till he met with a fractured thigh.

But whatever the imitators of Besnier may have accomplished, to the honest smith must be accorded the full credit of their success, and with his simple, but brilliant, record left at flood mark, the tide of progress ebbed back again, while mankind ruminated over the great problem in apparent inactivity. But not for long. The air-pump about this period was given to the world, and chemists were already busy investigating the nature of gases. Cavallo was experimenting on kindred lines, while in our own land the rival geniuses of Priestley and Cavendish were clearing the way to make with respect to the atmosphere the most important discovery yet dreamed of. In recording this dawn of a new era, however, we should certainly not forget how, across the Atlantic, had arisen a Rumford and a Franklin, whose labours were destined to throw an all-important sidelight on the pages of progress which we have now to chronicle.

It was a November night of the year 1782, in the little town of Annonay, near Lyons. Two young men, Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier, the representatives of a firm of paper makers, were sitting together over their parlour fire. While watching the smoke curling up the chimney one propounded an idea by way of a sudden inspiration: "Why shouldn't smoke be made to raise bodies into the air?"

The world was waiting for this utterance, which, it would seem, was on the tip of the tongue with many others. Cavendish had already discovered what he designated "inflammable air," though no one had as yet given it its later title of hydrogen gas. Moreover, in treating of this gas--Dr. Black of Edinburgh, as much as fifteen years before the date we have now arrived at, had suggested that it should be made capable of raising a thin bladder in the air. With a shade more of good fortune, or maybe with a modicum more of leisure, the learned Doctor would have won the invention of the balloon for his own country. Cavallo came almost nearer, and actually putting the same idea into practice, had succeeded in the spring of 1782 in making soap bubbles blown with hydrogen gas float upwards. But he had accomplished no more when, as related, in the autumn of the same year the brothers Montgolfier conceived the notion of making bodies "levitate" by the simpler expedient of filling them with smoke.

This was the crude idea, the application of which in their hands was soon marked with notable success. Their own trade supplied ready and suitable materials for a first experiment, and, making an oblong bag of thin paper a few feet in length, they proceeded to introduce a cloud of smoke into it by holding crumpled paper kindled in a chafing dish beneath the open mouth. What a subject is there here for an imaginative painter! As the smoky cloud formed within, the bag distended itself, became buoyant, and presently floated to the ceiling. The simple trial proved a complete success, due, as it appeared to them, to the ascensive power of a cloud of smoke.

An interesting and more detailed version of the story is extant. While the experiment was in progress a neighbour, the widow of a tradesman who had been connected in business with the firm, seeing smoke escaping into the room, entered and stood watching the proceedings, which were not unattended with difficulties. The bag, half inflated, was not easy to hold in position over the chafing dish, and rapidly cooled and collapsed on being removed from it. The widow noting this, as also the perplexity of the young men, suggested that they should try the result of tying the dish on at the bottom of the bag. This was the one thing wanted to secure success, and that good lady, whose very name is unhappily lost, deserves an honoured place in history. It was unquestionably the adoption of her idea which launched the first balloon into space.

The same experiment repeated in the open air proving a yet more pronounced success, more elaborate trials were quickly developed, and the infant balloon grew fast. One worthy of the name, spherical in shape and of some 600 cubic feet capacity, was now made and treated as before, with the result that ere it was fully inflated it broke the strings that held it and sailed away hundreds of feet into the air. The infant was fast becoming a prodigy. Encouraged by their fresh success, the inventors at once set about preparations for the construction of a much larger balloon some thirty-five feet diameter , to be made of linen lined with paper and this machine, launched on a favourable day in the following spring, rose with great swiftness to fully a thousand feet, and travelled nearly a mile from its starting ground.

Enough; the time was already ripe for a public demonstration of the new invention, and accordingly the 5th of the following June witnessed the ascent of the same balloon with due ceremony and advertisement. Special pains were taken with the inflation, which was conducted over a pit above which the balloon envelope was slung; and in accordance with the view that smoke was the chief lifting power, the fuel was composed of straw largely mixed with wool. It is recorded that the management of the furnace needed the attention of two men only, while eight men could hardly hold the impatient balloon in restraint. The inflation, in spite of the fact that the fuel chosen was scarcely the best for the purpose, was conducted remarkable expedition, and on being released, the craft travelled one and a half miles into the air, attaining a height estimated at over 6,000 feet.

From this time the tide of events in the aeronautical world rolls on in full flood, almost every half-year marking a fresh epoch, until a new departure in the infant art of ballooning was already on the point of being reached. It had been erroneously supposed that the ascent of the Montgolfier balloon had been due, not to the rarefaction of the air within it--which was its true cause--but to the evolution of some light gas disengaged by the nature of the fuel used. It followed, therefore, almost as a matter of course, that chemists, who, as stated in the last chapter, were already acquainted with so-called "inflammable air," or hydrogen gas, grasped the fact that this gas would serve better than any other for the purposes of a balloon. And no sooner had the news of the Montgolfiers' success reached Paris than a subscription was raised, and M. Charles, Professor of Experimental Philosophy, was appointed, with the assistance of M. Roberts, to superintend the construction of a suitable balloon and its inflation by the proposed new method.

The task was one of considerable difficulty, owing partly to the necessity of procuring some material which would prevent the escape of the lightest and most subtle gas known, and no less by reason of the difficulty of preparing under pressure a sufficient quantity of gas itself. The experiment, sound enough in theory, was eventually carried through after several instructive failures. A suitable material was found in "lustring," a glossy silk cloth varnished with a solution of caoutchouc, and this being formed into a balloon only thirteen feet in diameter and fitted without other aperture than a stopcock, was after several attempts filled with hydrogen gas prepared in the usual way by the action of dilute sulphuric acid on scrap iron.

The preparations completed, one last and all-important mistake was made by closing the stop-cock before the balloon was dismissed, the disastrous and unavoidable result of this being at the time overlooked.

On August 25, 1783, the balloon was liberated on the Champ de Mars before an enormous concourse, and in less than two minutes had reached an elevation of half a mile, when it was temporarily lost in cloud, through which, however, it penetrated, climbing into yet higher cloud, when, disappearing from sight, it presently burst and descended to earth after remaining in the air some three-quarters of an hour.

The bursting of this little craft taught the future balloonist his first great lesson, namely, that on leaving earth he must open the neck of his balloon; and the reason of this is obvious. While yet on earth the imprisoned gas of a properly filled balloon distends the silk by virtue of its expansive force, and in spite of the enormous outside pressure which the weight of air exerts upon it. Then, as the balloon rises high in the air and the outside pressure grows less, the struggling gas within, if allowed no vent, stretches the balloon more and more until the slender fabric bursts under the strain.

At the risk of being tedious, we have dwelt at some length on the initial experiments which in less than a single year had led to the discovery and development of two distinct methods--still employed and in competition with each other--of dismissing balloons into the heavens. We are now prepared to enter fully into the romantic history of our subject which from this point rapidly unfolds itself.

Some eleven months only after the two Montgolfiers were discovered toying with their inflated paper bag, the younger of the two brothers was engaged to make an exhibition of his new art before the King at Versailles, and this was destined to be the first occasion when a balloon was to carry a living freight into the sky. The stately structure, which was gorgeously decorated, towered some seventy feet into the air, and was furnished with a wicker car in which the passengers were duly installed. These were three in number, a sheep, a cock, and a duck, and amid the acclamations of the multitude, rose a few hundred feet and descended half a mile away. The cock was found to have sustained an unexplained mishap: its leg was broken; but the sheep was feeding complacently, and the duck was quacking with much apparent satisfaction.

The rest of the narrative, much condensed from a letter of the Marquis, written a week later, runs somewhat thus: "Our departure was at fifty-four minutes past one, and occasioned little stir among the spectators. Thinking they might be frightened and stand in need of encouragement, I waved my arm. M. de Rozier cried, 'You are doing nothing, and we are not rising!' I stirred the fire, and then began to scan the river, but Pilitre cried again, 'See the river; we are dropping into it!' We again urged the fire, but still clung to the river bed. Presently I heard a noise in the upper part of the balloon, which gave a shock as though it had burst. I called to my companion, 'Are you dancing?' The balloon by now had many holes burned in it, and using my sponge I cried that we must descend. My companion, however, explained that we were over Paris, and must now cross it. Therefore, raising the fire once more, we turned south till we passed the Luxemburg, when, extinguishing the flame, the balloon came down spent and empty."

Daring as was this ascent, it was in achievement eclipsed two months later at Lyons, when a mammoth balloon, 130 feet in height and lifting 18 tons, was inflated in seventeen minutes, and ascended with no less than seven passengers. When more than half a mile aloft this machine, which was made of too slender material for its huge size, suddenly developed a rent of half its length, causing it to descend with immense velocity; but without the smallest injury to any of the passengers. This was a memorable performance, and the account, sensational as it may read, is by no means unworthy of credit; for, as will be seen hereafter, a balloon even when burst or badly torn in midair may, on the principle of the parachute, effect its own salvation.

In the meanwhile, the rival balloon of hydrogen gas--the Charliere, as it has been called--had had its first innings. Before the close of the year MM. Roberts and Charles constructed and inflated a hydrogen balloon, this time fitted with a practicable valve, and in partnership accomplished an ascent beating all previous records. The day, December 17, was one of winter temperature; yet the aeronauts quickly reached 6,000 feet, and when, after remaining aloft for one and a half hours, they descended, Roberts got out, leaving Charles in sole possession. Left to himself, this young recruit seems to have met with experiences which are certainly unusual, and which must be attributed largely to the novelty of his situation. He declared that at 9,000 feet, or less than two miles, all objects on the earth had disappeared from view, a statement which can only be taken to mean that he had entered cloud. Further, at this moderate elevation he not only became benumbed with cold, but felt severe pain in his right ear and jaw. He held on, however, ascending till 10,500 feet were reached, when he descended, having made a journey of thirty miles from the start.

Ascents, all on the Continent, now followed one another in rapid succession, and shortly the MM. Roberts essayed a venture on new lines. They attempted the guidance of a balloon by means of oars, and though they failed in this they were fortunate in making a fresh record. They also encountered a thunderstorm, and by adopting a perfectly scientific method--of which more hereafter--succeeded in eluding it. The storm broke around them when they were 14,000 feet high, and at this altitude, noting that there were diverse currents aloft, they managed to manoeuvre their balloon higher or lower at will and to suit their purpose, and by this stratagem drew away from the storm centre. After six and a half hours their voyage ended, but not until 150 miles had been covered.

It must be freely granted that prodigious progress had been made in an art that as yet was little more than a year old; but assuredly not enough to justify the absurdly inflated ideas that the Continental public now began to indulge in. Men lost their mental balance, allowing their imagination to run riot, and speculation became extravagant in the extreme. There was to be no limit henceforward to the attainment of fresh knowledge, nor any bounds placed to where man might roam. The universe was open to him: he might voyage if he willed to the moon or elsewhere: Paris was to be the starting point for other worlds: Heaven itself had been taken by storm.

Moderation had to be learned ere long by the discipline of more than one stern lesson. Hitherto a marvellous--call it a Providential--good fortune had attended the first aerial travellers; and even when mishaps presently came to be reckoned with, it may fairly be questioned whether so many lives were sacrificed among those who sought to voyage through the sky as were lost among such as first attempted to navigate the sea.

It is in such ventures as we are now regarding that fortune seems readiest to favour the daring, and if I may digress briefly to adduce experiences coming within my own knowledge, I would say that it is to his very impulsiveness that the enthusiast often owes the safety of his neck. It is the timid, not the bold rider, that comes to grief at the fence. It is the man who draws back who is knocked over by a tramcar. Sheer impetus, moral or physical, often carries you through, as in the case of a fall from horse-back. To tumble off when your horse is standing still and receive a dead blow from the ground might easily break a limb. But at full gallop immunity often lies in the fact that you strike the earth at an angle, and being carried forward, impact is less abrupt. I can only say that I have on more than one occasion found the greatest safety in a balloon venture involving the element of risk to lie in complete abandonment to circumstances, and in the increased life and activity which the delirium of excitement calls forth. In comparing, however, man's first ventures by sky with those by sea, we must remember what far greater demand the former must have made upon the spirit of enterprise and daring.

We can picture the earliest sea voyager taking his first lesson astride of a log with one foot on the bottom, and thus proceeding by sure stages till he had built his coracle and learned to paddle it in shoal water. But the case was wholly different when the first frail air ship stood at her moorings with straining gear and fiercely burning furnace, and when the sky sailor knew that no course was left him but to dive boldly up into an element whence there was no stepping back, and separated from earth by a gulf which man instinctively dreads to look down upon.

Taking events in their due sequence, we have now to record a voyage which the terrors of sky and sea together combined to make memorable. Winter had come--early January of 1785--when, in spite of short dark days and frosty air, M. Blanchard, accompanied by an American, Dr. Jeffries, determined on an attempt to cross the Channel. They chose the English side, and inflating their balloon with hydrogen at Dover, boldly cast off, and immediately drifted out to sea. Probably they had not paid due thought to the effect of low sun and chilly atmosphere, for their balloon rose sluggishly and began settling down ere little more than a quarter of their course was run. Thereupon they parted with a large portion of their ballast, with the result that they crept on as far as mid-Channel, when they began descending again, and cast out the residue of their sand, together with some books, and this, too, with the uncomfortable feeling that even these measures would not suffice to secure their safety.

This was in reality the first time that a sea passage had been made by sky, and the gravity of their situation must not be under-estimated. We are so accustomed in a sea passage to the constant passing of other vessels that we allow ourselves to imagine that a frequented portion of the ocean, such as the Channel, is thickly dotted over with shipping of some sort. But in entertaining this idea we are forgetful of the fact that we are all the while on a steamer track. The truth, however, is that anywhere outside such a track, even from the commanding point of view of a high-flying balloon, the ocean is seen to be more vast than we suppose, and bears exceedingly little but the restless waves upon its surface. Once fairly in the water with a fallen balloon, there is clearly no rising again, and the life of the balloon in this its wrong element is not likely to be a long one. The globe of gas may under favourable circumstances continue to float for some while, but the open wicker car is the worst possible boat for the luckless voyagers, while to leave it and cling to the rigging is but a forlorn hope, owing to the mass of netting which surrounds the silk, and which would prove a death-trap in the water. There are many instances of lives having been lost in such a dilemma, even when help was near at hand.

Our voyagers, whom we left in mid-air and stream, were soon descending again, and this time they threw out their tackle--anchor, ropes, and other gear, still without adequately mending matters. Then their case grew desperate. The French coast was, indeed, well in sight, but there seemed but slender chance of reaching it, when they began divesting themselves of clothing as a last resort. The upshot of this was remarkable, and deserves a moment's consideration. When a balloon has been lightened almost to the utmost the discharge of a small weight sometimes has a magical effect, as is not difficult to understand. Throwing out ten pounds at an early stage, when there may be five hundred pounds more of superfluous weight, will tell but little, but when those five hundred pounds are expended then an extra ten pounds scraped together from somewhere and cast overboard may cause a balloon to make a giant stride into space by way of final effort; and it was so with M. Blanchard. His expiring balloon shot up and over the approaching land, and came safely to earth near the Forest of Guiennes. A magnificent feast was held at Calais to celebrate the above event. M. Blanchard was presented with the freedom of the city in a gold box, and application was made to the Ministry to have the balloon purchased and deposited as a memorial in the church. On the testimony of the grandson of Dr. Jeffries the car of this balloon is now in the museum of the same city.

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