The time had come when the prince of the
powers of the air demanded his first victim.
When they were three-quarters of a mile from
the ground, the two aëronauts were seen through
telescopes busy with the valves, and evidently
alarmed.  In a moment the balloon caught fire,
collapsed, and fell. M. Pilatre seemed to have
been dead before he came to the ground; but
M. Romaine was alive when some persons came
up to the place where he lay, though he expired
immediately after.

The first ascent in England was by Vincent
Lunardi, an Italian, from the Finsbury
Artillery-ground, on the 13th of September, 1784.
He used oars or wings, and produced the gas
he required by diluted vitriolic acid poured upon
zinc.  He took up with him a dog, a cat, and
a pigeon, and descended at Ware, in Hertfordshire,
in two hours and six minutes.

The voyage of Mr. Blanchard and Dr.
Jeffries, on the 7th of January, 1785, was a more
venturous one.  They ascended from
Shakespeare's Cliff, and resolved to cross the Channel.
The balloon was so small, they could only
carry thirty pounds of ballast.  It was a clear
frosty morning, and they were able to count
thirty-seven villages on the south-east of
England.  After passing several vessels, they found
the balloon determined to descend.  They then
threw out, bit by bit, all their ballast; next, a
parcel of books, one by one; then, the wings
of their boat, their provisions, their anchor,
their cords, and even their clothes.  Lastly,
like brave resolute men as they were, they
determined to sling themselves to the air-globe,
and cut away the car.  Just then, however,
the capricious thing took to ascending, and
rising over the high lands between Cape Blanc
and Calais, descended safely in an avenue of
the Forest of Guînes, where a monument still
marks the spot.

In 1785, a Mr. Crosbie attempted to ascend
in Dublin.  On his stepping out of the car,
a Mr. M'Guire, a reckless college youth,
sprang into it, and the balloon ascended
with him, to the astonishment of the
beholders, and presently was carried with great
velocity towards the Channel.  This being
observed, a crowd of horsemen pursued full
speed the course he seemed to take, and could
plainly perceive the balloon descending into the
sea.  Lord H. Fitzgerald, who was amongst
the foremost, instantly despatched a swift sailing
vessel mounted with oars, and all the boats
that could be got, to the relief of the rash
youth, whom they found almost spent with
swimming, just time enough to save his life.

On the 19th of July of the same year, Mr.
Crosbie again ascended at Dublin, determining
to cross the Channel to Holyhead.  His car
was a wicker basket, to the upper edge of
which he had tied bladders, to serve as
lifebuoys.  The current of air bore him towards
Whitehaven; and forty miles from Ireland he
could see both shores.  The cold became so
great, that his ink froze, and his mercury sank
into the bulb.  He became sick, and, entering
a region of storm and thunder and lightning,
the balloon sank to the surface of the water.
He soon found that the water in the car
served as ballast, and that the bladders kept it
afloat, so he put on his cork jacket, and made
himself snug.  The balloon maintaining its
poise, it became a powerful sail, by means of
which, and a snatch-block to his car, he went
before the wind as regularly as in a sailing vessel.
In this situation he became hungry, and ate
a little fowl.  Finding he outstripped all the
vessels pursuing him, he drew in the balloon, and
was finally overtaken and rescued by a barque
from Dunleary.

Only a few days afterwards, Major Money,
having ascended from Norwich, fell into somewhat
similar but far greater danger.  The valve
of the balloon being too small, and the major
being unable to descend in time, the balloon was
blown out to sea, where he floated for several
hours.  He was just sinking, when, near
midnight, a revenue cutter picked him up, almost
exhausted.  There was a fine mezzotint drawing
of this adventure published at the time.

In August of this year Mr. Blanchard made
his first trial of a parachute, to be used in case
of accident.  With this he let a dog fall safely
to the ground from a great height.

In September, 1785, a Mr. Baldwin ascended
from Chester, and left on record his observations,
which are rather fuller than those of his
predecessors.  The perspective appearance of
things to him was very remarkable.  The lowest
bed of vapour that first appeared as a cloud was
pure white in detached fleeces, increasing as
they rose; they presently coalesced, and formed,
as he expresses it, a sea of cotton, tufting here
and there by the action of the air in the
undisturbed part of the clouds.  The whole became
an extended white floor of cloud, the upper
surface being smooth and even.  Above this white
floor he observed, at great and unequal
distances, a vast assemblage of thunder-clouds,
each parcel consisting of whole acres in the
densest form; he compares their form and
appearance to the smoke of pieces of ordnance,
which had consolidated into masses of snow,
and penetrated through the upper surface or
white floor of common clouds, there remaining
visible and at rest.  Through a well-like
opening in the white floor of clouds, at four
miles high, he saw the town of Chester and two
miles of surrounding landscape.  The shadow
of the balloon in the clouds had an iris circle
round it.

On November the 25th, Mr. Lunardi ascended
at Glasgow, and in two hours he passed over a
track of one hundred and twenty-five miles.
Being overcome with drowsiness, he slept for
about twenty minutes in the bottom of the car
during his voyage.  In the same year, Blanchard
made several experiments with explosive and
other parachutes, and in all cases the dogs in
them reached the ground in safety.

In June, 1802, M. Garnerin and a Captain
Sowden made a remarkable ascent from Ranelagh
Gardens during a heavy gale.  At fifteen