thousand (?) feet high he could hear the
rattling of the carriages on the roads, the lowing
of cattle, and the huzzas of the people, though
at the same time it was with difficulty that he
and M. Garnerin could hear themselves speak.
In this situation, Epping Forest appeared to
them not larger than a gooseberry-bush.  In
three-quarters of an hour the balloon drove
sixty miles, and the descent, a very dangerous
one, was made on Fingering Hoe, a common
beyond Colchester.  The country people there
were so frightened at the balloon, that they
offered to fire at the bruised and drenched
aëronauts.  On their way towards Colchester
they were shouted at as impostors, and at
Colchester itself the landlord, seeing their sailors'
dress and signal flags, would insist on their
being election agents, and declared that lie
should reserve his vote.

In July, 1802, M. Garnerin made another
ascent from Lord's Cricket Ground, in
company with Mr. H. Locker, afterwards deputy-
governor of Greenwich Hospital.  The Prince
of Wales was on the ground, with the Duchess
of Devonshire on one arm and Lady Morpeth
on the other, attended by a train of noblemen
and people of fashion.  The wind was
very boisterous and threatening.  The balloon
descended at Chingford-green, in Essex, having
made exactly nine miles in one quarter of an
hour.

M. Garnerin was the son of a Parisian
pewterer.  A sludent at the university during
the height of the Montgolfier mania, he
devoted his whole time, in spite of the vexation
of the professors, to experiments with
small balloons, and was eventually expelled
the college.  When the Revolution broke
out, he became a volunteer in the Parisian
National Guard, devoting his spare time to
flights in the air.  Not having money sufficient
to purchase a balloon himself, he applied to a
rich and avaricious person, who bought one for
him, and gave him a mere trifle for ascending
in it, on condition that he should receive the
cash which the public were to pay for admission.
His parents, however, learning that he was on
the eve of going up in a balloon, waited on
General La Fayette, who was commander-in-
chief of the Parisian Guard, and begged he
would interpose his military authority, and not
suifer the giddy youth to ascend.  M. La
Fayette sent a file of soldiers to put the young
adventurer in confinement; but Garnerin saw
the men approach, and guessing what had been
their orders, immediately drew his sabre, threatened
to run the first person through who should
interrupt him, cut the cords which kept the
balloon to the ground, and ascended with the
utmost velocity.

In Robespierre's time, Garnerin was sent as
commissioner to the army of the North, then
commanded by General Ransonnet.  Taken
prisoner in Flanders by the Duke of York's
division, Garnerin was sent to Oudenarde.  Thence
the Austrians carried him to Hungary, where
he was eventually exchanged.  Whether or not
it was Garnerin who conducted the balloon
reconnoitres before some of the battles between
the republican troops and the Austrians, we do
not know.

Meanwhile, Mr. Wise made a still more
memorable ascent in July, 1835, from Lebanon, in
Pennsylvania.  He says: "At three o'clock I left
the earth with a breeze from the north-west. In
a few minutes, after a panoramic view of innumerable
villages, with the broad dazzling sheet of
water of the Susquehanna unfolding to the view,
I crossed the Reading and Harrisburg turnpike
at the first gate below the town; and although
I started off with an ascending power that
raised me more swiftly, there was the horizontal
velocity of the wind.  I was induced to part with
a bag of sand of about six pounds weight, as a
proffer to the toll-gate keeper, who very humorously
hailed me to pay toll as I passed over his
gate.  This caused the balloon to rise with amazing
rapidity, rushing up through the strong
horizontal wind, which was blowing with a speed
of at least thirty miles per hour, like a
fiery charger dashing along in mettled pride,
heeding no restraint.  This soon brought me
in contact with a thick hazy mist, which was
entered and in a few moments passed.  Above
this were a clear sky and a brilliant sunshine;
but it was now so cold that my hands became
numbed, and a painful ear-ache seized me.  The
balloon was still ascending rapidly, and my next
impulse was to discharge gas and to descend
into a more congenial climate; but in this I was
foiled, and up boomed the buoyant courser with
unabated career.  The cord with which the
valve was worked was sufficiently strong to
perform that office; but no allowance was made
in its appropriation to unforeseen necessities.
Having now got far above the mist, and not less
than three miles above the earth, in a temperature
of forty-three degrees, having been within
twenty-five minutes transferred from a warmth
of seventy-four degrees, which the thermometer
indicated when I left the earth, the world below
scarcely visible from the intervening discoloured
structure of air, my ears buzzing like a beehive,
which for a while I took to be a commotion
of the gas in the balloon trying to escape
through its tightly distended envelope, the valve-
rope broken inside the machine, the aërial ship
still bounding and gyrating upwards, I felt a
degree of excitement which can be better
imagined than described.  Having no way to
let off gas—even the lower orifice of the balloon
containing the waste-pipe, which answers for a
safety-valve when properly rigged, was doubled
up between the concentrating hoop and the
lower side of the balloon, which was now
swollen to its utmost tension—I endeavoured
to reach the lower part of the balloon
with a knife; but, by straddling across
with my feet in the open work of the
basket, it could not be so reached.  From
the hissing noise of the gas, which was
making its way through the small channels
of the compressed neck of the balloon, I
knew that something must give way soon.