or cities—lurid fires, that at first seemed like
prairies in flame, but gradually, as the balloon
drew nearer, assumed positive forms, mapped
out into square, and shot out into long lines of
streets.  In the dark night, rapidly losing
sight of all landmarks, the aëronauts floated on,
they knew not whither.  Liège, with its blazing
ironworks, seems to have been almost the only
city they could recognise.  Just outside this city,
Mr. Green, in hauling in his guide-line, lest it
should entangle itself with a factory chimney
or a church steeple, dropped from the car his
coffee-pot, and this was the only serious
accident he met with in his whole journey.
Having no longer use for the lime he had
brought, he let the barrel fall, with a parachute
attached to it.  Hearing voices from some of
the works outside Liège, Mr. Green lowered a
Bengal light, and shouted to the people below
in French and German through a speaking-
trumpet, to their horror and confusion.  Hearing
a steam-engine below, Mr. Green raised the
guide-rope again, and let fall some sand ballast
among the alarmed crowd.  The fiery globe
then passed away into the outer darkness from
the crowd's astonished gaze.  It was now past
midnight, and even the baying of the watch-dogs
had ceased.  The stars looked larger than on
earth, and occasional flashes of lightning lit the
sky to the north.  The light at times lowered
from the car seemed to melt its way through a
sea of blackness.  One of the voyagers describes
the effect to be as if the balloon was cleaving its
way through black marble, which slowly softened
before its orb.  Mr. Mason, in his inflated book,
says the altitude of the barometric column would
manifest a change of several thousand feet in the
level of the balloon's course, while the guiderope,
continuing to trail upon the ground, would
indicate an uniform distance from the surface of
somewhat less than its own extreme dimensions.
"Several times, under the influence of these
changes, did we arrive so near the earth as to
be enabled to distinguish, imperfectly, it is true,
some of its most prominent features, and, as
the intensity of the darkness yielded to our
approach, obtain some faint idea of the nature
of the country which lay beneath us.  At these
times we appeared to be traversing large tracts
of country, partially covered with snow, diversified
by forests, and intersected occasionally with
rivers, of which the Meuse in the earlier part
of the night, and the Rhine towards the
conclusion, constituted, as we afterwards learned,
the principal objects both of our admiration and
of our conjectures."

At about half-past three in the morning,
when the balloon was about twelve thousand
feet from the earth, three sudden explosions and
a great agitation of the car struck terror to the
voyagers, who, however, soon discovered it was
only the gores of silk expanding in a higher
atmosphere.  The cold was at this time intense, for
the water and coffee were frozen.  The aëronauts
themselves, however, did not suffer, for the
cold was not a damp cold.  As day broke,
the stars lost their intense brilliancy, and the
morning star alone retained its resplendence.
Large flocks of fleecy clouds spread below.
The rushing noise, as of the sea or of vast forests,
which they had heard all night, ceased, and an
irregular surface of dimly-lit cultivated country
appeared, traversed by a vast river.  The
sun rose, lighting up a circle whose diameter
was three hundred miles in length.  Three
times they rose to see the sun rise, and three
times they descended again into the lower unlit
darkness.  Fearing now, by the vast track of
snow, that they were approaching Poland, Mr.
Green got ready the grapnel, drew in the guiderope,
and prepared to descend.  Mr. Mason
says:

"As the mists of the night began to clear
away from the surface of the soil, we were
delighted to perceive a country intersected with
roads, dotted with villages, and enlivened with
all the signs of an abundant and industrious
population.  The snowy covering, which so lately
chilled us with its forbidding aspect, had now
disappeared, except a few patches which still
lingered in the crevices, or lay spread within
the sheltered recesses of the numerous hills, by
which the surrounding neighbourhood was
particularly distinguished.  On the summit of one
of these an isolated edifice of considerable magnitude
and venerable antiquity appeared."

The place selected for the descent was a
grassy vale between two wooded hills.  In
every direction spread forests.  The difficulty was
to release the frozen sand from the bags.  There
was danger, for a wooded precipice was all but
touching the balloon.  When Mr. Green and his
friend heaved out a solid frozen ballast-bag of
fifty-six pounds weight, the balloon, clearing the
mountain at a bound, rose a thousand feet into
the air.  The gas was then released, and the
balloon descended close to the forest, the grapnel
catching at the branches.  Then Mr. Green
pulled the valve full open, and descended just
outside the wood, after a voyage of eighteen
hours.  They had descended near Weilburg, in
Nassau.

These are a few of the more memorable
balloon ascents.  We have no room to give in
detail Mr. Blanchard's or Mr. Cocking's death,
and many other disastrous occurrences.

It must be confessed that the new science
has as yet led but to small results.  Even in
1785, Mr. Blanchard performed an aërial voyage
from Lille of three hundred miles.  Nearer our.
own time, Mr. Wise and others have traversed
one thousand one hundred miles of air; but
the danger of voyages in vessels that will
obey no helm, and are exposed to storms more
terrible than those of earth, still continues.
Yet it would be unworthy any thoughtful
man, who opposes finality, to deride the
horrible future of a new and undeveloped idea.
Even now balloons could he used to explore otherwise
inaccessible mountains and seas; they could
reconnoitre military positions, or drop lighted
shells into besieged towns; they could carry
ropes over wrecked vessels, or convey intelligence
into beleaguered places; above all, they