was picked out of the burning embers of his car, literally a roasted mass of flesh,—and Admiral Sir Edward Vernon. The day they ascended was a cold one, and snow was falling; notwithstanding which, a Miss Grice, who happened to be passing the field near Tottenham Court Road where the balloon was stationed, entreated so earnestly to be allowed to go with them, that they consented; but the balloon was unable to ascend with such a weight, and they were therefore obliged to put the young lady out, and make their trip without her. The descent was made at Horsham, about thirty-five miles distant from London. The rage for witnessing these balloon ascensions increased so much that they became quite frequent. Immediately after that just mentioned Decker went up at Bristol, and Colonel Fitzpatrick at Oxford, and Major Money at Norwich, who was carried out to sea and very nearly drowned, the balloon, as the gas escaped, sinking lower and lower, and letting him down into the water inch by inch till it reached his shoulders, when he was rescued by a revenue cutter, after being two hours in this unpleasant situation. To obviate this peril of drowning, Mr. Blanchard and Dr. Jefferies ascended from Dover with a balloon to which a car was attached, provided with oars and a sail, and a couple of cork jackets, their intention being to cross the Channel. The ascent was made from the open space on which Queen Anne’s Pocket-pistol is placed. Guns were fired at the castle as signals to regulate the proceedings. The Channel was crossed safely, though the balloon almost touched the water once, and the descent was made in France about twelve miles beyond Calais, the voyagers having been obliged to strip themselves and the car of nearly everything to enable the balloon to ascend to a sufficient height. As a proof of the interest felt in these ascents, it may be mentioned that they took with them letters of introduction written by the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Devonshire, and other members of the nobility, to the Duke de Chartres, Count d’Artois, and others at the French Court. At Calais the commandant sat up till three o’clock in the morning waiting till they should come in from the country, and later on the same morning they received congratulatory visits from the mayor, governor, and every official of note, and were accorded all the honours it was customary to offer the king whenever he happened to visit the town.
Up to this time aeronauts had been singularly fortunate in escaping accidents, and the first to suffer was the first who ascended since Gusmao. Between the time when Pilatre de Roziere made his ascent before Marie Antoinette and the Court, and the 15th June, 1785, he had been up repeatedly. A fortnight previous to this date he dined with Lord Orford, in England, then paid a visit to Miss Dyer, a young lady of considerable fortune, to whom he was engaged to be married, after which he crossed to Boulogne for the purpose of returning thence in a balloon, which had been constructed at King Louis’s expense. The balloon he used was a double one, the upper one being small, and filled with hydrogen, and the lower one a large Montgolfier. The fire was duly kindled, and the balloon was soon darting upwards; the wind blowing so strongly at the time that the fuel, as it was placed on the brazier, was driven about among the wicker-work. An immense crowd had assembled to see him start on his voyage to England, who watched the balloon with intense interest till it was supposed to be about three-quarters of a mile high, and their horror it is hardly possible for us to conceive when they saw at this moment flames issuing from the balloon. The flimsy structure was consumed almost instantly and the car, with the two unfortunate occupants standing upright in it, was seen falling through the air. Almost as soon as the crash was heard a number of persons surrounded the fragments, and released the human beings enveloped in them. Roziere was already dead, but his companion lived for some moments afterwards; the bodies of both appearing as if they had been broken on the wheel. In the succeeding year a Mr. Heron was taken up by a balloon, which was released prematurely in consequence of a panic among the holders of the ropes, he himself clinging tightly to his, and being in consequence raised about a hundred and fifty yards from the ground, when the balloon collapsed, and he fell to the earth, and was, of course, killed. The mania for going up in balloons spread everywhere, even to Constantinople, where a Persian doctor went up in one; so much to the gratification of the “grand Signior,” that he ordered the machine to be suspended in the mosque of St. Sophia as a perpetual memorial of the wonderful achievement.
The first nation to make use of a balloon in warfare was the French, and, singularly enough, when we remember of how much use the same machine was found in ascertaining the position of the Austrians at Solferino and elsewhere, it was against the same enemy that it was first used. The occasion was when General Jourdain attacked a body of Austrians 18,000 strong, who had fortified a position on the banks of a river a few miles from Liege. The exact position of the Austrians was sketched by two engineers, who ascended over the camp in a balloon, and who hovered over it during the French attack, and reported the movements of the Austrians; so that the former avoided attacking the strongest parts of the camp, and directed their efforts against those parts where the defence was weakest. By this means they penetrated to every part of the Austrian camp, and defeated its defenders with great loss. It was made use of on several other similar occasions.
Garnerin’s ascent from Ranelagh, in 1802, was attended with as many dangers as any aeronaut’s since. The wind was so strong that it carried the balloon to Colchester, about sixty miles, in three-quarters of an hour, and on reaching the earth again it was dashed so violently against the ground that he and his companion were very much bruised. His next descent was made by means of a parachute, to the great horror of the spectators, who, from the manner in which the flimsy apparatus rolled about, fully expected he would be dashed to pieces. There was certainly more novelty and daring displayed in these early days of ballooning than now. Notwithstanding the occasional destruction of an aeronaut, through the Montgolfier taking fire (and it would be very difficult indeed