during the previous winter, in a Monte Carlo carpenter shop he worked out the triangular-sectioned ‘‘keel’’ that was to save his life between the roofs of the Trocadero Hotels on the occasion of his famous fall in Paris. His friend, the Duc de Dino, had already invited him to spend the winter at his Monte Carlo villa. When, therefore, Prince Roland Bonaparte, President of the Scientific Commission of the Paris Aëro Club, assured him that the Prince of Monaco would be glad to build him a winter balloon-house on the low shore of the Condamine, and aid him to make a series of over-sea experiments, M. Santos-Dumont did not hesitate.
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Showing its construction, the inflated balloon, and the pennant with its mystic letters
The little Bay of Monaco, sheltered from behind against wind and cold by mountains, and from the wind and sea on both sides by the heights of Monte Carlo and Monaco Town, seemed to offer an ideal situation for a balloon-house. The airship would be always ready, filled with hydrogen gas. It could dart out of the balloon - house when desired and back again for shelter at the approach of squalls. The balloon-house could be erected on the edge of the shore, and the protected bay and open sea beyond wouldafford unlimited clear space for operation. If the maritime experiment is attractive to spherical balloonists, it is doubly so to the navigator of an airship, who, from the nature of things, is unable to carry a large provision of ballast. As will be seen, this proved a chief consideration.
Balloon-house and landing-stage
WHEN M. Santos-Dumont arrived at Monte Carlo in the latter part of January, the Prince’s balloon-house was already practically completed. On the heights of old Monaco Town, in the lovely Botanical Garden that blooms in this soft climate through the entire winter, and on the very edge of the ragged cliffs that overhang the sea far below, this scientific Prince has a stone palace in construction for the lodging of his collection of deep-sea fauna and flora. Now, low down on the shore, in the center of the crescent bay by the Boulevard de la Condamine, he had placed the balloon-house.
The new building rises just across the street-car tracks from the sea-wall, with the waters of the bay from eight to twelve feet below. It is an immense empty shell of wood and canvas over an iron skeleton, 182 feet long, 33
