HOW I BECAME AN AËRONAUT
AND MY EXPERIENCE WITH AIR-SHIPS
BY ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT
IN Brazil, where I was born on July 20, 1873, the sky is so fair, the birds fly so high and soar with such ease on their great outstretched wings, the clouds mount up so gaily in the pure light of day, that you have only to raise your eyes to fall in love with Space and Freedom.
Immense territories reach down to the ocean, from the Cordilleras of the Andes to the mouths of the Amazon and the peerless bay of Rio; there are virgin forests impenetrable to every known means of locomotion; plains covered with tall grass, and mountains broken by precipices; rivers without bridges, obstructed by rocks and cataracts, and encroached on by forbidding vegetation; vast pathless wilds, where under hanging lianas are hidden tracks left by the passage of wild animals through centuries; wonderful sites which only the eye can reach. All these naturally lift thought and ambition to the free air, to that limitless ocean which bathes the earth everywhere, overlooks all, and leads everywhither.
And when I reflect that it is enough to rise a few yards only above the ground to be out of the way of all the obstacles and dangers threatening the foot traveler below, and to visit unfatigued and gently rocked in a basket all the infinitely varied panoramas of a land so rich, it seems to me—as it has always seemed from my earliest childhood—a necessity of Nature to become an aëronaut.
I cannot say at what age I made my first kites; but I remember how my comrades used to tease me at our game of “Pigeon flies”! All the children gather round a table, and the leader calls out: “Pigeon flies! Hen flies! Crow flies! Bee flies!” and so on; and at each call we were supposed to raise our fingers. Sometimes, however, he would call out: “Dog flies! Fox flies!” or some other like impossibility, to catch us. If any one should raise a finger, he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my playmates never failed to wink and smile mockingly at me when one of them called: “Man flies!” For at the word I would always lift my finger very high, as a sign of absolute conviction; and I refused with energy to pay the forfeit. The more they laughed at me, the happier I was. And so, among the thousands of letters which I have received during the past year, there is one that gave me particular pleasure. I quote from it as a matter of curiosity:
“. . . Do you remember the time, my dear Alberto, when we played together—‘Pigeon flies!’? It came back to me suddenly the day when the news of your success reached Rio.
“Man flies! old fellow! You were right to raise your finger; and you have just proved it by flying round the Eiffel Tower.
“You were right not to pay the forfeit; it is M. Deutsch who has paid it in your stead. Bravo! you well deserve the 100,000 franc prize.
“They play the old game now more than ever at home; but the name has been changed and the rules modified . . . since October 19, 1901. They call it now ‘Man flies!’ . . . and he who does not raise his finger at the word, pays his forfeit.”
“Your friend,
“ PEDRO.”
This letter brings back to me the happiest days of my life, when I exercised myself in making light aëroplanes with bits of straw, moved by a screw propeller driven by springs of twisted rubber, or ephemeral silk-paper balloons. Each year, on the 24th of June, over the St. John bonfires which are customary in Brazil from long tradition, I inflated whole fleets of little ‘‘Montgolfières,’’ and watched in ecstasy their ascension to the skies. So, also, my best beloved books came to be the stories of Jules Verne, where, giving free rein to his imagination, that author carries away with him the reader in a balloon, or flying-machine. I devoured the history of aërial navigation, which I found in the works of Camille Flammarion and Wilfrid de Fonvielle.
At an early age I was taught the principles of mechanics by my father, an engineer of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures of Paris. From childhood I had a passion for making calculations and inventing; and from my tenth year I was accustomed to handle the powerful and heavy machines of our factories, and drive the compound locomotives on our plantation railroads. I was constantly taken up with the desire to lighten their parts; and I dreamed of air-ships and flying-machines. The fact that up to the end of the nineteenth century those who occupied themselves with aërial navigation passed for crazy, rather pleased than offended me. It is incredible and yet true that, in the kingdom of the wise, to which all of us flatter ourselves we belong,
