AËrial navigation, the faculty of locomotion through the air, the power of soaring bird-like into the azure fields of space, has always been tantalisingly seductive to the human imagination. So engrossing is the theme, that although the subject has already been discussed from a scientific point of view in these pages, a few additional words about its more popular aspects may not be found uninteresting to our readers.

Great, and, as it has proved, baseless anticipations were evoked by the advent of the first balloon. AËrostation was to disclose the secrets of the atmospheric world, and by enabling men to predict rains and droughts, secure by the proper cultivation of the soil abundant and excellent harvests. The unmanageable nature of the new invention was not taken into account at all, nor the fact, that although you might ascend into the air from any point you chose, no one could predict where or how you would descend. This charming uncertainty still attends aËrial voyages; no means have yet been discovered of guiding the balloon in a horizontal direction; and it is always so much at the mercy of currents of air, that the course it will follow is a matter of chance, and not an affair of the aËronaut’s will or choice.

Attempts have been made to press this unmanageable machine into the service of science, and with some success, although what has yet been done is little more than a suggestion of discoveries which may at some future time be practicable by its aid.

In 1862 Mr Glaisher, author of a history of Travels in the Air, made a series of ascents from Wolverhampton, in order to verify a number of scientific observations; the results of which are contained in the annals of the British Association. A new balloon was provided for him, which was not made of silk, but of American cloth, a stronger and more serviceable material, and in this aËrial machine he encountered sundry mishaps and misadventures, on two occasions narrowly escaping with his life.

Its very danger lends to balloon-travelling a sense of conscious adventure, of thrilling excitement, peculiarly its own. Added to this, the cloud-scenery through which the aËronaut glides is not only novel, but is often, especially at sunrise and sunset, most gorgeously beautiful; while the earth beneath, which seems to have motion transferred to it, presents as it hurries past, a charming and varied panorama. Woods and rivers, hamlets and towns, hills and valleys, and wide-spreading downs, succeed each other in rapid succession. From the immense height, all idea of the comparative altitude of objects is lost; great cities appear like small models of towns, and the biggest man-of-war looks like a boy’s toy ship. Morning up in cloudland is a gloriously radiant spectacle. The balloon floats out of darkness into a world of shadowy mountain ranges, colourless and unsubstantial at first, but borrowing from the rising sun the softest, tenderest hues of roseate pink and warmest crimson, glowing and blending and fading away at last into a mellow flood of amber gold.

In France, for some time after their invention, balloons were quite the rage, the first made for scientific purposes being that of July 1803, and which was followed by several others having for their object the solution of many physical problems, not a few of which remain problems still. In 1850 two ascents were made for the purpose of investigating certain atmospheric phenomena. One especially of these aËrial voyages was in the last degree unfortunate. Scarcely had the two philosophers MM. Barral and Bixio taken their seats, than they made the unpleasant discovery that their balloon was not in good working order; and while they were hesitating about what should be done in the circumstances, a violent gust of wind settled the question for them, and the balloon, blown from the earth, shot into the air with the velocity of an arrow. Becoming rapidly inflated, the machine then bulged out at top and bottom, covering the car like a hood, and enveloping the unfortunate aËronauts in total darkness. ‘Their position was most critical; and when one of them endeavoured to secure the valve-rope, a rent was made in the lower part of the balloon, and the hydrogen gas with which it was inflated escaping close to their faces suffocated both of them, causing a momentary exhaustion, followed by nausea and violent vomiting.’

In this helpless condition they discovered that they were descending rapidly; and on groping about for the cause they found that the balloon was split open in the middle, and that there was a rent in it two yards long. This was a cruel predicament in which to find themselves thirty thousand feet up in the air, and very naturally they abandoned all hope of life, although, like wise men, they did all in their power to preserve it. To lessen the downward velocity of the balloon they threw overboard all their ballast, then article after article of their raiment even to their fur coats, preserving only their instruments, with which they at last descended in safety in a vineyard near Lagny.

The motion in a balloon is scarcely perceptible. You are not conscious of rising; but the earth appears to recede from you, and to advance to meet you during a descent. In the higher regions of the air, the intense solitude of the cloud-scape has something in it awful and oppressive, as if the world were left behind for ever, and the aËronaut were about to launch chance-driven into the vast infinitude of shadowland. Amid these altitudes, if any sound is made by the aËronaut, it is echoed back in ghostly tones by the vast envelope of the balloon, which as it floats casts a shadow sometimes black and sometimes white; but which is usually surrounded by an aureole or halo more or less distinctly marked.

In throwing out ballast or any small article from a balloon, a certain degree of caution is requisite, as a bottle or any similar object falls with such velocity that if it were to strike the roof of a cottage it would go right through it. We are told that Gay-Lussac, in an ascent in 1804, threw out a common deal chair from the height of 23,000 feet. It fell beside a country girl who was tending some sheep in a field, and as the balloon was invisible, she concluded—and so did wiser heads than hers—that the chair had fallen straight down from heaven, a gift of the Virgin to her faithful followers. No one was sceptical enough to deny it, for there was the chair, or rather its remains. The most the incredulous could venture to do was to criticise the coarse workmanship of the miraculous seat, and they were busy carping and fault-finding with the celestial upholstery, when an account of M. Gay-Lussac’s aËrial voyage was published, and extinguished at once the discussion and the miracle.

In 1868 M. Tissandier and a professional aËronaut made a voyage over the North Sea in a balloon called the Neptune. The machine made a splendid ascent, and was soon floating in mid air buoyant as a feather at the height of four thousand feet, bound, as the aËronauts fondly hoped, for the coast of England. But in this they soon found that they had counted without their host; the Neptune, impelled by the wind, was soaring away in the direction of the middle of the German Ocean. This most inauspicious goal struck terror for a few moments into their ardent souls; but they were soon reassured by observing that the wind in the atmospheric regions below them was setting towards the shore, and that by sinking into this lower current of air they could return whenever they chose. Thus yielding to the current of their fate, they allowed themselves to be carried out to sea, floating like gossamer into the very heart of cloudland. Gorgeous scenes, more splendid, more airy, more delicate than the most glowing visions of the Arabian Nights, rose around them. It was like the enchantment of a vivid dream. They took no note of time; every sense was absorbed in that of vision; they even forgot to be hungry, but gazed, and gazed, and gazed again upon the wide waste of waters that spread beneath them, glowing like one vast molten emerald; its glories half seen, half hid by the multitude of cloud mountains and valleys that rose fluctuating and fantastic on every side, fair with luminous half-lights, delicately lovely with pearly iridescence shading into silvery gray. Thus hovering miles above the world and its commonplace cares, they enjoyed an interval of transcendent delight, rudely broken in upon by the professional aËronaut, a creature of appetite, who pulled the valve-rope unbidden, thus causing them to descend from their cloudy paradise into the grosser atmosphere that immediately surrounds the earth, where they at length bethought themselves—of lunch. In spite of thick thronging poetic fancies and transcendental raptures, they made a very tolerable repast, M. Tissandier finishing his portion of the fowl by tossing a well-picked drumstick overboard. For this imprudence the professional was down upon him immediately. ‘Do you not know,’ quoth he, ‘that to throw out ballast without orders is a very serious crime in a balloon?’ M. Tissandier was at first inclined to argue the point; but on consulting the sensitive barometer he was fain to admit that in consequence of the disappearance of the chicken-bone, the Neptune had made an upward bound of between twenty and thirty yards. Very fine calculation—if true.

Luncheon satisfactorily over, they again soared upward out of sight and sound of earth, and soon found themselves once more in their cloudy Elysium, but with a change; mist and fog hemmed them round instead of the breeze and sunshine, but did not make them less happy. The Neptune was to them a little Goshen, a lonely floating temple of peace, dedicated to contentment and ease. The serenity of their souls was depicted in their faces. Tranquil and easy, they took no thought of the morrow, no, nor of the next hour, when suddenly there broke upon their ears, like a faint far-distant murmur, a sound subdued, monotonous, and yet terrible. Was it the voices of the spheres? No, gentle reader; it was a strain more awful still—it was the voice of the sea. In a moment the listless ease, the sweet do-nothingness of those idlers in cloudland was gone, clean washed away by the swish and swell of that intrusive ocean, which stretched beneath them, painted by the sunset with a thousand glowing tints of beauty, which they had neither leisure nor tranquillity to admire. Fortunately the wind was setting inshore; and amid the fast falling shades of night, the anxious aËronauts were fortunate enough to descry a cape crowned with a lighthouse. Every nerve was strained to reach it; and after a few moments of intense anxiety and effort, the anchor was let go. It caught in a sandhill, and the Neptune once more moored to earth, rolled over on its side, and was after some difficulty secured.

The spot where they landed was curiously enough only a few yards from the reef of rocks where the first aËronaut, Pilatre de Rosier, was dashed to pieces in 1785.

Sometimes, like other bubbles, the balloon bursts; and when this little accident happens, say four thousand feet up in the air, it is of course attended with unpleasant and inconvenient consequences, as was the experience of MM. Fonvielle and Tissandier, who with a party of nine made an ascent in a veteran balloon called ‘the Giant.’ Merry as larks they soared into the air, keenly enjoying the beauty of the day, the novelty of the pastime, the sense of liberty, of entire freedom from all wonted conventionalisms or accustomed restraints. Then with what a keen school-boy edge of appetite they fell upon their chicken, which seems the appropriate food for balloons, eaten from newspapers, which served as plates, and washed down with soda-water and Bordeaux. Champagne was inadmissible; an unruly cork might have popped unawares through the silken tissues of the envelope, and thus hastened a catastrophe. But let us not anticipate. The banquet was over, the board, that is to say the newspapers were cleared, and ‘the feast of reason and the flow of soul’ had begun. All was bright airy genial cordiality and mirth, when suddenly the attention of the travellers was attracted to a white smoke issuing from the sides of the balloon. Whence came this ominous mist, this preternatural cloud, that began to enshroud them? One reckless youth said: ‘It is the Giant smoking his pipe.’ And so it was with a vengeance! Then followed a few terrible moments, in which each after his own fashion bade the world farewell, and found it marvellous hard to do so. The clouds, the sky, the pleasant sunlight, was that their last look at each? It seemed so; but while they were still shivering dizzy and aghast upon that awful threshold, the balloon fell, and strange to relate, fell safely, and they were saved.

A few days afterwards Monsieur Tissandier made another ascent in the Neptune with Monsieur de Fonvielle, and they were busily engaged conducting some scientific experiments when a sharp crack like a sudden quick peal of thunder fell upon their astounded ears, and the professional aËronaut exclaimed in a loud startled voice: ‘The balloon has burst!’ What followed, we give in Monsieur Tissandier’s own words: ‘It was too true; the Neptune’s side was torn open and transformed suddenly into a bundle of shreds, flattening down upon the opposite half. Its appearance was now that of a disc surrounded with a fringe! We came to the ground immediately. The shock was awful. The aËronaut disappeared. I leaped into the hoop, which at that instant fell upon me, together with the remains of the balloon and all the contents of the car. All was darkness. I felt myself rolled along the ground, and wondered if I had lost my sight, or if we were buried in some hole or cavern. An instant of quiet ensued, and then the loud voice of the aËronaut was heard exclaiming: “Now come all of you from under there.”’ And one after another they emerged unhurt into the sunshine, in time to bid farewell to a few fragments of the balloon which were floating away upon the rising wind.

Such experiences must as a rule be trying to the nerves of most people, and we must be so plain as say that travelling by balloon is at best an act of extreme danger and temerity. In order to utilise balloons, it is evident that some sure means of guiding them must be invented; and this discovery or anything approaching to it has yet to be made. In fact, a balloon is still, after about a hundred years’ experience, little better than a toy.