At length, in November, 1783, accompanied by the Marquis
d'Arlandes as a passenger, he determined to venture. The
experiment aroused immense excitement all over France, and a
large concourse of people were gathered together on the outskirts
of Paris to witness the risky feat. The balloon made a perfect
ascent, and quickly reached a height of about half a mile above
sea-level. A strong current of air in the upper regions caused
the balloon to take an opposite direction from that intended, and
the aeronauts drifted right over Paris. It would have gone hard
with them if they had been forced to descend in the city, but the
craft was driven by the wind to some distance beyond the suburbs
and they alighted quite safely about six miles from their
starting-point, after having been up in the air for about half an
hour.

Their voyage, however, had by no means been free from anxiety.
We are told that the fabric of the balloon repeatedly caught
fire, which it took the aeronauts all their time to extinguish.
At times, too, they came down perilously near to the Seine, or to
the housetops of Paris, but after the most exciting half-hour of
their lives they found themselves once more on Mother Earth.

Here we must make a slight digression and speak of the invention
of the hydrogen, or gas, balloon. In a previous chapter we read
of the discovery of hydrogen gas by Henry Cavendish, and the
subsequent experiments with this gas by Dr. Black, of Glasgow.
It was soon decided to try to inflate a balloon with this
"inflammable air"--as the newly-discovered gas was called--and
with this end in view a large public subscription was raised in