BALLOONS AND AIR JOURNEYS.

PART I. THE CONQUEST OF THE SKIES.--1783.

Chapter I. Introduction.

The title of our introduction to aeronautics may appear ambitious
to astronomers, and to those who know that the infinite space we
call the heavens is for ever inaccessible to travellers from the
earth; but it was not so considered by those who witnessed the
ardent enthusiasm evoked at the ascension of the first balloon.
No discovery, in the whole range of history, has elicited an
equal degree of applause and admiration--never has the genius of
man won a triumph which at first blush seemed more glorious. The
mathematical and physical sciences had in aeronautics achieved
apparently their greatest honours, and inaugurated a new era in
the progress of knowledge. After having subjected the earth to
their power; after having made the waves of the sea stoop in
submission under the keels of their ships; after having caught
the lightning of heaven and made it subservient to the ordinary
purposes of life, the genius of man undertook to conquer the
regions of the air. Imagination, intoxicated with past
successes, could descry no limit to human power; the gates of the
infinite seemed to be swinging back before man's advancing step,
and the last was believed to be the greatest of his achievements.

In order to comprehend the frenzy of the enthusiasm which the
first aeronautic triumphs called forth, it is necessary to recall