By Land and Sky Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A BALLOON BACK Me. Glaisher's classical researches in the heavens have been so widely and so often spoken of, that there will be no need to detail them at any length. It will, perhaps, be better to introduce them in these pages alongside of, and in comparison with, the more recent experiences which, by good fortune, have fallen to my own lot. It is now five-and-thirty years ago since Mr. Glaisher's voyages of discovery were undertaken, and though knowledge has increased and methods have improved since then, yet so ably were his investigations carried out, and so handsomely was he equipped by liberal grants from the scientific world, that his results have a very special and permanent value. Far more than this, his own simple and conscientious narrative, embellished with his vivid and picturesque descriptions, has a charm for everybody. Nay, the most listless reader casually glancing through the mere illustrations in that tempting volume, "Travels in the Air," irresistibly catches something of the enthusiasm of the writer. No one can fail to be struck by the simple diagram of the lofty climb, through rain and upper sunshine, fog and snow, or by the unearthly phantom of the balloon shadow depicted riding through the highest cloud. But an interest, intense to the verge of painfulness, is aroused by the sensational but by no means overdrawn illustration of the grave misadventure which befell the author at the estimated height of nearly seven miles. He was in this, as in all other aerial ventures, accompanied by the famous practical aeronaut Mr. Coxwell, then in the heyday of robust manhood. The exploit was, and ever will be, without a parallel, for in those days there were no cylinders of compressed oxygen, such as are now taken aloft for the refreshment of t...Read More