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128
Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies
·
Fulgence Marion
118
not
polarised,
&c.
All
the
preparations
having
been
made
in
the
garden
of
the
Observatory
at
Paris,
the
ascent
took
place
on
the
29th
of
June,
1850,
at
10.27
a.m.,
the
balloon
being
filled
with
hydrogen
gas.
The
first
ascent
was
a
signal
failure.
It
was
found
that
the
weather
being
bad,
the
envelope
of
the
balloon
was
torn
in
several
places,
and
had
to
be
mended
in
all
haste.
Immediately
preceding
the
moment
of
ascent,
a
torrent
of
rain
fell.
But
the
voyagers
were
determined
to
ascend.
They
placed
themselves
in
the
car,
and,
when
thrown
off
from
the
fastenings,
they
rose
through
the
air
with
the
speed
of
an
arrow.
The
height
to
which
the
balloon
reached
made
it
suddenly
dilate,
and
the
network,
which
was
much
too
small,
was
stretched
to
the
utmost.
The
balloon
was
forced
down
upon
them
by
the
dilation,
and
one
of
them,
in
the
endeavour
to
work
the
valve,
made
a
rent
in
the
lower
part
of
the
globe,
from
which
the
gas
escaping
almost
over
the
heads
of
the
travellers,
nearly
choked
them.
The
escape
of
the
gas
had
the
usual
result--the
balloon
descended
rapidly,
and
fell
in
a
vineyard
near
Lugny,
where
they
were
found
by
the
peasants
holding
on
to
the
trees
by
their
legs
and
arms,
and
thus
attempting
to
stop
the
horizontal
advance
of
the
car.
They
had
risen
to
the
height
of
over
17,000
feet,
and
they
had
descended
from
this
height
in
from
four
to
five
minutes.
For
all
practical
purposes,
the
ascent
was
a
failure,
and
the
aeronauts
immediately
commenced
preparations
for
a
new
voyage,
which
took
place
a
month
afterwards.
They
rose
to
very
great
altitudes,
but
experienced
no
illness
from
the
rarefied
air.
M.
Bixio
did
not
feel
the
sharp
pains
in
the
ears
from
which
he
had
suffered
on
the
former
occasion.
They
passed
through
a
mass
of
cloud
15,000
feet
in
thickness,
and
they
had
not
yet
passed
quite
through
it,
when
at
the
height
of
over
21,000
feet
from
the
ground,
they
began
to
descend,
their
descent
being
caused
by
a
rent
in
the
envelope
of
the
balloon,
from
which
the
gas
escaped.
They
might,
in
throwing
out
the
last
of
their
ballast,
have,
perhaps,
prolonged
for
a
little
their
sojourn
in
space,
but
the
circumstances
in
which
they
were
placed
did
not
permit
them
to
make
many
more
scientific
observations
than
those
they
had
made,
and
thus
they
were
obliged
to
submit
to
their
fate.
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