Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

wind from the north-west, the balloon mounted so perpendicularly that in all the streets each of the spectators believed we were mounting straight up above his head. In order to quicken our ascent I discharged a parachute made of silk, and weighted in a way to prevent oscillations. The parachute descended at the rate of two feet per second, and its descent was uniform. From the moment when the barometer began to sink we became very careful of our ballast, as we wished to test from experience the different temperatures through which we were about to pass. “At 10.15, the barometer was at nineteen inches, and the thermometer at three above zero. We now felt all the inconvenience of an extremely rarefied atmosphere coming upon us, and we commenced to arrange some experiments in atmospheric electricity. Our first attempts did not succeed. We threw over part of our ballast, and mounted up till the cold and the rarefaction of the air became very troublesome. During our experiments we experienced an illness throughout our whole system. Buzzing in the cars commenced, and went on increasing. The pain we felt was like that which one feels when he plunges his head in water. Our chests seemed to be dilated, and failed in elasticity. My pulse was quickened, M. Lhoest’s became slower; he had, like me, swelled lips and bleeding eyes; the veins seemed to come out more strongly on the hands. The blood ran to the head, and occasioned a feeling as if our hats were too tight. The thermometer continued to descend, and, as we ascended, our illness increased, and we could with difficulty keep awake. Fearing that my travelling companion might go to sleep, I attached a cord to my thigh and to his, and we held the extremities of the cord in our hands. Thus trammelled, we had to commence the experiments which I had proposed to make. “At this elevation, the glass, the brimstone, and the Spanish wax were not electrified in a manner to show any signs under friction--at least, I obtained no electricity from the conductors or the electrometer. “I had in my car a voltaic pile, consisting of sixty couples--silver and zinc. It worked very well on the occasion of our departure from the earth, and gave, without the condenser,