Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

four o’clock the voyagers sighted the sea. “It was forty-eight minutes past four,” says Monk-Mason, “that we first saw the line of waves breaking on the shores beneath us. It would have been impossible to have remained unmoved by the grandeur of the spectacle that spread out before us. Behind us were the coasts of England, with their white cliffs half lost in the coming darkness. Beneath us on both sides the ocean spread out far end wide to where the darkness closed in the scene. Opposite us a barrier of thick clouds like a wall, surmounted all along its line with projections like so many towers, bastions, and battlements, rose up from the sea as if to stop our advance. A few minutes afterwards we were in the midst of this cloudy barrier, surrounded with darkness, which the vapours of the night increased. We heard no sound. The noise of the waves breaking on the shores of England had ceased, and our position had for some time cut us off from all the sounds of earth.” In an hour the Straits of Dover were cleared, the lights of Calais shone out toward the voyagers, and the sound of the town drums rose up toward them. “Darkness was now complete,” continues the writer, “and it was only by the lights, sometimes isolated, sometimes seen in masses, and showing themselves far down on the earth beneath us, that we could form a guess of the countries we traversed, or of the towns and villages which appeared before us every moment. The whole surface of the earth for many leagues round showed nothing but scattered lights, and the face of the earth seemed to rival the vault of heaven with starry fires. Every moment in the earlier part of the night before men had betaken themselves to repose, clusters of lights appeared indicating large centres of population. “Those on the horizon gave us the notion of a distant conflagration. In proportion as we approached them, these masses of lights appeared to increase, and to cover a greater space, until, when right over them, they seemed to divide themselves into different parts, to stretch out in long streets, and to shine in starry quadrangles round the squares, so that we could see the exact plan of each city, given as on a small map. It would be difficult to give an idea of what sort of effect such a