Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

If we recall the impressions which the first air-journeys made, we shall find that, among people of enthusiastic temperament, it was believed that it was not merely the blue sky above us, not merely the terrestrial atmosphere, but the vast spaces through which the worlds move, that were to become the domain of man--the sea of the balloon. The moon, the mysterious dwelling-place of men unknown, would no longer be an inaccessible place. Space no longer contained regions which man could not cross! Indeed, certain expeditions attempted the crossing of the heavens, and brought back news of the moon. The planets that revolve round the sun, the far-flying comets, the most distant stars--these formed the field which from that time was to lie open to the investigations of man. This enthusiasm one can well enough understand. There is in the simple fact of an aerial ascent something so bold and so astonishing, that the human spirit cannot fail to be profoundly stirred by it. And if this is the feeling of men at the present day, when, after having been witnesses of ascents for the last eighty years, they see men confiding themselves in a swinging car into the immensities of space, what must have been the astonishment of those who, for the first time since the commencement of the world, beheld one of their fellow-creatures rolling in space, without any other assurance of safety than what his still dim perception of the laws of nature gave him?