Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

into forms with a knife. As we were without a moon, and had no light at all, in fact, we were unable to distinguish nicely the different shades of colour in these thick clouds. Now and then, when the clouds seemed to be lighter, they had a bluish tinge; but the thicker ones were dirty and muddy-looking. Dante must have seen some like these. “Water trickled down our faces, hands, and clothes, and the ropes and sides of our car. “The water did not fall in rain-drops or in flakes, as it sometimes does in the tropics; but we were as completely saturated by this heavy, penetrating mist as if we had been under a waterfall. We still continued to traverse these rainy regions. The thick fog which the balloon dislodged in forcing a passage closed immediately after it. At one moment I thought I felt something press against my cheek, which could only be compared to the points of a thousand needles, or to floating particles of ice. We were all of us too much absorbed with our situation to think of the hour or of the height to which we had attained. Suddenly the Prince of Wittgenstein, who was standing at my left hand, cried out under his breath-- “‘Look at the balloon, sir! look at the balloon!’ “I raised my eyes, in company with several others, and shall never forget the magnificent sight which awaited them. I saw the balloon, for which I had been searching in vain a few minutes before. It had undergone a transformation. It looked now as if coated with silver, and floating in a pale phosphorescent glimmer. All the ropes and cords seemed to be of new, bright, and liquid silver, like mercury, caused by the mist which had rested on them becoming suddenly congealed. Two luminous arcs intervened between us, in a sea of mother-of-pearl and opal, the lower one being the colour of red ochre and the upper one orange. Both of them, blinding in their brilliancy, seemed about to embrace one another. “‘How far are they off?’ thought I to myself. ‘Can I touch them with my hand, or are they separated from me by an immense space?’ We are not capable of forming ideas of perspective, floating as we are in the midst of such a glimmering splendour. “Above and around us are nothing but thick fogs and