The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-08-26 00:00:00

BALLOONING IN AMERICA.

The following are extracts from the letter of the Corres-
pondent of The Times (writing from Philadelphia), in which
he gives an interesting account of a trip in a bslloGn :
I have just returned from an excursion in a balloon,
and though it proved shorter and less eventful than
had been hoped, some account of it may not be without
novelty and interest to those of your readers who do
not happen to have journeyed in a balloon over this
part of America. We had intended to go westward,
and some of the party were sanguine enough to
believe that we might get as far as the Reeky
Mountains. The wind promised at first to be
favourable, and our Commodore, Professor King,
was reputed a master of his craft, and his
balloon, the Buffalo, an unusually large one, carried
gas enough for the journey, on the usual condition
that every now and then it was lightened by some one
of the passengers—nine in all—getting out. As we
only took provisions for one hearty meal, we were
bound to trust to the country for food, and so I hoped
to see something of American life in the West under
peculiar and advantageous conditions. If any misan-
thrope wishes to cure himself by a good view of the
bright side of human nature let him view it in America
from a balloon. We made three descents—to say
nothing of halts and flying conversation as we passed
along—and nothing could exceed the amiability and
benevolence of almost all the people we encountered.
One lady rushed off to get us a glass (which, we had,
of couree, forgotten, though we had plenty of wine) as
eagerly as if our lives and her own depended on
it ; a gentleman volunteered to take our tele-
grams to the nearest station, as if he had been an
overpaid postboy ; a farmer and an innkeeper fought
which should give us a supper, and the only enemy we
made was the farmer, because we accepted his rival's
invitation, the inn being close at hand. When, after
an excellent supper, at which our hostess—a perfect
lady—waited on us As if we had been of the Blood
Royal, we asked for the bill, we were pleasantly laughed
to scorn. All the girls of the village—American, and
therefore of necessity pretty—chatted with Us after five
minutes' acquaintance as if they had known us all their
lives, and wrote their names and addresses in our note-
books in order that we might send them newspapers
rscording the sequel of our adventures, there being, I
have since been told, an honourable understanding
with the young men of the party that they were not
to take a base advantage of this confidence and with
the newspapers send billets-doux. Where nowadays in
any civilized country do these things happen to
strangers who step out of a steamboat or a train?- I
have not mentioned the small boys, since they are
always easily pleased; but if we had been a menagerie,
and each one of us some new and strange beast to be
seen gratis, we could scarcely have afforded them more
Intense excitement and delight. We experienced, in
fact, everywhere that greatest of all happiness to well.
regulated minds—the consciousness that we were
giving other people infinite pleasure at their own
trouble and expense—the former by no means incon-
siderable when the balloon had to be taken care of
while we were at supper or graciously submitting to
to be "interviewed." It was, I blush to confess, my
first ascent, but it certainly shall not be my last. I
can only regret that I have already wasted so much of
my life, and express my astonishment that people who
can afford to keep belloons should throw away their
money upon shooting-boxes and yachts.
I have said that the wind was at first favourable
for a journey westward, but rain and mist unluckily
prevented our going up on the appointed day. Next
deer the wind had shifted and fallen somewhat, but the
trip could not be any longer postponed, and we started
about five o'clock in the afternoon. The party con-
sisted of Professor King, his daughter, Mrs. Nelson,
his assistant, Mr. M'Cormick, Messrs. Taylor, Ford,
Sauiders, Colburn, Jonas, and myself. We made a
very good ascent, starting at once, without difficulty,
' and were soon some 2,000 ft. above the earth. We
seenied, to my surprise, quite motionless and stationary,
thotigh we were going, I was told, at a fair pace; nor
did looking down from so great a height make some of
us, who confessed to weak heads, half so dizzy as we
had expected. lat least cannot look down from the
roof of a house without feeling "queer," but up in the
clouds felt comfortable enough. I record these two
phenomena, but must leave the learned in these mat-
ters to explain them. In about half an hour we found
ourselves completely enveloped in a dense cloud, which
shut off all view of the earth. It was charged with
rain and the weight of the moisture on the balloon
r .
and still more the contraction of gas caused by the
coolness of the atmosphere brought the balloon
down so rapidly that I half thought we were coin-
ing to grief. We were near a wood, and charged for
a tree. It is by no means an uncommon impulse
with young balloonists to rat from tee ship toe
iestent she feels like sinking if there. is a chance of
escape to terra firma or anything solid, so the Pro-
fessor shouted to us all to hold tight and stick to
our seats, whatever happened. The soundness of
the ' advice was proved in an instant. The balloon
as glee touched the tree, rebounded from it will
all the spring of an indiarnbber ball, and in another
moment was sailing majestically along at a safe height
above the wood. Some ballast had also been thrown
out; and it is perfectly marvellous with what rapidity
diminution of weight, however slight, will act. One
handful of sand will sometimes enable a balloon
to clear a tree which she would otherwise foul. We
did not rise very high, and in a neighbouring field our
drag-rope, which was 350 ft. long, began to trail. Some
labourers caught it, and at the Professor's request drew
us to the ground. A crowd from the neighbouring
farms soon collected, and it was here that the glass
was brought us by a lady, and that a gentleman
took charge of two hurriedly written telegrams for
the Philadelphia Press. The order was then given
to the labourers to loosen their hold of the car, and
the balloon shot up again, but,. as before, rose to no
great height; so that we were still within talking reach
of all the people we met. Many of them had seen us from
distance and were hurrying in our direction as fast as
their legs could carry them. We had not got very far
when a pressing invitation from Mr. James Hoy, land-
lord of the "King of Prussia," caused us again to stop.
Some small boys were nearest in pursuit, and caused
us no little amusement by their ineffectual struggles to
master the drag rope, which flung them off and escaped
again and again. At last two men succeeded in catch-
ing it, and, running it quickly round a fence, secured
us till more hands had time to come up. We were
towed in triumph to within a few yards of the "King
of Prussia,' and there drawn to the ground, but we
could not leave the ship till stones enough had
been brought to weight it and keep it down. The
" King of Prussia," the name given strangely
enough to the village as well as to the inn, proved
well worth a visit, apart from the attractions of supper.
It is a quaint little place, quite old-looking for
America, and interesting from its historical associa-
tions. Washington used to come here by night to
hold conferences with his scouts when the British Army
occupied Philadelphia The landlord of the
inn, Mr. James Hoy, is a jovial Briton, hailing
from Manchester, and his friends and kinsfolk there
will be glad to know that he is happy and flourishinging in the land of his adoption, but ready as ever
to give a hospitable welcome to any one from the
land of his birth, more especially if arriving in a
balloon. After the capital supper to which he treated
Us we returned to the balloon, and found it surrounded
by a large crowd, whom the news of our arrival had
attracted from all parts. The wind had almost
entirely fallen ; what little breeze there was blew. per-
versely from the West, the point for which we wished
to make. The professor accordingly resolved to wait
a couple of hours or so on the chance of a change, and
to pass away the time and show the people some return
for the friendly reception they had given us. Some
of the villagers were allowed to make short ascents by
turns into the clouds while the drag-rope was held by
others below. . . At about ten o'clock we made up our
minds, most reluctantly, to start amid as many hearty
farewells and good wishes and cheers and waving of hand-
kerchiefs as if we had been village emigrants leaving
our old homes for a new land. I ought before to have
mentioned that one farmer's wife, whose handsome
apple-tree our drag-rope had stripped of fruit, followed
us a mile, not to revile us or demand payment, or even
burden us with a barren forgiveness, but to present us
with a large basketful of the apples. . .
The sounds of the cheering had scarcely died away
before we were out of sight of the village, and sailing
i along n profound stillness through the moonlit sky.
The moon was so bright that we could see clearly to
write notes or read the smallest print. It would be of
little interest to English readers to be told the names
of the places over which we passed and for which we
have since had to study the map. At the time we had
only a general notion of the direction we were taking
through Pennsylvania towards New Jersey. I was
struck by the highly-cultivated condition of the land
and the frequency of the farms, which thickly
dotted the vast expanse of plain open to our
view. But for the want of hedges and the
large number of isola ed plantations left in
clewing the land I might have fancied myself looking
down on an English ceunty. The villages, however,
were fewer, everybody but ourselves had by this time
gone to bed, and when we were for a moment silent
nothing disturbed the "solemn stillness of the air,"
save, perhaps, the distant baying of a dog or the low
sounds of myriad insects, those "bells on the garments
of silence," so in unison that they scarcely seemed to
disturb it. We -went so slowly, there being little
breeze, that it was sometimes difficult to believe we
were making any movement whatsoever. The balloon
seemed to hang in mid-air, fixed and motionless as
the calm sky above. It was only by watching its
shadow creeping along the earth, contracting and
expanding as we now rose, now sank, that we could
at all realize our progress. It was altogether a glorious
sublime scene, and to have been at all in harmony with
it we ought to have mused and meditated in deepest
silence, or, at the utmost, only broken the silence by
reciting sentimental poetry in low tones or softly
channting hymns. But, lam sorry to be obliged, as
a veracious historian, to confess that on the contrary,
we were shamefully uproarous and hilarous, shouting
comic songs with rattling refrains, which woke every
slumbering echo in clouds, wood and hill. We did not
rise high—had, indeed, to throw over all our ballast by
slow degrees to escape descending to earth; and after a
time our rope began to trail, making a strange rustling
noise which much mystified and scared all the dogs for
miles round, as it draeged through trees or the tall stalks
of the Indian corn. Now and then it went scraping and
scratching over a farm roof, loud enough to awaken
the most resolute of rustic snorers, and on such occa-
sions the younger members of the party could not
resist the temptation to utter the most unearthly war-
whoops and yells. . . The injured rustics so far had
their revenge that not one of our party got any sleep
during the whole night. Not, however, that we tried
very hard to get any. The novelty of the situation
kept us awake, and, what with chatting, singing, and
listening to the aeronautic adventures of the Professor,
time passed quickly and pleasantly enough. . . . At
about four o'clock, as dawn was breaking, we had a
very exciting adventure, which served thoroughly
to rouse us all up—and shake off any incipient
drowsiness. As we were slowly making for a railroad
we saw a train coming down it at right angles to us,
and it was for some minutes a nice question whether
we should not cross the road just as the train came up.
If our drag and rope had become entangled in' the '
" cow-catcher " of the engine, the meeting might have
proved as awkward for the balloon as Stephenson
thought it would prove for the . "coo." The Pro-
fessor had our provision basket, in which some wine
and sandwiches were still left, ready uplifted for the
sacrifice, as our ballast had all gone, and there were

few moments of intense excitement as, with necks
craning over the basket, we watched the race between
rope and train. The rope won by about a hundred
yards, and the provision basket was saved.
Soon after we began to come upon labourers at work
and tried to find out were we were, but though each
knew his village, they gave us very contradictory
answers on other points. We discovered, however,
that we were making for New York, which was from
20 to 30 miles distant. The heat of the sun soon began
to expand the gas, and we rose gradually to a height
which the Professor estimated at nearly three miles.
We were, of course, far above all clouds, and suffered
not a little from the heat and blinding rays of the
sun, all the more because a few minutes before, in
passing through the clouds, we had suffered from
the cold. The pain in our ears was much less than we
had expected, until, indeed, we got nearer the earth
again, when the drum seemed to swell as if it were
going to burst, I was recommended to keep on gulp-
ing as if trying to swallow something and found this a
great relief. In our ascent and descent we got a series
of panoramic views so gorgeous that, even if I were
at the beginning instead of at the end of a letter
already too long, I durst not attempt to do them
justice by anything meant for an adequate description.
Sometimes we were surrounded on all sides by a
boundless prairie of snow dazzlingly white, except
where the sunbeams fle-ked it with gold. Then a
sudden change in our point of view would turn the
snow prairie into a frozen sea, broken up into ice-
bergs and floating pinnacles. In another moment we
were among billows of softest fleece or eiderdown,
looking so palpable that we almost put out our hands
to grasp them, gently heaving and surging round the
balloon, yet leaving it at perfect rest. Then we had
nothing but cloud around, above and below us, we—or
I, at least—found it impossible to discern any move.
merit, and the effect of feeling one's-self perfectly
motionless at such a height, as if fixed for ever in the
sky, was indescribably strange. The sensation was too
much even for our hilarity; we held our breath or spoke
in whispers, so that the silence was absolute except
when from the distant hidden earth came faintly,
like an echo, the scream of a railway whistle or the
crowing of a cock—the only two sounds that could
reach us. Several times as the balloon passed between
the sun and a white cloud, we saw its reflection dis-
tinctly traced in the cloud in concentric circles, with
gorgeous prismatic colours—a sort of rainbow shadow.
Now and then the cloud below us suddenly broke
and gave us a full view of the earth, the white
monuments in its churchyards looking like a child's
front teeth, and a race course like a cottage lawn.
We forgot even our hunger and the breakfast of
which we had been since five o'clock in search,
and wished to prolong this glorious sojourn
amcng the clouds but our Commodore had discovered
that we were drifting towards the ocean, which
had for some time been full in view, and as this
is one of the most serious dangers which besets
the balloonist, he opened the valve used to let out
gas and we began to descend. Contrary currents
rather checked our descent, and the valve had two or
three times to be opened. But when at last we got
near the earth, at half-past nine o'clock, we found we
were descending with startling rapidity. The same
order as before was shouted to keep quiet, and to stick
to the ship, whatever happened, but one of the party
lost either his head or his grip, or both, and, as the
car bumped on the ground, he rolled out. He
was not hurt, but the accident led to various diffi
culties which are of no interest to the public, bat
which, unfortunately for me, however fortunately for
my readers, cut our journey prematurely short.