The weekly Butte record. [volume] (Oroville [Calif.]) 1866-1887, 1866-11-17
The Unexpected Balloon Ascension.

Mr.. Thurston, the aronaut, lost his
life at his last balloon ascent. While
he was attaching the car to the huge
bag inside the netting and already filled,
his assistants let 90 of their hold upon
the ropes, and up went the balloon like
a huge bomb. Anxious to save the bag
and netting, Mr.. Thurston hung on to
his rope, thoughtless of consequences.
Imagine the situation. In the flicker of
an instant he was two, five hundred feet
in air, the ungovernable bag and netting
still rushing upward. As the balloon,
frightened at its sudden freedom, rushed
up, deep, concerted groan, thrill of
multitudinous agony followed it from
the paralyzed crowd. Thousands held
their breath, life lived but in their star
ing eyes as sight eagerly mounted the
ladders of the sky, anxious, but unavail-
ing.
There, before, above them, hung the
fated Thurston, at the hempen extrem-
ity of forty feet of rope.
The upward rush, the rapid oscilla-
ton rendered it impossible for him to
do more than maintain his present hold.
What hope in that! Five minutes ago,
the balloon, like an elastic soul, bounded
from earth, freighted with one poor
dangling life-now it had climbed a
mile of perpendicular air. The very
clouds fled from the appalling sight of
a mortal so terrorized and dilemmaed.
Up-up with tireless flight sped the
aerial plummet; higher into the firma-
mental depths than an angel wing ever
sounded. Eyes gave out! The fatal
aronaut was beyond human sight, as
beyond human help. Spyglasses and
telescopes still held him in view, as the
dizzy balloon trooped off to the East.
Now he is lost, the larger object alone
is visible; an instant later and all is
blank. A soul buried in mid heaven
man lost in sight of thousands life
so singularly folded up and handed to
God who gave it.
And Thurston! His pallid cheek
still paler with the widening distance
below, his breath battling the air
through which he was dragged, his very
soul nerved in his arms to make that
life grip eternal. What thought he.
as he realized the miles of death
beneath him! Did he hurl despairing
cries up to God, as he plunged through
the hungry air! Or were his eyes
closed alike to time and space, as pray
err put on the only wings now of avail {!
Chnging to life, which ended in a rope,
how he must have hated his poor avoir-
dupois. How he wished that he were
light as feather! Think of the gi-
gantic terror which the system of gravi-
tation now had! He is whelmed in an
lntinity of air: dancer upon nothing,
held to life by two already wearied
arms, soon to fall into space from the
grand dome Of Heaven, the azure air to
be his pail. He filings his hatred
against the yielding air; he implores
empty space; he fastens his eyes upon
lost tleecy cloud. as if he would hold
himself there. Anything in preference
to the awful descent which his body
must take.
Silence! The stiffness of immediate
God sounds his death song; intellect
tiutters upon the confness oftwo worlds.
The huge cave below ends alike in earth
and death, between miles of nothing.
more terrible than hungry wolves. or
roaring lions. Oh! that air had ALI
gators or crocodiles, to devour him
where he hangs. Any certainty rather
than the pending certainty.