AN AERIAL BIVOUAC
In the history of contests since man first began striving against his
fellows, seldom has a record performance stood so long unbroken as that
of the good airship _Barnum_, made thirty-three years ago. Of her
captain and crew of five men, six all told, the writer remains the sole
survivor, the only one who may live to see that record broken in this
country.
The _Barnum_ rose at 4 p.m. July 26, 1874, from New York and made her
last landing nine miles north of Saratoga at 6.07 p.m. of the
twenty-seventh, thus finishing a voyage of a total elapsed time of
twenty-six hours and seven minutes. In the interim she made four
landings, the first of no more than ten minutes; the second, twenty;
the third, ten; the fourth, thirty-five; and these descents cost an
expenditure of gas and ballast which shortened her endurance capacity
by at least two or three hours.
Tracing on a map her actual route traversed, gives a total distance of
something over four hundred miles, which gave her the record of second
place in the history of long-distance ballooning in this country, a
record which she still holds.
So far as my knowledge of the art goes, and I have tried to read all of
its history, the _Barnum's_ voyage of twenty-six hours, seven minutes
was then and remained the world's endurance record until 1900; and it
still remains, in point of hours up, the longest balloon voyage ever
made in the United States.
The longest voyage in point of distance ever made in this country was
that of John Wise and La Mountain, in the fifties, from St. Louis, Mo.,
to Jefferson County, N. Y., a distance credited under the old custom of
a little less than twelve hundred miles, while the actual distance
under the new rules is between eight hundred and nine hundred miles,
the time being nineteen hours. This voyage also remained, I believe,
the world's record for distance until 1900, and still remains the
American record--and lucky, indeed, will be the aeronaut who beats it.
P. T. Barnum's "Great Roman Hippodrome," now for many years Madison
Square Garden, was never more densely crowded than on the afternoon of
July 26, 1874. Early in the Spring of that year Mr. Barnum had
announced the building of a balloon larger than any theretofore made in
this country. His purpose in building it was to attempt to break all
previous records for time and distance, and he invited each of five
daily city papers of that time to send representatives on the voyage.
So when the day set for the ascent arrived, not only was the old
Hippodrome packed to the doors, but adjacent streets and squares were
solid black with people, as on a _fête_ day like the Dewey Parade.
Happily the day was one of brilliant sunshine and clear sky, with
scarcely a cloud above the horizon.
The captain of the _Barnum_ was Washington. H. Donaldson, by far the
most brilliant and daring professional aeronaut of his day, and a
clever athlete and gymnast. For several weeks prior to the ascent of
the _Barnum_, Donaldson had been making daily short ascents of an hour
or two from the Hippodrome in a small balloon--as a feature of the
performance. Sometimes he ascended in a basket, at other times with
naught but a trapeze swinging beneath the concentrating ring of his
balloon himself in tights perched easily upon the bar of the trapeze.
And when at a height to suit his fancy--of a thousand feet or
more--many a time have I seen him do every difficult feat of trapeze
work ever done above the security of a net.
Such was Donaldson, a man utterly fearless, but reckless only when
alone, of a steadfast, cool courage and resource when responsible for
the safety of others that made him the man out of a million best worth
trusting in any emergency where a bold heart and ready wit may avert
disaster.
Donaldson's days were never dull.
The day preceding our ascent his balloon was released with insufficient
lifting power. As soon as he rose above neighboring roofs, a very high
southeast wind caught him, and, before he had time to throw out
ballast, drove his basket against the flagstaff on the Gilsey House
with such violence that the staff was broken, and the basket
momentarily upset, dumping two ballast bags to the Broadway sidewalk
where they narrowly missed several pedestrians.
That he himself was not dashed to death was a miracle. But to him this
was no more than a bit unusual incident of the day's work.
The reporters assigned as mates on this skylark in the _Barnum_ were
Alfred Ford, of the _Graphic_; Edmund Lyons, of the _Sun_; Samuel
MacKeever, of the _Herald_; W. W. Austin, of the _World_ (every one of
these good fellows now dead, alas!) and myself, representing the
_Tribune_.
Lyons, MacKeever, and myself were novices in ballooning, but the two
others had scored their bit of aeronautic experience. Austin had made
an ascent a year or two before at San Francisco, was swept out over the
bay before he could make a landing, and, through some mishap, dropped
into the water midway of the bay and well out toward Golden Gate, where
he was rescued by a passing boat. Ford had made several balloon
voyages, the most notable in 1873, in the great _Graphic_ balloon.
After the voyage of the _Barnum_ was first announced and it became
known that the _Tribune_ would have a pass, everybody on the staff
wanted to go. For weeks it was the talk of the office. Even grave
graybeards of the editorial rooms were paying court for the preference
to Mr. W. F. G. Shanks, that prince of an earlier generation of city
editors, who of course controlled the assignment of the pass. But when
at length the pass came, the enthusiasm and anxiety for the distinction
waned, and it became plain that the piece of paper "Good for One Aerial
Trip," etc., must go begging.
At that time I was assistant night city editor, and a special detail to
interview the Man in the Moon was not precisely in the line of my
normal duties. I was therefore greatly surprised (to put it
conservatively) when, the morning before the ascent, Mr. Shanks, in
whose family I was then living, routed me out of bed to say:
"See here, Ted, you know Barnum's balloon starts tomorrow on her trial
for the record, but what you don't know is that we are in a hole.
Before the ticket came every one wanted to go, from John R. G. Hassard
down to the office boy. Now no one will go--all have funked it, and I
suppose you will want to follow suit!"
Thus diplomatically put, the hinted assignment was not to be refused
without too much personal chagrin.
So it happened that about 3.30 p.m. the next day I arrived at the
Hippodrome, loaded down with wraps and a heavy basket nigh bursting
with good things to eat and drink, which dear Mrs. Shanks had insisted
on providing.
The _Barnum_ was already filled with gas, tugging at her leash and
swaying restlessly as if eager for the start. And right here, at first
sight of the great sphere, I felt more nearly a downright fright than
at any stage of the actual voyage; the balloon appeared such a
hopelessly frail fabric to support even its own car and equipment. The
light cord net enclosing the great gas-bag looked, aloft, where it
towered above the roof, little more substantial than a film of lace;
and to ascend in that balloon appeared about as safe a proposition as
to enmesh a lion in a cobweb.
Already my four mates for the voyage were assembled about the basket,
and Donaldson himself was busy with the last details of the equipment.
My weighty lunch basket had from my mates even a heartier reception
than I received, but their joy over the prospect of delving into its
generous depths was short-lived. The load as Donaldson had planned it
was all aboard, weight carefully adjusted to what he considered a
proper excess lifting power to carry us safely up above any chance of a
collision with another flagstaff, as on the day before above the Gilsey
House. Thus the basket and all its bounty (save only a small flask of
brandy I smuggled into a hip pocket) were given to a passing acrobat.
At 4 p.m. the old Hippodrome rang with applause; a brilliant equestrian
act had just been finished. Suddenly the applause ceased and that
awful hush fell upon the vast audience which is rarely experienced
except in the presence of death or of some impending disaster! We had
been seen to enter the basket, and people held their breath.
Released, the balloon bounded seven hundred feet the air, stood
stationary for a moment, and then drifted northwest before the
prevailing wind.
In this prodigious leap there was naught of the disagreeable sensation
one experiences in a rapidly rising elevator. Instead it rather seemed
that we were standing motionless, stationary in space, and that the
earth itself had gotten loose and was dropping away beneath us to
depths unknown. Every cord and rope of the huge fabric was tensely
taut, the basket firm and solid beneath our feet. Indeed, the balloon,
with nothing more substantial in her construction than cloth and twine,
and hempen ropes and willow wands (the latter forming the basket), has
always, while floating in mid-air free of the drag rope's tricks, the
rigid homogeneity of a rock, a solidity that quickly inspires the most
timid with perfect confidence in her security.
Ballast was thrown out by Donaldson,--a little. At Seventh Avenue and
Forty-second Street our altitude was 2,000 feet. The great city lay
beneath us like an unrolled scroll. White and dusty, the streets
looked like innumerable strips of Morse telegraph paper--the people the
dots, the vehicles the dashes. Central Park, with its winding waters,
was transformed into a superb mantle of dark green velvet splashed with
silver, worthy of a royal _fête_. Behind us lay the sea, a vast field
of glittering silver. Before us lay a wide expanse of Jersey's hills
and dales that from our height appeared a plain, with many a
reddish-gray splash upon its verdant stretches that indicated a village
or a town.
Above and about us lay an immeasurable space of which we were the only
tenants, and over which we began to feel a grand sense of dominion that
wrapped us as in royal ermine: if we were not lords of this aerial
manor, pray, then, who were? Beneath us, lay--home. Should we ever
see it again? This thought I am sure came to all of us. I know it
came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our
confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our
enviable position; and enviable indeed it was. For who has not envied
the eagle his power to skim the tree-tops, to hover above Niagara, to
circle mountain peaks, to poise himself aloft and survey creation, or
to mount into the zenith and gaze at the sun?
Indeed our sense of confidence became such that, while sitting on the
edge of the basket to reach and pass Donaldson a rope he asked for, I
leaned so far over that the bottle of brandy resting in my hip pocket
slipped out and fell into the Hudson.
Oddly, Ford, who was the most experienced balloonist of the party after
Donaldson himself, seemed most nervous and timid, but it was naught but
an expression of that constitutional trouble (dizziness) so many have
when looking down from even the minor height of a step-ladder. In all
the long hours he was with us, I do not recall his once standing erect
in the basket, and when others of us perched upon the basket's edge, he
would beg us to come down. But mind, there was no lack of stark
courage in Alfred Ford, sufficiently proved by the fact that he never
missed a chance for an ascent.
But safe? Confident? Why, before we were up ten minutes, Lyons and
MacKeever were sitting on the edge of the basket, with one hand holding
to a stay, tossing out handfuls of small tissue paper circulars bearing
"News from the Clouds." Many-colored, these little circulars as they
fell beneath us looked like a flight of giant butter-flies, and we kept
on throwing out handfuls of them until our pilot warned us we were
wasting so much weight we should soon be out of easy view of the earth!
Indeed, the balance of the balloon is so extremely fine that when a
single handful of these little tissue circulars was thrown out,
increased ascent was shown on the dial of our aneroid barometer!
At 4.30 p.m. we had drifted out over the Hudson at an altitude of 2,500
feet. Here Donaldson descended from the airy perch which he had been
occupying since our start on the concentrating ring, when one of us
asked how long he expected the cruise to last. He replied that he
hoped to be able to sail the _Barnum_ at least three or four days.
"But," he added, "I shall certainly be unable, to carry all of you for
so long a journey, and shall be compelled to drop you one by one. So
you had best draw lots to settle whom I shall drop first, and in what
order the rest shall follow."
Sailing then 2,500 feet above the earth, Lyons voiced a thought racing
from my own brain for utterance when he blurted out: "What the deuce do
you mean by 'drop' us?" Indeed, the question must have been on three
other tongues as well, for Donaldson's reply, "Oh, descend to the earth
and let you step out then," was greeted by all five of us with a salvo
of deep, lusty sighs of relief.
Then we drew lots for the order of our going, MacKeever drawing first,
Austin second, Lyons third, Ford fourth, and I fifth.
Meantime, beneath us on the river vessels which from our height looked
like the toy craft on the lake in Central Park were whistling a shrill
salute that, toned down by the distance, was really not unmusical.
Having crossed the Hudson and swept above Weehawken, we found ourselves
cruising northwest over the marshes of the Hackensack.
As the heat of the declining sun lessened, our cooling gas contracted
and the balloon sank steadily until at 5.10 we were 250 feet above the
earth and 100 feet of our great drag rope was trailing on the ground.
Within hailing distance of people beneath us, a curious condition was
observed. We could hear distinctly all they said, though we could not
make them understand a word; our voices had to fill a sphere of air;
theirs, with the earth beneath them, only a hemisphere. Thus the
modern megaphone is especially useful to aeronauts.
Hereabouts our fun began. Many countrymen thought the balloon running
away with us and tried to stop and save us--always by grasping the drag
rope, bracing themselves, and trying literally to hold us; when the
slack of the rope straightened, they performed somersaults such as our
pilot vowed no acrobat could equal. And yet the balance of the balloon
is so fine that even a child of ten can pull one down, if only it has
strength enough to withstand occasional momentary lifts off the ground.
Occasionally one more clever would run and take a quick turn of the
rope about a gate or fence--and then spend the rest of the evening
gathering the scattered fragments and repairing the damage.
And when there was not fun enough below, Donaldson himself would take a
hand and put his steed through some of her fancy paces--as when,
approaching a large lake, he told us to hold tightly to the stays, let
out gas and dropped us, bang! upon the lake. Running at a speed of
twelve or fifteen miles an hour, we hit the water with a tremendous
shock, bounded thirty or forty feet into the air, descended again and
literally skipped in great leaps along the surface of the water,
precisely like a well-thrown "skipping stone." Then out went ballast
and up and on we went, no worse for the fun beyond a pretty thorough
wetting!
At 6.20 p.m. we landed on the farm of Garrett Harper in Bergen County,
twenty-six miles from New York. After drinking our fill of milk at the
farmhouse, we rose again and drifted north over Ramapo until, at 7.30,
a dead calm came upon us and we made another descent. We then found
that we had landed near Bladentown on the farm of Miss Charlotte
Thompson, a charming actress of the day whose "Jane Eyre" and "Fanchon"
are still pleasant memories to old theatre-goers. Loading our balloon
with stones to anchor it, our party paid her a visit and were cordially
received. An invitation to join us hazarded by Donaldson, Miss
Thompson accepted with delight. I do not know if she is still living,
but it she is, she cannot have forgotten her half-hour's cruise in the
good airship _Barnum_, wafted silently by a gentle evening breeze, the
lovely panorama beneath her half hid, half seen through the purple haze
of twilight.
After landing Miss Thompson at 8.18 we ascended for the night, for a
night's bivouac among the stars. The moon rose early. We were soon
sailing over the Highlands of the Hudson. Off in the east we could see
the river, a winding ribbon of silver. We were running low, barely
more than 200 feet high. Below us the great drag rope was hissing
through meadows, roaring over fences, crashing through tree-tops. And
all night long we were continually ascending and descending, sinking
into valleys and rising over hills, following closely the contours of
the local topography.
During the more equable temperature of night the balloon's height is
governed by the drag rope. Leaving a range of hills and floating out
over a valley, the weight of the drag pulls the balloon down until the
same length of rope is trailing through the valley that had been
dragging on the hill. This habit of the balloon produces startling
effects. Drifting swiftly toward a rocky precipitous hillside against
which it seems inevitable you must dash to your death, suddenly the
trailing drag rope reaches the lower slopes and you soar like a bird
over the hill, often so low that the bottom of the basket swishes
through the tree-tops.
But, while useful in conserving the balloon's energy, the drag rope is
a source of constant peril to aeronauts, of terror to people on the
earth, and of damage to property. It has a nasty clinging habit,
winding round trees or other objects, that may at any moment upset
basket and aeronauts. On this trip our drag rope tore sections out of
scores of fences, upset many haystacks, injured horses and cattle that
tried to run across it, whipped off many a chimney, broke telegraph
wires, and seemed to take malicious delight in working some havoc with
everything it touched.
At ten o'clock we sighted Cozzen's Hotel, and shortly drifted across
the parade ground of West Point, its huge battlemented gray walls
making one fancy he was looking down into the inner court of some great
mediaeval castle. Then we drifted out over the Hudson toward Cold
Spring until, caught by a different current, we were swept along the
course of the river.
As we sailed over mid-stream and two hundred feet above it, with the
tall cliffs and mysterious, dark recesses of the Highlands on either
hand, the waters turned to a livid gray under the feeble light of the
waning moon. No part of our voyage was more impressive, no scene more
awe-inspiring. It was a region of such weird lights and gruesome
shadows as no fancy could people with aught but gaunt goblins and dread
demons, come down to us through generations untold, an unspent legacy
of terror, from half-savage, superstitious ancestors.
Suddenly Ford spoke in a low voice: "Boys, I was in nine or ten battles
of the Civil War, from Gaines's Mill to Gettysburg, but in none of them
was there a scene which impressed me as so terrible as this, no
situation that seemed to me so threatening of irresistible perils."
Nearing Fishkill at eleven, a land breeze caught and whisked us off
eastward. At midnight we struck the town of Wappinger's Falls--and
struck it hard. Our visitation is doubtless remembered there yet. The
town was in darkness and asleep. We were running low before a stiff
breeze, half our drag rope on the ground. The rope began to roar
across roofs and upset chimneys with shrieks and crashes that set the
folk within believing the end of the world had come. Instantly the
streets were filled with flying white figures and the air with men's
curses and women's screams. Three shots were fired beneath us. Two of
our fellows said they heard the whistle of the balls, so Donaldson
thought it prudent to throw out ballast and rise out of range.
Here the moon left us and we sailed on throughout the remainder of the
night in utter darkness and without any extraordinary incident, all but
the watch lying idly in the bottom of the basket viewing the stars and
wondering what new mischief the drag rope might be planning.
The only duty of the watch was to lighten ship upon too near descent to
the earth, and for this purpose a handful of Hippodrome circulars
usually proved sufficient. Indeed, only eight pounds of ballast were
used from the time we left Miss Thompson till dawn, barring a half-sack
spent in getting out of range of the Wappinger's Falls sportsmen, who
seemed to want to bag us.
Ford and Austin were assigned as the lookout from 12.00 to 2.00, Lyons
and myself from 2.00 to 3.00, and Donaldson and MacKeever from 3.00 to
4.00.
From midnight till 3.00 a.m. Donaldson slept as peaceful as a baby,
curled up in the basket with a sandbag for a pillow. The rest of us
slept little through the night and talked less, each absorbed in the
reflections and speculations inspired by our novel experience.
At the approach of dawn we had the most unique and extraordinary
experience ever given to man. The balloon was sailing low in a deep
valley. To the east of us the Berkshires rose steeply to summits
probably fifteen hundred feet above us. Beneath us a little village
lay, snuggled cosily between two small meeting brooks, all dim under
the mists of early morning and the shadows of the hills. No flush of
dawn yet lit the sky. Donaldson had been consulting his watch,
suddenly he rose and called, pointing eastward across the range:
"Watch, boys! Look there!"
He then quickly dumped overboard half the contents of a ballast bag.
Flying upward like an arrow, the balloon soon shot up above the
mountain-top, when, lo! a miracle. The phenomenon of sunrise was
reversed! We our very selves instead had risen on the sun! There he
stood, full and round, peeping at us through the trees crowning a
distant Berkshire hill, as if startled by our temerity.
Shortly thereafter, when we had descended to our usual level and were
running swiftly before a stiff breeze over a rocky hillside, Donaldson
yelled:
"Hang on, boys, for your lives!"
The end of the drag rope had gotten a hitch about a large tree limb.
Luckily Donaldson had seen it in time to warn us, else we had there
finished our careers. We had barely time to seize the stays when the
rope tautened with a shock that nearly turned the basket upside down,
spilled out our water-bucket and some ballast, left MacKeever and
myself hanging in space by our hands, and the other four on the lower
side of the basket, scrambling to save themselves. Instantly, of
course, the basket righted and dropped back beneath us.
And then began a terrible struggle.
The pressure of the wind bore us down within a hundred feet of the
ragged rocks. Groaning under the strain, the rope seemed ready to
snap. Like a huge leviathan trapped in a net, the gas-bag writhed,
twisted, bulged, shrank, gathered into a ball and sprang fiercely out.
The loose folds of canvas sucked up until half the netting stood empty,
and then fold after fold darted out and back with all the angry menace
of a serpent's tongue and with the ominous crash of musketry.
It seemed the canvas must inevitably burst and we be dashed to death.
But Donaldson was cool and smiling, and, taking the only precaution
possible, stood with a sheath-knife ready to cut away the drag rope and
relieve is of its weight in case our canvas burst.
Happily the struggle was brief. The limb that held us snapped, and the
balloon sprang forward in mighty bounds that threw us off our feet and
tossed the great drag rope about like a whip-lash. But we were free,
safe, and our stout vessel soon settled down to the velocity of the
wind.
By this time we all were beginning to feel hungry, for we had supped
the night before in mid-air from a lunch basket that held more
delicacies than substantials. So Donaldson proposed a descent and
began looking for a likely place. At last he chose a little village,
which upon near approach we learned lay in Columbia County of our own
good State.
We called to two farmers to pull us down, no easy task in the rather
high wind then blowing. They grasped the rope and braced themselves as
had others the night before, and presently were flying through the air
in prodigious if ungraceful somersaults. Amazed but unhurt, they again
seized the rope and got a turn about a stout board fence, only to see a
section or two of the fence fly into the air as if in pursuit of us.
Presently the heat of the rising sun expanded our gas and sent us up
again 2,000 feet, making breakfast farther off than ever. Thus, it
being clear that we must sacrifice either our stomachs or our gas,
Donaldson held open the safety valve until we were once more safely
landed on mother earth, but not until after we had received a pretty
severe pounding about, for such a high wind blew that the anchor was
slow in holding.
This landing was made at 5.24 a.m. on the farm of John W. Coons near
the village of Greenport, four miles from Hudson City, and about one
hundred and thirty miles from New York.
Here our pilot decided our vessel must be lightened of two men, and
thus the lot drawn the night before compelled us to part, regretfully,
with MacKeever of the _Herald_, and Austin of the _World_. Ford,
however, owing allegiance to an afternoon paper, the _Graphic_, and
always bursting with honest journalistic zeal for a "beat," saw an
opportunity to win satisfaction greater even than that of keeping on
with us. So he, too, left us here, with the result that the _Graphic_
published a full story of the voyage up to this point, Saturday
afternoon, the twenty-fifth, the _Herald_ and the _World_ trailed along
for second place in their Sunday editions, while _Sun_ and _Tribune_
readers had to wait till Monday morning for such "News from the Clouds"
as Lyons and I had to give them, for wires were not used as freely then
as now.
Our departing mates brought us a rare good breakfast from Mr. Coons'
generous kitchen--a fourteen-quart tin pail well-nigh filled with good
things, among them two currant pies on yellow earthen plates, gigantic
in size, pale of crust, though anything but anaemic of contents. Lyons
finished nearly the half of one before our reascent, to his sorrow, for
scarcely were we off the earth before he developed a colic that seemed
to interest him more, right up to the finish of the trip, than the
scenery.
Bidding our mates good-bye, we prepared to reascend. Many farmers had
been about us holding to our ropes and leaning on the basket, and later
we realized we had not taken in sufficient ballast to offset the weight
of the three men who had left us.
Released, the balloon sprang upward at a pace that all but took our
breath away. Instantly the earth disappeared beneath us. We saw
Donaldson pull the safety valve wide open, draw his sheath knife ready
to cut the drag rope, standing rigid, with his eyes riveted upon the
aneroid barometer. The hand of the barometer was sweeping across the
dial at a terrific rate. I glanced at Donaldson and saw him smile.
Then I looked back the barometer and saw the hand had stopped--at
10,200 feet! How long we were ascending we did not know. Certain it
is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that
when Donaldson turned and spoke we saw his lips move but could hear no
sound. Our speed had been such that the pressure of the air upon the
tympanum of the ear left us deaf for some minutes. We had made a dash
of two miles into cloudland and had accomplished it, we three firmly
believed, in little more than a minute.
Presently Donaldson observed the anchor and grapnel had come up badly
clogged with sod, and a good heavy tug he and I had of it to pull them
in, for Lyons was still much too busy with his currant pie to help us.
Nor indeed were the currant pies yet done with us, for at the end of
our tug at the anchor rope, I found| had been kneeling very precisely
in the middle of pie No. 2, and had contrived to absorb most of it into
the knees of my trousers. Thus at the end of the day, come to Saratoga
after all shops were closed, I had to run the gauntlet of the porch and
office crowd of visitors at the United States Hotel in a condition that
only needed moccasins and a war bonnet to make me a tolerable imitation
of an Indian.
We remained aloft at an altitude of one or two and one half miles for
three hours and a half, stayed there until the silence became
intolerable, until the buzz of a fly or the croak of a frog would have
been music to our ears. Here was _absolute silence_, the silence of
the grave and death, a silence never to be experienced by living man in
any terrestrial condition.
Occasionally the misty clouds in which we hung enshrouded parted
beneath us and gave us glimpses of distant earth, opened and disclosed
landscapes of infinite beauty set in grey nebulous frames. Once we
passed above a thunderstorm, saw the lightning play beneath us, felt
our whole fabric tremble at its shock--and were glad enough when we had
left it well behind. Seen from a great height, the earth looked to be
a vast expanse of dark green velvet, sometimes shaded to a deeper hue
by cloudlets floating beneath the sun, splashed here with the silver
and there with the gold garniture reflected from rippling waters.
Toward noon we descended beneath the region of clouds into the realm of
light and life, and found ourselves hovering above the Mountain House
of the Catskills. And thereabouts we drifted in cross-currents until
nearly 4.00 p.m., when a heavy southerly gale struck us and swept us
rapidly northward past Albany at a pace faster than I have ever
travelled on a railway.
We still had ballast enough left to assure ten or twelve hours more
travel. But we did not like our course. The prospects were that we
would end our voyage in the wilderness two hundred or more miles north
of Ottawa. So we rose to 12,500 feet, seeking an easterly or westerly
current, but without avail. We could not escape the southerly gale.
Prudence, therefore, dictated a landing before nightfall. Landing in
the high gale was both difficult and dangerous, and was not
accomplished until we were all much bruised and scratched in the oak
thicket Donaldson chose for our descent.
Thus the first voyage of the good airship _Barnum_ ended at 6.07 p.m.
on the farm of E. R. Young, nine miles north of Saratoga.
A year later the _Barnum_ rose for the last time--from Chicago--and to
this day the fate of the stanch craft and her brave captain remains an
unsolved mystery.