"CHAPTER ONE.
BALLOON VOYAGES.
TREATS OF EARLY EFFORTS TO FLY, ETCETERA.
It is man's nature to soar intellectually, and it seems to have been his
ambition from earliest ages to soar physically.
Every one in health knows, or at some period of life must have known,
that upward bounding of the spirit which induces a longing for the
possession of wings, that the material body might be wafted upwards into
those blue realms of light, which are so attractive to the eye and
imagination of poor creeping man that he has appropriately styled them
the heavens.
Man has envied the birds since the world began. Who has not watched,
with something more than admiration, the easy gyrations of the sea-mew,
and listened, with something more than delight, to the song of the
soaring lark?
To fly with the body as well as with the mind, is a wish so universal
that the benignant Creator Himself seems to recognise it in that most
attractive passage in Holy Writ, wherein it is said that believers shall
"mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they
shall walk and not faint."
Of course man has not reached the middle of the nineteenth century
without making numerous attempts to fly bodily up to the skies.
Fortunately, however, such ambitious efforts have seldom been made
except by the intellectually enthusiastic. Prosaic man, except in the
case of the Tower of Babel, has remained content to gaze upwards with
longing desire, and only a few of our species in the course of centuries
have possessed temerity enough to make the deliberate effort to ride
upon the wings of the wind.
Naturally, the first attempts were, like most beginnings, simple and
imitative. The birds flew with wings, therefore man put on artificial
wings and essayed to fly like the birds. It was not until many grievous
disappointments and sad accidents had befallen him, that he unwillingly
gave up wings in despair, and set to work to accomplish his ends by more
cumbrous and complex machinery.
Very early in the world's history, however, "flying machines" were made,
some of which were doubtless intended by their honest inventors to carry
men through the air, while others were mere shams, made by designing
men, wherewith to impose upon the ignorant for wicked ends of their own;
and some of these last were, no doubt, believed to be capable of the
feats attributed to them..."
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