The Independent

“ I was by this time an experienced dirigible balloon captain—it was the winter following my winning of the Deutsch Prize in Paris; I had no task to perform, nothing to prove, and I could give myself up to the pleasures of aerial navigation in by far the swiftest airship I had yet constructed. As I steered my course I remember saying to, myself:
" How different are these from the sensations of the spherical balloonist! It is true that he has the earth flying backward beneath him at a great speed, but he knows that he is powerless. ”

“ As my airship plowed ahead the wind fluttered my coat violently, as on the deck of an Atlantic liner, tho in all other respects it is more like river navigation with a steam-boat. It is not at all like sail navigation and all talk about “tacking” is meaningless. Imagine the air current to be a river running 10 miles per hour. If you go against the current, making 20 miles per hour, your net progress will be but 10 miles per hour. ”

“ With respect to combinations of vertical and horizontal movement man is quite without experience. Indeed, I cannot describe the delight, the wonder and intoxication of that free diagonal movement onward and upward, or onward and downward, combined at will with changes of direction horizontally when the airship answers to the touch of the rudder! The birds have this sensation when they spread their wings and go toboganning in curves and spirals through the sky. ”

“ When the moon rises you see, perhaps, a faint curling line of gray. It is a river, with moonlight or starlight falling on its waters. There comes a flash and a faint roar; it is a railway train, the locomotive’s fires illuminating for a moment its smoke as it rises. ”

“ Held to the plane of the earth, his movement “down” has scarcely been more than a return after a short excursion “up,” our minds always remaining on the plane surface, even while our bodies may be mounting, and this is so much true that the spherical balloonist as he rises has no sense of movement, but gains the impression on which I have insisted, that the earth is descending below him. ”

“ If your propeller makes you 20 miles per hour with the current, your net speed becomes 30 miles per hour. Well, it is just so in an airship. In a calm it makes its own speed, unaffected by wind current.
The navigator of the air, however, has one great pleasure unknown to the navigator of a river. He can seek to change one air current for another. The air is full of varying currents. Mounting, I have often sought and found either a calm or an advantageous breeze, even in a spherical balloon ”

“ Now and again there come the lights of earth to cheer you. You see a point far below ahead. It slowly expands, until where there came to be a blaze there are countless bright spots. They run in lines, with here and there a cluster. ”

“ Then we packed the silk envelope, anchor, rope and utensils in the basket and hired a man to haul it to the nearest railway station.
After two more such personally conducted trips, in which I sought to do all the maneuvering with my own hands under M. Machuron’s kind instruction, I ventured in a spherical balloon, and during this early period I made very many trips, landing in all parts of France. Often they were prolonged into the night; and no sporting sensations are more diversified and agreeable than those of night ballooning. One is alone in the black void—yes, in a murky limbo ”

“ Taken from a Balloon 200 Meters Above That was a sensation. We were still shooting up, up; and it was time to have recourse to effective means, to open the maneuver valve and let out a portion of our gas. It was done in a moment. The balloon began descending again, until its guide rope again dragged on the ground. There was nothing but to bring the trip to an end, because only a little sand remained in the ballast bags.
I watched my captain’s maneuvers. He who would navigate an airship should first practice landing in a spherical balloon, take my word for it. ”

“ Pleasures like these—the triumphs of personal effort from minute to minute—the spherical balloonist may not know. I recall a similar moment of fierce enjoyment on my return from the Eiffel Tower, when I won the Deutsch Prize for aerial navigation in October, 1901. On my way to the Tower the motor had worked fairly well. ”