Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851

But let us, at all events, ascend into the sky! Taking balloons as they are, "for better, for worse," as Mr. Green would say – let us for once have a flight in the air.

The first thing you naturally expect is some extraordinary sensation in springing high up into the air, which takes away your breath for a time. But no such matter occurs. The extraordinary thing is, that you experience no sensation at all, so far as motion is concerned. So true is this, that on one occasion, when Mr. Green wished to rise a little above a dense crowd, in order to get out of the extreme heat and pressure that surrounded his balloon, those who held the ropes, misunderstanding his direction, let go entirely, and the balloon instantly rose, while the aeronaut remained calmly seated, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, after the exertions he had undergone in preparing for the flight, and totally unconscious of what had happened. He declares that he only became aware of the circumstance, when, on reaching a considerable elevation (a few seconds are often quite enough for that), he heard the shouts of the multitude becoming fainter and fainter, which caused him to start up, and look over the edge of the car.

A similar unconsciousness of the time of their departure from earth has often happened to "passengers." A very amusing illustration of this is given in a letter published by Mr. Poole, the well-known author, shortly after his ascent. "I do not despise you," says he, "for talking about a balloon going up, for it is an error which you share in common with some millions of our fellow-creatures; and I, in the days of my ignorance, thought with the rest of you. I know better now. The fact is, we do not go up at all; but at about five minutes past six on the evening of Friday, the 14th of September, 1838 – at about that time, Vauxhall Gardens, with all the people in them, went down!" What follows is excellent. "I can not have been deceived," says he; "I speak from the evidence of my senses, founded upon repetition of the fact. Upon each of the three or four experimental trials of the powers of the balloon to enable the people to glide away from us with safety to themselves – down they all went about thirty feet? – then, up they came again, and so on. There we sat quietly all the while, in our wicker buck-basket, utterly unconscious of motion; till, at length, Mr. Green snapping a little iron, and thus letting loose the rope by which the earth was suspended to us– like Atropos, cutting the connection between us with a pair of shears – down it went, with every thing on it; and your poor, paltry, little Dutch toy of a town, (your Great Metropolis, as you insolently call it), having been placed on casters for the occasion – I am satisfied of that– was gently rolled away from under us."12

Feeling nothing of the ascending motion, the first impression that takes possession of you in "going up" in a balloon, is the quietude – the silence, that grows more and more entire. The restless heaving to and fro of the huge inflated sphere above your head (to say nothing of the noise of the crowd), the flapping of ropes, the rustling of silk, and the creaking of the basketwork of the car – all has ceased. There is a total cessation of all atmospheric resistance. You sit in a silence which becomes more perfect every second. After the bustle of many moving objects, you stare before you into blank air. We make no observations on other sensations – to wit, the very natural one of a certain increased pulse, at being so high up, with a chance of coming down so suddenly, if any little matter went wrong. As all this will differ with different individuals, according to their nervous systems and imaginations, we will leave each person to his own impressions.

So much for what you first feel; and now what is the first thing you do? In this case every body is alike. We all do the same thing. We look over the side of the car. We do this very cautiously – keeping a firm seat, as though we clung to our seat by a certain attraction of cohesion – and then, holding on by the edge, we carefully protrude the peak of our traveling-cap, and then the tip of the nose, over the edge of the car, upon which we rest our mouth. Every thing below is seen in so new a form, so flat, compressed and simultaneously – so much too-much-at-a-time – that the first look is hardly so satisfactory as could be desired. But soon we thrust the chin fairly over the edge, and take a good stare downward; and this repays us much better. Objects appear under very novel circumstances from this vertical position, and ascending retreat from them (though it is they that appear to sink and retreat from us). They are stunted and foreshortened, and rapidly flattened to a map-like appearance; they get smaller and smaller, and clearer and clearer. "An idea," says Monck Mason, "involuntarily seizes upon the mind, that the earth with all its inhabitants had, by some unaccountable effort of nature, been suddenly precipitated from its hold, and was in the act of slipping away from beneath the aeronaut's feet into the murky recesses of some unfathomable abyss below. Every thing, in fact, but himself, seems to have been suddenly endowed with motion." Away goes the earth, with all its objects – sinking lower and lower, and every thing becoming less and less, but getting more and more distinct and defined as they diminish in size. But, besides the retreat toward minuteness, the phantasmagoria flattens as it lessens – men and women are of five inches high, then of four, three, two, one inch – and now a speck; the Great Western is a narrow strip of parchment, and upon it you see a number of little trunks "running away with each other," while the Great Metropolis itself is a board set out with toys; its public edifices turned into "baby-houses, and pepper-casters, and extinguishers, and chess-men, with here and there a dish-cover – things which are called domes, and spires, and steeples!" As for the Father of Rivers, he becomes a dusky-gray, winding streamlet, and his largest ships are no more than flat pale decks, all the masts and rigging being foreshortened to nothing. We soon come now to the shadowy, the indistinct – and then all is lost in air. Floating clouds fill up all the space beneath. Lovely colors outspread themselves, ever-varying in tone, and in their forms or outlines – now sweeping in broad lines – now rolling and heaving in huge, richly, yet softly-tinted billows – while sometimes, through a great opening, rift, or break, you see a level expanse of gray or blue fields at an indefinite depth below. And all this time there is a noiseless cataract of snowy cloud-rocks falling around you – falling swiftly on all sides of the car, in great fleecy masses – in small snow-white and glistening fragments – and immense compound masses – all white, and soft, and swiftly rushing past you, giddily, and incessantly down, down, and all with the silence of a dream – strange, lustrous, majestic, incomprehensible.

Aeronauts, of late years, have become, in many instances, respectable and business-like, and not given to extravagant fictions about their voyages, which now, more generally, take the form of a not very lively log. But it used to be very different when the art was in its infancy, some thirty or forty years ago, and young balloonists indulged in romantic fancies. We do not believe that there was a direct intention to tell falsehoods, but that they often deceived themselves very amusingly. Thus, it has been asserted, that when you attained a great elevation, the air became so rarefied that you could not breathe, and that small objects, being thrown out of the balloon, could not fall, and stuck against the side of the car. Also, that wild birds, being taken up and suddenly let loose, could not fly properly, but returned immediately to the car for an explanation. One aeronaut declared that his head became so contracted by his great elevation, that his hat tumbled over his eyes, and persisted in resting on the bridge of his nose. This assertion was indignantly rebutted by another aeronaut of the same period, who declared that, on the contrary, the head expanded in proportion to the elevation; in proof of which he stated, that on his last ascent he went so high that his hat burst. Another of these romantic personages described a wonderful feat of skill and daring which he had performed up in the air. At an elevation of two miles, his balloon burst several degrees above "the equator" (meaning, above the middle region of the balloon), whereupon he crept up the lines that attached the car, until he reached the netting that inclosed the balloon; and up this netting he clambered, until he reached the aperture, into which he thrust – not his head – but his pocket handkerchief! Mr. Monck Mason, to whose "Aeronautica" we are indebted for the anecdote, gives eight different reasons to show the impossibility of any such feat having ever been performed in the air. One of these is highly graphic. The "performer" would change the line of gravitation by such an attempt: he would never be able to mount the sides, and would only be like the squirrel in its revolving cage. He would, however, pull the netting round – the spot where he clung to, ever remaining the lowest – until having reversed the machine, the balloon would probably make its escape, in an elongated shape, through the large interstices of that portion of the net-work which is just above the car, when the balloon is in its proper position! But the richest of all these romances is the following brief statement: – A scientific gentleman, well advanced in years (who had "probably witnessed the experiment of the restoration of a withered pear beneath the exhausted receiver of a pneumatic machine") was impressed with a conviction, on ascending to a considerable height in a balloon, that every line and wrinkle of his face had totally disappeared, owing, as he said, to the preternatural distension of his skin; and that, to the astonishment of his companion, he rapidly began to assume the delicate aspect and blooming appearance of his early youth!

These things are all self-delusions. A bit of paper or a handkerchief might cling to the outside of the car, but a penny-piece would, undoubtedly, fall direct to the earth. Wild birds do not return to the car, but descend in circles, till, passing through the clouds, they see whereabouts to go, and then they fly downward as usual. We have no difficulty in breathing; on the contrary, being "called upon," we sing a song. Our head does not contract, so as to cause our hat to extinguish our eyes and nose; neither does it expand to the size of a prize pumpkin. We see that it is impossible to climb up the netting of the balloon over-head, and so do not think of attempting it; neither do we find all the lines in our face getting filled up, and the loveliness of our "blushing morning" taking the place of a marked maturity. These fancies are not less ingenious and comical than that of the sailor who hit upon the means of using a balloon to make a rapid voyage to any part of the earth. "The earth spins round," said he, "at a great rate, don't it? Well, I'd go up two or three miles high in my balloon, and then 'lay to,' and when any place on the globe I wished to touch at, passed underneath me, down I'd drop upon it."

But we are still floating high in air. How do we feel all this time? "Calm, sir – calm and resigned." Yes, and more than this. After a little while, when you find nothing happens, and see nothing likely to happen (and you will more especially feel this under the careful conduct of the veteran Green), a delightful serenity takes the place of all other sensations – to which the extraordinary silence, as well as the pale beauty and floating hues that surround you, is chiefly attributable. The silence is perfect – a wonder and a rapture. We hear the ticking of our watches. Tick! tick! – or is it the beat of our own hearts? We are sure of the watch; and now we think we can hear both.

Two other sensations must, by no means, be forgotten. You become very cold, and desperately hungry. But you have got a warm outer coat, and traveling boots, and other valuable things, and you have not left behind you the pigeon-pie, the ham, cold beef, bottled ale and brandy.

Of the increased coldness which you feel on passing from a bright cloud into a dark one, the balloon is quite as sensitive as you can be; and, probably, much more so, for it produces an immediate change of altitude. The expansion and contraction which romantic gentlemen fancied took place in the size of their heads, does really take place in the balloon, according as it passes from a cloud of one temperature into that of another.

We are now nearly three miles high. Nothing is to be seen but pale air above – around – on all sides, with floating clouds beneath. How should you like to descend in a parachute? – to be dangled by a long line from the bottom of the car, and suddenly to be "let go," and to dip at once clean down through those gray-blue and softly rose-tinted clouds, skimming so gently beneath us? Not at all: oh, by no manner of means – thank you! Ah, you are thinking of the fate of poor Cocking, the enthusiast in parachutes, concerning whom, and his fatal "improvement," the public is satisfied that it knows every thing, from the one final fact – that he was killed. But there is something more than that in it, as we fancy.

Two words against parachutes. In the first place, there is no use to which, at present, they can be applied; and, in the second, they are so unsafe as to be likely, in all cases, to cost a life for each descent. In the concise words of Mr. Green, we should say – "the best parachute is a balloon; the others are bad things to have to deal with."

Mr. Cocking, as we have said, was an enthusiast in parachutes. He felt sure he had discovered a new, and the true, principle. All parachutes, before his day, had been constructed to descend in a concave form, like that of an open umbrella; the consequence of which was, that the parachute descended with a violent swinging from side to side, which sometimes threw the man in the basket in almost a horizontal position. Mr. Cocking conceived that the converse form; viz., an inverted cone (of large dimensions), would remedy this evil; and becoming convinced, we suppose, by some private experiments with models, he agreed to descend on a certain day. The time was barely adequate to his construction of the parachute, and did not admit of such actual experiments with a sheep, or pig, or other animal, as prudence would naturally have suggested. Besides the want of time, however, Cocking equally wanted prudence; he felt sure of his new principle; this new form of parachute was the hobby of his life, and up he went on the appointed day (for what aeronaut shall dare to "disappoint the Public?") – dangling by a rope, fifty feet long, from the bottom of the car of Mr. Green's great Nassau Balloon.

The large upper rim of the parachute, in imitation, we suppose, of the hollow bones of a bird, was made of hollow tin – a most inapplicable and brittle material; and besides this, it had two fractures. But Mr. Cocking was not to be deterred; convinced of the truth of his discovery, up he would go. Mr. Green was not equally at ease, and positively refused to touch the latch of the "liberating iron," which was to detach the parachute from the balloon. Mr. Cocking arranged to do this himself, for which means he procured a piece of new cord of upward of fifty feet in length, which was fastened to the latch above in the car, and led down to his hand in the basket of the parachute. Up they went to a great height, and disappeared among the clouds.

Mr. Green had taken up one friend with him in the car; and, knowing well what would happen the instant so great a weight as the parachute and man were detached, he had provided a small balloon inside the car, filled with atmospheric air, with two mouth-pieces. They were now upward of a mile high.

"How do you feel, Mr. Cocking?" called out Green. "Never better, or more delighted in my life," answered Cocking. Though hanging at fifty feet distance, in the utter silence of that region, every accent was easily heard. "But, perhaps you will alter your mind?" suggested Green. "By no means," cried Cocking; "but, how high are we?" – "Upward of a mile." – "I must go higher, Mr. Green – I must be taken up two miles before I liberate the parachute." Now, Mr. Green, having some regard for himself and his friend, as well as for poor Cocking, was determined not to do any such thing. After some further colloquy, therefore, during which Mr. Green threw out a little more ballast, and gained a little more elevation, he finally announced that he could go no higher, as he now needed all the ballast he had for their own safety in the balloon. "Very well," said Cocking, "if you really will not take me any higher, I shall say good-by."

At this juncture Green called out, "Now, Mr. Cocking, if your mind at all misgives you about your parachute, I have provided a tackle up here, which I can lower down to you, and then wind you up into the car by my little grapnel-iron windlass, and nobody need be the wiser." – "Certainly not," cried Cocking; "thank you all the same. I shall now make ready to pull the latch-cord." Finding he was determined, Green and his friend both crouched down in the car, and took hold of the mouth-pieces of their little air-balloon. "All ready?" called out Cocking. "All ready!" answered the veteran aeronaut above. "Good-night, Mr. Green!" – "Good-night, Mr. Cocking!" – "A pleasant voyage to you, Mr. Green – good-night!"

There was a perfect silence – a few seconds of intense suspense – and then the aeronauts in the car felt a jerk upon the latch. It had not been forcible enough to open the liberating iron. Cocking had failed to detach the parachute. Another pause of horrid silence ensued.

Then came a strong jerk upon the latch, and in an instant, the great balloon shot upward with a side-long swirl, like a wounded serpent. They saw their flag clinging flat down against the flag-staff, while a torrent of gas rushed down upon them through the aperture in the balloon above their heads, and continued to pour down into the car for a length of time that would have suffocated them but for the judgmatic provision of the little balloon of atmospheric air, to the mouth-pieces of which their own mouths were fixed, as they crouched down at the bottom of the car. Of Mr. Cocking's fate, or the result of his experiment, they had not the remotest knowledge. They only knew the parachute was gone!

The termination of Mr. Cocking's experiment is well known. For a few seconds he descended quickly, but steadily, and without swinging – as he had designed, and insisted would be the result – when, suddenly, those who were watching with glasses below, saw the parachute lean on one side – then give a lurch to the other – then the large upper circle collapsed (the disastrous hollow tin-tubing having evidently broken up), and the machine entered the upper part of a cloud: in a few more seconds it was seen to emerge from the lower part of the cloud – the whole thing turned over – and then, like a closed-up broken umbrella, it shot straight down to the earth. The unfortunate, and, as most people regard him, the foolish enthusiast, was found still in the basket in which he reached the earth. He was quite insensible, but uttered a moan; and in ten minutes he was dead.

Half a word in favor of parachutes. True, they are of no use "at present;" but who knows of what use such things may one day be? As to Mr. Cocking's invention, the disaster seems to be attributable to errors of detail, rather than of principle. Mr. Green is of opinion, from an examination of the broken latch-cord, combined with other circumstances, which would require diagrams to describe satisfactorily, that after Mr. Cocking had failed to liberate himself the first time, he twisted the cord round his hand to give a good jerk, forgetting that in doing so, he united himself to the balloon above, as it would be impossible to disengage his hand in time. By this means he was violently jerked into his parachute, which broke the latch-cord; but the tin tube was not able to bear such a shock, and this caused so serious a fracture, in addition to its previous unsound condition, that it soon afterward collapsed. This leads one to conjecture that had the outer rim been made of strong wicker-work, or whale-bone, so as to be somewhat pliable, and that Mr. Green had liberated the parachute, instead of Mr. Cocking, it would have descended to the earth with perfect safety – skimming the air, instead of the violent oscillations of the old form of this machine. We conclude, however, with Mr. Green's laconic – that the safest parachute is a balloon.

But here we are – still above the clouds! We may assume that you would not like to be "let off" in a parachute, even on the improved principle; we will therefore prepare for descending with the balloon. This is a work requiring great skill and care to effect safely, so as to alight on a suitable piece of ground, and without any detriment to the voyagers, the balloon, gardens, crops, &c.

The valve-line is pulled! – out rushes the gas from the top of the balloon – you see the flag fly upward – down through the clouds you sink faster and faster – lower and lower. Now you begin to see dark masses below – there's the Old Earth again! – the dark masses now discover themselves to be little forests, little towns, tree-tops, house-tops – out goes a shower of sand from the ballast-bags, and our descent becomes slower – another shower, and up we mount again, in search of a better spot to alight upon. Our guardian aeronaut gives each of us a bag of ballast, and directs us to throw out its contents when he calls each of us by name, and in such quantities only as he specifies. Moreover, no one is suddenly to leap out of the balloon, when it touches the earth; partly because it may cost him his own life or limbs, and partly because it would cause the balloon to shoot up again with those who remained, and so make them lose the advantage of the good descent already gained, if nothing worse happened. Meantime, the grapnel-iron has been lowered, and dangling down at the end of a strong rope of a hundred and fifty feet long. It is now trailing over the ground. Three bricklayers' laborers are in chase of it. It catches upon a bank – it tears its way through. Now the three bricklayers are joined by a couple of fellows in smock-frocks, a policeman, five boys, followed by three little girls, and, last of all, a woman with a child in her arms, all running, shouting, screaming, and yelling, as the grapnel-iron and rope go trailing and bobbing over the ground before them. At last the iron catches upon a hedge – grapples with its roots; the balloon is arrested, but struggles hard; three or four men seize the rope, and down we are hauled, and held fast till the aerial Monster, with many a gigantic heave and pant, surrenders at discretion, and begins to resign its inflated robust proportions. It subsides in irregular waves – sinks, puffs, flattens – dies to a mere shriveled skin; and being folded up, like Peter Schlemil's shadow, is put into a bag, and stowed away at the bottom of the little car it so recently overshadowed with its buoyant enormity.

We are glad it is all over; delighted, and edified as we have been, we are very glad to take our supper at the solid, firmly-fixed oak table of a country inn, with a brick wall and a barn-door for our only prospect, as the evening closes in. Of etherial currents, and the scenery of infinite space, we have had enough for the present.

Touching the accidents which occur to balloons, we feel persuaded that in the great majority of cases they are caused by inexperience, ignorance, rashness, folly, or – more commonly than all – the necessities attending a "show." Once "announced" for a certain day, or night (an abominable practice, which ought to be prevented) – and, whatever the state of the wind and weather, and whatever science and the good sense of an experienced aeronaut may know and suggest of imprudence – up the poor man must go, simply because the public have paid their money to see him do it. He must go, or he will be ruined.

But nothing can more strikingly display the comparative safety which is attained by great knowledge, foresight, and care, than the fact of the veteran, Charles Green, being now in the four hundred and eighty-ninth year of his balloonical age; having made that number of ascents, and taken up one thousand four hundred and thirteen persons, with no fatal accident to himself, or to them, and seldom with any damage to his balloons.