ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
1904

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURG


[CONTENTS]

PAGE
Introductory Fable[1]
CHAPTER
I.The Coffee Plantation[10]
II.Paris—Professional Balloonists—Automobiles[24]
III.My First Balloon Ascent[33]
IV.My "Brazil"—smallest of Spherical Balloons[42]
V.The Real and the Imaginary Dangers of Ballooning[51]
VI.I yield to the Steerable Balloon Idea[63]
VII.My First Air-Ship Cruises (1898)[74]
VIII.How it feels to Navigate the Air[82]
IX.Explosive Engines and Inflammable Gases[100]
X.I go in for Air-Ship Building[114]
XI.The Exposition Summer[133]
XII.The Deutsch Prize and its Problems[153]
XIII.A Fall before a Rise[164]
XIV.The Building of my "No. 6"[180]
XV.Winning the Deutsch Prize[190]
XVI.A Glance Backward and Forward[205]
XVII.Monaco and the Maritime Guide Rope[217]
XVIII.Flights in Mediterranean Winds[232]
XIX.Speed[243]
XX.An Accident and its Lessons[256]
XXI.The First of the World's Air-Ship Stations[264]
XXII.My "No. 9," the Little Runabout[282]
XXIII.The Air-Ship in War[303]
XXIV.Paris as a Centre of Air-Ship Experiments[318]
Concluding Fable[327]