If it had been a yacht in which we were speeding along at the rate of a trifle over a mile per minute, we should have “taken our reckoning,” “hove the log,” or done something nautical, and the captain would doubtless have reported in regular sea-faring terms that we were off Oil City with Lake Chautauqua so and so many knots on our port quarter.
But it wasn’t a yacht, nor a schooner, nor a Conestoga wagon, lightning express or catamaran, in which we were travelling neck and neck with one of the wildest looking storm clouds of hot mid-summer.
No. It was—can you guess it? Yes, a balloon.
And this is how it all came about:
Fourth of July came upon the fifth that year, (because of some strange oversight on the part of the folks who first hit upon the plan of dividing time into weeks, somehow the Fourth will, every once in a while, strike Sunday.)
INFLATING THE “BUFFALO.”
At least it did in Cleveland; and although they were a day late, the Clevelanders determined to have a big time. So they had sent for Prof. Samuel A. King, an aeronaut of distinction. Balloonists, you know, are nearly always called “Professors”—why this is so I don’t profess to know. And Prof. King had arrived in Cleveland a few days before, bringing his great balloon, the “Buffalo.”
Early upon the morning of the 5th he was on hand with the helpless monster all in a heap tied about with ropes, mixed up with netting and sand-bags, and supplemented with a big basket which looked a good deal like an inverted straw hat made for some huge giant.