Ballooning as a sport has a fascination all its own. There is much of the spice of adventure in the fact that one’s destiny is quite unknown. Floating with the wind, there is no consciousness of motion. Though the wind may be travelling at great speed, the balloon seems to be in a complete calm. A lady passenger, writing of a recent trip, has thus described her experience:—“The world continues slowly to unroll itself in ever-varying but ever-beautiful panorama—patchwork fields, shimmering silver streaks, toy box churches and houses, and white roads like the joints of a jig-saw puzzle. And presently cotton-wool billows come creeping up, with purple shadows and fleecy outlines and prismatic rainbow effects. Sometimes they invade the car, and shroud it for a while in clinging warm white wreaths, and anon they fall below and shut out the world with a glorious curtain, and we are all alone in perfect silence, in perfect peace, and in a realm made for us alone.
“And so the happy, restful hours go smoothly by, until the earth has had enough of it, and rising up more or less rapidly to invade our solitude, hits the bottom of our basket, and we step out, or maybe roll out, into every-day existence a hundred miles away.”
The perfect smoothness of motion, the absolute quiet, and the absence of distracting apparatus combine to render balloon voyaging the most delightful mode of transit from place to place. Some of the most fascinating bits of descriptive writing are those of aeronauts. The following quotation from the report of Capt. A. Hildebrandt, of the balloon corps of the Prussian army, will show that although his expeditions were wholly scientific, he was far from indifferent to the sublimer influences of nature by which he was often surrounded.
In his account of the journey from Berlin to Markaryd, in Sweden, with Professor Berson as a companion aeronaut, he says: “The view over Rügen and the chalk cliffs of Stubbenkammer and Arkona was splendid: the atmosphere was perfectly clear. On the horizon we could see the coasts of Sweden and Denmark, looking almost like a thin mist; east and west there was nothing but the open sea.
“About 3:15 the balloon was in the middle of the Baltic; right in the distance we could just see Rügen and Sweden. The setting of the sun at 4 P.M. was a truly magnificent spectacle. At a height of 5,250 feet, in a perfectly clear atmosphere, the effect was superb. The blaze of color was dimly reflected in the east by streaks of a bluish-green. I have seen sunsets over France at heights of 10,000 feet, with the Alps, the Juras, and the Vosges Mountains in the distance; but this was quite as fine.
“The sunsets seen by the mountaineer or the sailor are doubtless, magnificent; but I hardly think the spectacle can be finer than that spread out before the gaze of the balloonist. The impression is increased by the absolute stillness which prevails; no sound of any kind is heard.
Landscape as seen from a balloon at an altitude of 3,000 feet.
“As soon as the sun went down, it was necessary to throw out some ballast, owing to the decrease of temperature.... We reached the Swedish coast about 5 o’clock, and passed over Trelleborg at a height of 2,000 feet. The question then arose whether to land, or to continue through the night. Although it was well past sunset, there was sufficient light in consequence of the snow to see our way to the ground, and to land quite easily.... However, we wanted to do more meteorological work, and it was thought that there was still sufficient ballast to take us up to a much greater height. We therefore proposed to continue for another sixteen hours during the night, in spite of the cold.... Malmö was therefore passed on the left, and the university town of Lund on the right. After this the map was of no further use, as it was quite dark and we had no lamp. The whole outlook was like a transformation scene. Floods of light rose up from Trelleborg, Malmö, Copenhagen, Landskrona, Lund, Elsinore, and Helsingborg, while the little towns beneath our feet sparkled with many lights. We were now at a height of more than 10,000 feet, and consequently all these places were within sight. The glistening effect of the snow was heightened by the blaze which poured from the lighthouses along the coasts of Sweden and Denmark. The sight was as wonderful as that of the sunset, though of a totally different nature.”
Captain Hildebrandt’s account of the end of this voyage illustrates the spice of adventure which is likely to be encountered when the balloon comes down in a strange country. It has its hint also of the hardships for which the venturesome aeronaut has to be prepared. He says:—