“See, mon ami, how beautiful this is! Do not dream of days gone by. Are not those the lights of Namur, some six or eight leagues distant? And see, there is Huy, and beyond it again Liège! Here we are right over Belgium, and we may cross a corner of Holland, perhaps, before we enter Prussia!”
The Belgian blast-furnaces soon light up the landscape beneath them, and the noises of the workshops, mingled with the deep sound of the river, rise to their ears.
The dawn begins to break. In fact, through the whole night a faint gleam of twilight has been seen in the north; but now it begins to take effect on the clouds and air around them. The light increases.
“Although the air above is more or less veiled by light mists, we can distinguish the country before three o’clock as clearly as at mid-day. Our course follows the edge of some considerable forests situated on our right hand. These plains (are they plains?) have a very different aspect from those on French territory. In place of the regular patches of fields which lie upon the surface in parallel lines, the country here is composed of fields of every size and form, like the various provinces on a colored map; most of which are surrounded by hedges as they are in England.”
They are wafted along into Prussia. On the right, Luxemburg and Trèves are visible; on the left, Holland, even to the shore of the North Sea.
“The Rhine flows along with its silver ripple in the distance.... All nature is silent, save from time to time the timid chirping of some little bird; when, suddenly, a vast golden streak of light breaks forth from the east, and caresses the highest clouds of the atmosphere, clothing them in rosy and golden tints.”
The illustration representing this sunrise is magnificent, as the sight must have been in the highest degree. What could be more inspiring than to be borne along amid the glorious clouds of morning toward the rising sun—the cheering influence of whose beams the balloon itself seems to feel, as, dried and expanded by their heat, it rises proudly into the sky—with the Rhine glistening before us, and the green plains and forests of Germany inviting us to continue our voyage?
They hear the sound of church-bells, and, soon after, that of cannon.
“From minute to minute the voice of this gracious apparatus of civilization and progress growled among the clouds. It was the artillery of Mülheim preparing itself for the next war.
“The ancient city of Cologne forms beneath us a regular semicircle soldered to the left bank of the Rhine. Unless one examined it attentively, it might be taken for a moderate-sized snail sticking to the thin branch of a tree.”