Why not apply balloons to African exploration or the crossing of Australia? The only reply to this is that we know too little of the practical possibilities of such a method of traveling when thus applied. Hitherto the balloon has only been a sensational toy. We know well enough that it cannot be steered in a predetermined line, i.e., from one point to another given point, but this is quite a different problem from sailing over a given surface of considerable area. This can be done to a certain extent, but we want to know definitely to what extent, and what are the limits of reliability and safety. With this knowledge, and its application by the brave and skillful men who are so eager to start, the solution of the Polar mystery assumes a new and far more hopeful phase than it has ever before presented.
The Anglo-American Arctic Expedition.
Commander Cheyne has gone to America to seek the modest equipment that his own countrymen are unable to supply. He proposes now that his expedition shall be “Anglo-American.” I have been asked to join an arctic council, to coöperate on this side, and have refused on anti-patriotic grounds. As a member of the former arctic committee, I was so much disgusted with the parsimony of our millionaires and the anti-geographical conduct of the Savile Row Mutual Admiration Society, that I heartily wish that in this matter our American grandchildren may “lick the Britishers quite complete.” It will do us much good.
My views, expressed in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” of July 1880, and repeated above, remain unchanged, except in the direction of confirmation and development. I still believe that an enthusiastic, practically trained, sturdy arctic veteran, who has endured hardship both at home and abroad, whose craving eagerness to reach the Pole amounts to a positive monomania, who lives for this object alone, and is ready to die for it, who will work at it purely for the work’s sake—will be the right man in the right place when at the head of a modestly but efficiently equipped Polar expedition, especially if Lieutenant Schwatka is his second in command.
They will not require luxurious saloons, nor many cases of champagne; they will care but little for amateur theatricals; they will follow the naval traditions of the old British “sea-dogs” rather than those of our modern naval lap-dogs, and will not turn back after a first struggle with the cruel arctic ice, even though they should suppose it to be “paleocrystic.”
Mr. Walter Powell.
Scientific aerostation has lost its most promising expert by the untimely death of Walter Powell. He was not a mere sensational ballooner, nor one of those dreamers who imagine they can invent flying machines, or steer balloons against the wind by mysterious electrical devices or by mechanical paddles, fan-wheels, or rudders.
He perfectly understood that a balloon is at the mercy of atmospheric currents and must drift with them, but nevertheless he regarded it as a most promising instrument for geographical research. I had a long conference with him on the subject in August last, when he told me that the main objects of the ascents he had already made, and should be making for some little time forward, were the acquisition of practical skill, and of further knowledge of atmospheric currents; after which he should make a dash at the Atlantic with the intent of crossing to America.
On my part, I repeated with further argument what I have already urged on page 113 of the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for July, 1880, viz., the primary necessity of systematic experimental investigation of the rate of exosmosis (oozing out) of the gas from balloons made of different materials and variously varnished.
Professor Graham demonstrated that this molecular permeation of gases and liquids through membranes mechanically air-tight, depends upon the adhesive affinities of particular solids for other particular fluids, and these affinities vary immensely, their variations depending on chemical differences rather than upon mechanical impermeability. My project to attach captive balloons of small size to the roof of the Polytechnic Institution, holding them by a steelyard that should indicate the pull due to their ascending power, and the rate of its decline according to the composition of the membrane, was heartily approved by Mr. Powell, and, had the Polytechnic survived, would have been carried out, as it would have served the double purpose of scientific investigation and of sensational advertisement for the outside public.