were soon found sufficiently daring to make the experiment. Another
balloon was constructed, 74 feet high, and 48 feet in diameter, and M.
Pilatre de Rozier, superintendent of the royal museum, and the Marquis
de Arlandes, volunteered to make an aerial voyage. At the bottom, it had
an opening of about 15 feet in diameter, around which was a gallery of
wicker-work, three feet broad, with a balustrade all around the outer
edge, of the same material, three feet high; and, to enable the
aeronauts to increase or diminish at pleasure the rarified state of the
air within, it was provided with an iron brazier, intended for a fire,
which could easily be regulated as necessity required. On the 21st of
November, in the same year, the adventurers having taken their places on
opposite sides of the gallery, the balloon rose majestically in the
sight of an immense multitude of spectators, who witnessed its upward
course with mingled sentiments of fear and admiration. The whole
machine, with fuel and passengers, weighed 1600 pounds. It rose to the
height of at least 3000 feet, and remained in the air from 20 to 25
minutes, visible all the time to the inhabitants of Paris and its
environs. At several times it was in imminent danger of taking fire, and
the marquis, in terror for his life, would have made a precipitate
descent, which, in all probability, would have ended fatally, but M.
Pilatre de Rozier, who displayed great coolness and intrepidity,
deliberately extinguished the fire with a sponge of water he had
provided for the emergency, by which they were enabled to remain in the
atmosphere some time longer. They raised and lowered themselves
frequently during their excursion, by regulating the fire in the
brazier, and finally landed in safety five miles distant from the place
where they started, after having sailed over a great portion of Paris.
This is the first authentic instance in which man succeeded in putting
into practical operation the art of traveling in the air, which had
hitherto baffled his ingenuity, though turned to the subject for two
thousand years. The news of the novel and adventurous feat rapidly
spread over the whole civilized world, and aerial ascents in balloons
constructed on the same principle were made in other cities of France,
in Italy, and in the United States of America.

The two Montgolfiers soon obtained a high and wide-spread reputation;
and the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Paris voted a gold