of the
same year Leon Delagrange had four times in succession raised the
world's official records (which, of course, took no note of the Wrights)
for duration of flight. On the 31st of October Louis Bleriot made the
first cross-country circuit flight, from Toury to Artenay and back, a
distance of about seventeen miles, in the course of which flight he
twice landed and rose again into the air. All these and many similar
achievements were dwarfed by Wilbur Wright's performance at the
Hunaudieres racecourse near Le Mans. His first flight, on Saturday the
8th of August, lasted one minute and forty-seven seconds. Three days
later, though he flew for only four minutes, the figures of eight and
other manoeuvres which he executed in the air caused M. Delagrange, who
witnessed them, to remark, 'Eh bien. Nous n'existons pas. Nous sommes
battus.' On the last day of the year he flew for two hours and twenty
minutes, covering seventy-seven miles. In the intervening time he had
beaten the French records for duration, distance, and height.
Cross-country work he did not attempt; his machine at that time was
ill-fitted for it. During the winter he went to Pau to instruct his
first three pupils--the Count de Lambert and MM. Paul Tissandier and
Alfred Leblanc.

At the beginning of the year 1909 the mystery and craft of flying was
still known only to the few. In the two years that followed it was
divulged to the many, and became a public spectacle. The age of the
designers was followed by the age of the performers. Flying machines and
men who could fly them rapidly increased in number. A man working in a
laboratory on difficult and uncertain experiments cannot engage or
retain the attention of the public; a flying man, who circles over a
city or flies across great tracts of populated country, is visible to
all, and, when he is first seen, excites a frenzy of popular enthusiasm.
These years were the years of competition and adventure, of races, and
of record-breaking in distance, speed, duration, and height. Flying was
the newest sport; and the aviator, whose courage, coolness, and skill
carried him through great dangers, was the hero of the day. The press,
with its ready instinct for profitable publicity, offered magnificent
encouragement to the new art. Large money prizes were won by gallant
deeds that have made history. The _Daily Mail_, of London, offered a
prize of a thousand pounds for the first flight across the English
Channel. Hub