tion record to 8 hours 12 minutes, and the distance for a single
flight to 365 miles, while a speed of over 65 miles an hour had been
achieved, when Jacques de Lesseps, son of the famous engineer of Suez
Canal and Panama fame, crossed from France to England on a Bleriot
monoplane. By this time flying had dropped so far from the marvellous
that this second conquest of the Channel aroused but slight public
interest in comparison with Bleriot's feat.

The total weight of Bleriot's machine in Cross Channel trim was 660
lbs., including the pilot and sufficient petrol for a three hours' run;
at a speed of 37 miles an hour, it was capable of carrying about 5
lbs. per square foot of lifting surface. It was the three-cylinder 25
horse-power Anzani motor which drove the machine for the flight. Shortly
after the flight had been accomplished, it was announced that the
Bleriot firm would construct similar machines for sale at L400 apiece--a
good commentary on the prices of those days.

On June the 2nd, 1910, the third Channel crossing was made by C. S.
Rolls, who flew from Dover, got himself officially observed over French
soil at Barraques, and then flew back without landing. He was the first
to cross from the British side of the Channel and also was the first
aviator who made the double journey. By that time, however, distance
flights had so far increased as to reduce the value of the feat, and
thenceforth the Channel crossing was no exceptional matter. The honour,
second only to that of the Wright Brothers, remains with Bleriot.

XVI. LONDON TO MANCHESTER

The last of the great contests to arouse public enthusiasm was the
London to Manchester Flight of 1910. As far back as 1906, the Daily
Mail had offered a prize of L10,000 to the first aviator who should
accomplish this journey, and, for a long time, the offer was regarded as
a perfectly safe one for any person or paper to make--it brought forth
far more ridicule than belief. Punch offered a similar sum to the first
man who should swim the Atlantic and also for the first flight to Mars
and back within a week, but in the spring of 1910 Claude Grahame White
and Paulhan, the famous French pilot, entered for the 183 mile run on
which the prize depended. Both these competitors flew the Farman biplane
with the 50 horse-power Gnome motor as propulsive power. Grahame White
surveyed the ground along the route, and the L. & N. W. Railway Company,
at his request, whitewashed the s