their
peril, and were in constant danger of being captured and hung or
murdered by either party. Some of these bright and daring men did lose
their lives there, and no one takes the trouble to sing a requiem over
them in verse or prose, but others, in spite of all the opposition, got
to and remained at the front, and succeeded in sending out accurate news
to their papers.

[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPHER AT WORK.]

It was one of these successful newspaper men, and a Japanese at that,
who originated the idea of using a balloon to help him get to the front,
as well as to keep him safely out of the reach of both contestants. He
procured a balloon, several, in fact--and had a peculiar metal
frame-work constructed, which held him firmly in place under the
balloon, and left his arms free, so that he could use them to write, or
to work a huge camera that was also attached and supported by the same
iron frame. By means of straps over his shoulders and about his body he
could keep himself moderately firm in his position, and his camera
reasonably stationary, except, of course, for the movements of the
balloon itself, which he could not regulate.

Several times this correspondent was sent up in his balloon, and held by
an assistant with the help of a long rope far above houses, and even
hills, so that he could take photographs on his huge lens of the general
view of a battle, while he himself was either too far away or too
unimportant at the moment to the combatants to tempt them to fire upon
him. In this way he succeeded in securing some astonishing views. They
were, of course, very far removed from the scene of action, too far to
give much of the small details, but they presented a bird's-eye view of
the whole battle, which proved of great interest. Occasionally, because
of a sudden movement of the balloon, he "took" the sky or a distant
landscape instead of the raging battle beneath him, but these little
mistakes were insignificant when on being hauled down, he discovered two
or three views that showed charges of cavalry here, repulses of infantry
there, and smoke and strife, bursting shells and burning houses,
everywhere.

Sometimes the photographer would go up in his camera-balloon without
being held to the earth by a rope, and then he might drift with the wind
over the battle-field, or quietly drift away without getting a chance to
"shoot." As a rule, however, calculations were pretty well made before
the rope was dropped