el and exceedingly simple device bore witness to the
ingenuity of the inventor. He had noticed in his days of free
ballooning that to rise the aeronaut had to throw out sand-ballast;
to descend he had to open the valves and let out gas. As his supply
of both gas and sand was limited it was clear that the time of his
flight was necessarily curtailed every time he ascended or
descended. Santos-Dumont thought to husband his supplies of lifting
force and of ballast, and make the motor raise and lower the ship.
It was obvious that the craft would go whichever way the bow might
be pointed, whether up or down. But how to shift the bow? The
solution seems so simple that one wonders it ever perplexed
aviators. From the peak of the bow and stern of his craft
Santos-Dumont hung long ropes caught in the centre by lighter ropes
by which they could be dragged into the car. In the car was carried
a heavy bag of sand, which so long as it was there held the ship in
a horizontal plane. Was it needful to depress the bow? Then the bow
rope was hauled in, the bag attached, and swung out to a position
where it would pull the forward tip of the delicately adjusted gas
bag toward the earth. If only a gentle inclination was desired the
bag was not allowed to hang directly under the bow, but was held at
a point somewhere between the car and the bow so that the pull would
be diagonal and the great cylinder would be diverted but little from
the horizontal. If it were desired to ascend, a like manipulation of
the ballast on the stern rope would depress the stern and point the
bow upwards. For slight changes in direction it was not necessary
even to attach the sand bag. Merely drawing the rope into the car
and thus changing the line of its "pull" was sufficient.

The Deutsch prize which stimulated Santos-Dumont to his greatest
achievements with dirigibles was a purse of twenty thousand dollars,
offered by Mr. Henry Deutsch, a wealthy patron of the art of
aviation. Not himself an aviator, M. Deutsch greatly aided the
progress of the air's conquest. Convinced that the true solution of
the problem lay in development of the gasoline engine, he expended
large sums in developing and perfecting it. When he believed it was
sufficiently developed to solve the problem of directing the flight
of balloons he offered his prize for the circuit of the Eiffel
Tower. The conditions of the contest were not easy. The competitor
had to sail from the Aero Club at St. C