Lowell to it, and they were
both somewhat alarmed. However, they continued to watch the object
steadily for some time. It drew nearer. It was of triangular shape, and
seemed to be about the size of a pilot-boat mainsail, with chains
attached to the bottom of it. While crossing the land it had appeared to
descend, but, as it went out to sea, it ascended, and continued to
ascend, until it was lost to sight high in the clouds.

Or with such power to ascend, I don't think much myself of the notion
that it was an escaped balloon, partly deflated. Nevertheless, General
Lefroy, correlating with Exclusionism, attempts to give a terrestrial
interpretation to this occurrence. He argues that the thing may have
been a balloon that had escaped from France or England--or the only
aerial thing of terrestrial origin that, even to this date of about
thirty-five years later, has been thought to have crossed the Atlantic
Ocean. He accounts for the triangular form by deflation--"a shapeless
bag, barely able to float." My own acceptance is that great deflation
does not accord with observations upon its power to ascend.

In the _Times_, Oct. 1, 1885, Charles Harding, of the R.M.S., argues
that if it had been a balloon from Europe, surely it would have been
seen and reported by many vessels. Whether he was as good a Briton as
the General or not, he shows awareness of the United States--or that the
thing may have been a partly collapsed balloon that had escaped from the
United States.

General Lefroy wrote to _Nature_ about it (_Nature_, 33-99),
saying--whatever his sensitivenesses may have been--that the columns of
the _Times_ were "hardly suitable" for such a discussion. If, in the
past, there had been more persons like General Lefroy, we'd have better
than the mere fragments of data that in most cases are too broken up
very well to piece together. He took the trouble to write to a friend of
his, W.H. Gosling, of Bermuda--who also was an extraordinary person. He
went to the trouble of interviewing Mrs. Bassett and Mrs. Lowell. Their
description to him was somewhat different:

An object from which nets were suspended--

Deflated balloon, with its network hanging from it--

A super-dragnet?

That something was trawling overhead?

The birds of Baton Rouge.

Mr. Gosling wrote that the item of chains, or suggestion of a basket
that had been attached, had originated with Mr. Bassett, who had not
seen the object. Mr. Gosling mentioned a