of another world!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1. _Exeter Hall Lectures--Scientific Experiments in Balloons_, by
James Glaisher, Esquire, F.R.S.--Published by James Nisbet and Company,
London.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

ACCOUNT OF NADAR'S BALLOON, "LE GEANT." FIRST ASCENT.

As the "Giant" is the largest balloon that has yet been made, and as its
experiences on the occasions of its first and second ascents were not
only peculiar but terrible, we shall give an account of it in detail--
commencing with its construction, and ending with the thrilling
termination of its brief but wild career.

Monsieur Nadar, a photographer of Paris, was the enthusiastic and
persevering aeronaut who called it into being, and encountered the
perils of its ascents, from which he did not emerge scatheless, as we
shall see.

Besides being an experimental voyager in cloudland, Monsieur Nadar
started a newspaper named _L'Aeronaute_, in which he gives an account of
the "Giant," and his reasons for constructing it.

These latter were peculiar. He is emphatic in asserting that the huge
balloon was never intended by him to be an "end," but a mere
stepping-stone to an end--which end was the construction of an
_aeromotive_--a machine which was to be driven by means of a screw, and
which he intended should supersede balloons altogether, so that his own
"Giant" was meant to be the last of its race!

In reference to this, Monsieur Nadar tells us that he was deeply
impressed with the belief that the screw would ultimately become our
aerial motor, but that, being ignorant of what it was likely the
experiments of this first aeromotive would cost, he had resolved,
instead of begging for funds to enable him to accomplish his great end,
to procure funds for himself in the following manner:--

"I shall," says he, "make a balloon--the _last balloon_--in proportions
extraordinarily gigantic, twenty times larger than the largest, which
shall realise that which has never been but a dream in the American
journals, which shall attract, in France, England, and America, the
crowd always ready to run to witness the most insignificant ascent. In
order to add further to the interest of the spectacle--which, I declare
beforehand, without fear of being belied, shall be the most beautiful
spectacle which it has ever been given to man to contemplate,--I shall
dispose under this monster balloon a small balloon (_ballo