forehead with a little touch of pride, when at the end of a month--one
month!--I have said to myself, `it is done!'"

The "Giant" was composed of yellowish white silk, of which there were
used 22,000 yards at about 5 shillings 4 pence a yard, so that the cost
of the silk alone was 5,866 pounds. This was cut into 118 gores, which
were entirely hand-sewed with a double seam, and some idea of the
vastness of the work may be gathered from the fact that 200 women were
employed during a month in the sewing of the gores. For the sake of
greater strength the silk was doubled. In other words, there were _two_
balloons of the same size, one within the other.

Directly beneath, and attached to its lower orifice, there was a small
balloon called a _compensator_, the object of which was to receive and
retain for use the surplus gas. When a balloon rises to the higher
regions of the atmosphere, the gas within it expands, so that a large
quantity of it is allowed to rush out at the open mouth beneath, or at
the safety-valve above. Were this not the case, the balloon would
certainly burst. This loss of gas, however, is undesirable, because
when the balloon descends the gas contracts, and the loss is then felt
to be a great one. By collecting the over-flow of gas in the
_compensator_, this disadvantage is obviated.

The car, which was made chiefly of wicker-work, was actually a small
cottage of two storeys (a ground-floor and platform or upper deck), with
door and windows. Its height was about eight, and its length thirteen
feet. The ground-floor contained a cruciform passage and six divisions.
At one extremity was a captain's cabin with a bed in it, and underneath
a compartment for luggage. At the other was the passengers' cabin, with
three beds, one above the other. The four other divisions or rooms were
a provision store, a lavatory, a place for conducting photographic
operations, and a room for a small lithographic press, with which it was
intended to print an account of the voyage, to be scattered about the
localities over which they should pass!

In reference to this last, Monsieur Nadar writes:--

"An English company a month ago (our neighbours are marvellous in not
losing time), appreciating the bustle which the sight of a balloon
always excites in every inhabited place, and judging rightly that papers
would never be better received and more greedily read than those thrown
overboard by us, despatched a messenger t