ned to use it. A few months later, when it had been
repaired, one Donaldson and two other adventurers, attempting a voyage
with this ill-formed monster, ascended from New York, and were
fortunate in coming down safely, though not without peril, somewhere in
Connecticut.

Failing in his grand endeavour, Wise continued to follow the career of a
professional aeronaut for some years longer, of which he has left a full
record, terminating with the spring of 1848. His ascents were always
marked by carefulness of detail, and a coolness and courage in trying
circumstances that secured him uniform success and universal regard. He
was, moreover, always a close and intelligent observer, and many of his
memoranda are of scientific value.

His description of an encounter with a storm-cloud in the June of 1843
has an interest of its own, and may not be considered overdrawn. It was
an ascent from Carlisle, Pa., to celebrate the anniversary of Bunker's
Hill, and Wise was anxious to gratify the large concourse of people
assembled, and thus was tempted, soon after leaving the ground, to dive
up into a huge black cloud of peculiarly forbidding aspect. This cloud
appeared to remain stationary while he swept beneath it, and, having
reached its central position, he observed that its under surface was
concave towards the earth, and at that moment he became swept upwards in
a vortex that set his balloon spinning and swinging violently, while he
himself was afflicted with violent nausea and a feeling of suffocation.
The cold experienced now became intense, and the cordage became glazed
with ice, yet this had no effect in checking the upward whirling of the
balloon. Sunshine was beyond the upper limits of the cloud; but this was
no sooner reached than the balloon, escaping from the uprush, plunged
down several hundred feet, only to be whirled up again, and this
reciprocal motion was repeated eight or ten times during an interval of
twenty minutes, in all of which time no expenditure of gas or discharge
of ballast enabled the aeronaut to regain any control over his vessel.

Statements concerning a thunderstorm witnessed at short range by Wise
will compare with other accounts. The thunder "rattled" without any
reverberations, and when the storm was passing, and some dense clouds
moving in the upper currents, the "surface of the lower stratum swelled
up suddenly like a boiling cauldron, which was immediately followed by
the most brilliant ebullit