engine.

But about the beginning of the eighties the Government had become fully
alive to the importance of the subject, and Royal Engineers at Woolwich
grew busy with balloon manufacture and experiment. Soon "the sky around
London became speckled with balloons." The method of making so-called
pure hydrogen by passing steam over red-hot iron was fully tested, and
for a time gained favour. The apparatus, weighing some three tons,
was calculated to be not beyond the carrying powers of three service
waggons, while it was capable of generating enough gas to inflate two
balloons in twenty-four hours, a single inflation holding good, under
favourable circumstances, for a long period. At the Brighton Volunteer
Review of 1880, Captain Templer, with nine men, conducted the operations
of a captive reconnoitring balloon. This was inflated at the Lewes gas
works, and then towed two and a half miles across a river, a railway,
and a line of telegraph wires, after which it was let up to a height of
1,500 feet, whence, it was stated, that so good a view was obtained
that "every man was clearly seen." Be it remembered, however, that
the country was not the South African veldt, and every man was in the
striking English uniform of that date.

Just at this juncture came the Egyptian War, and it will be recalled
that in the beginning of that war balloons were conspicuous by their
absence. The difficulties of reconnaissance were keenly felt and
commented on, and among other statements we find the following in the
war intelligence of the Times:--

"As the want of a balloon equipment has been mentioned in letters from
Egypt, it may be stated that all the War Department balloons remain in
store at the Royal Dockyard at Woolwich, but have been recently examined
and found perfectly serviceable." An assertion had been made to the
effect that the nature of the sand in Egypt would impede the transport
of the heavy material necessary for inflation. At last, however, the
order came for the despatch of the balloon equipment to the front, and
though this arrived long after Tel-el-Kebir, yet it is recorded that the
first ascent in real active service in the British Army took place on
the 25th of March, 1885, at Suakin, and balloons becoming regarded as
an all-important part of the equipment of war, they were sent out in
the Bechuanaland Expedition under Sir Charles Warren, the supply of gas
being shipped to Cape Town in cylinders.

It was at this pe