ather of Waters, the
Mississippi, whose double-decked steam-boats seemed no bigger than
canoes. Then the "Albatross" flew over Iowa after having sighted Iowa
City about eleven o'clock in the morning.

A few chains of hills, "bluffs" as they are called, curved across the
face of the country trending from the south to the northwest, whose
moderate height necessitated no rise in the course of the aeronef.
Soon the bluffs gave place to the large plains of western Iowa and
Nebraska--immense prairies extending all the way to the foot of the
Rocky Mountains. Here and there were many rios, affluents or minor
affluents of the Missouri. On their banks were towns and villages,
growing more scattered as the "Albatross" sped farther west.

Nothing particular happened during this day. Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans were left entirely to themselves. They hardly noticed Frycollin
sprawling at full length in the bow, keeping his eyes shut so that he
could see nothing. And they were not attacked by vertigo, as might
have been expected. There was no guiding mark, and there was nothing
to cause the vertigo, as there would have been on the top of a lofty
building. The abyss has no attractive power when it is gazed at from
the car of a balloon or deck of an aeronef. It is not an abyss that
opens beneath the aeronaut, but an horizon that rises round him on
all sides like a cup.

In a couple of hours the "Albatross" was over Omaha, on the Nebraskan
frontier--Omaha City, the real head of the Pacific Railway, that
long line of rails, four thousand five hundred miles in length,
stretching from New York to San Francisco. For a moment they could
see the yellow waters of the Missouri, then the town, with its houses
of wood and brick in the center of a rich basin, like a buckle in the
iron belt which clasps North America round the waist. Doubtless,
also, as the passengers in the aeronef could observe all these
details, the inhabitants of Omaha noticed the strange machine. Their
astonishment at seeing it gliding overhead could be no greater than
that of the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute at
finding themselves on board.

Anyhow, the journals of the Union would be certain to notice the
fact. It would be the explanation of the astonishing phenomenon which
the whole world had been wondering over for some time.

In an hour the "Albatross" had left Omaha and crossed the Platte
River, whose valley is followed by the Pacific Railway in it