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Updated: April 30, 2025
He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said his friend. "We've got no aeronauts." "That's what they're doing anyhow." He looked at his rifle, looked at the struggling crowd, and suddenly turning to the wounded man. "Mind these, mate," he said, handing his carbine and cartridge belt; and in a moment he was running towards the aeropile.
But all that is nothing to the main comfort I feel as a writer. I have got rid of something my mind could not keep to itself and rise as it was meant to into higher regions. I saw the aeronauts the other day emptying from the bags some of the sand that served as ballast. It glistened a moment in the sunlight as a slender shower, and then was lost and seen no more as it scattered itself unnoticed.
"Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder; untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying, 'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil. It's the same with the forests, one whole densely wooded slope of Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters.
It is impossible to dismiss this brief sketch of French balloonists of this period without paying some due tribute to M. Depuis Delcourt, equally well known in the literary and scientific world, and regarded in his own country as a father among aeronauts. Born in 1802, his recollection went back to the time of Montgolfier and Charles, to the feats of Garnerin, and the death of Madame Blanchard.
It would seem that these first aeronauts were of different temperaments; for, after they had reached a height of nearly 3000 feet, and the earth was no longer distinguishable, the Marquis began to think that he had seen enough of the upper regions, would fain have descended, and murmured against his companion, who still kept feeding the fire.
Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of France. I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely to alter yours. I do not know that they ought.
I sent to the dwelling of each, and learned that one had started for Hamburg, another for Vienna and the third, still more fearful, for London. Their hearts had failed them at the moment of undertaking one of those excursions, which, since the ingenious experiments of aeronauts, are deprived of all danger.
This task, however, it proved ill adapted to accomplish: for the disappointed aeronauts had not been gone many minutes from the ground, when the heated air inside, which had for some time been gradually growing cooler, reached at length so low a temperature, that the great sphere began to collapse and settle down upon the embers of the pine faggots still glowing red underneath.
With regard to this motor, engineers and electricians had been approaching more and more to that desideratum which is known as a steam horse in a watch case. Gradually the results of the pile of which Captains Krebs and Renard had kept the secret had been surpassed, and aeronauts had become able to avail themselves of motors whose lightness increased at the same time as their power.
It was but shortly after this, on March 26, 1870, that Charles Green passed away in the 85th year of his age. De Fonvielle's colleague, M. Gaston Tissandier, was on one occasion accidentally brought to visit the resting place of the earliest among aeronauts, whose tragic death occurred while Charles Green himself was yet a boy.
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