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Updated: June 22, 2025
He hastens to send it, and also to add a copy of the note which accompanied it. The cardinal also takes this occasion to assure Monsieur Garnerin of his highest esteem."
M. Garnerin ascended, accompanied by General Suolf; and the two travelers were transported across the Gulf of Friedland in three-quarters of an hour, and descended at Krasnoe-selo, twenty-five versts from St. Petersburg.
Garnerin, in the year 1802, conceived the bold design of letting himself fall from a height of 1,200 feet, and he accomplished the exploit before the Parisians. When he had reached the height he had fixed beforehand, he cut the rope which connected the parachute with the balloon. At first the fall was terribly rapid; but as soon as the parachute spread out the rapidity was considerably diminished.
He made a dreadful lurch in the air, that forced a sudden cry of fear from the whole multitude, and made a number of women faint. Meanwhile Citizen Garnerin descended into the plain of Monceau; he mounted his horse upon the spot, and rode back to the park, attended by an immense multitude, who gave vent to their admiration for the skill and talent of the young aeronaut.
Every descent, in fact, is determined by the side on which the incline is greatest." That these are not mere theoretical opinions or conjectures is certain from the fact that Mademoiselle Garnerin once wagered to guide herself with a parachute from the point of separation from her balloon to a place determined and very remote.
More than fifteen days passed before he received the expected notice; and he had probably given up his balloon as lost, when there came the following letter from the nuncio of his Holiness: "Cardinal Caprara is charged by his Excellency Cardinal Gonsalvi, Secretary of State of His Holiness, to remit to M. Garnerin a copy of a letter dated Dec. 18.
Garnerin, of whom mention has already been made, accomplished in the summer of 1802 two aerial voyages marked by extreme velocity in the rate of travel. The first of these is also remarkable as having been the first to fairly cross the heart of London. Captain Snowdon, R.N., accompanied the aeronaut.
This same balloon was again used at the ascension which Madame Garnerin made at Moscow with Madame Toucheninolf, in the midst of a frightful storm, and amid flashes of lightning which killed three men within three hundred paces of the balloon, at the very instant of the ascension. These ladies descended without accident twenty-one versts from Moscow.
The wind carried it over Marylebone and Somerstown; it almost grazed some of the houses of Saint Pancras in passing, and finally came to the ground in a field with such violence that poor Garnerin was thrown on his face and severely cut and bruised. No wonder that we are told he received a terrible shock. He trembled violently, and blood flowed from his nose and ears.
He hastens to send it, and also to add a copy of the note which accompanied it. The cardinal also takes this occasion to assure Monsieur Garnerin of his highest esteem."
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