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According to this narrative, there was no conflagration of the gas in the middle of the atmosphere, nor is it stated precisely whether the grating of the Montgolfiere was lighted. Maisonfort ran to the spot when the travellers fell, found them covered with the cloth of the balloon, and occupying the same positions which they had taken up on departing.
In continuing our upward progress, I perceived that an upper current of air made the Montgolfiere bend, but on increasing the heat, we rose above the current. The size of objects on the earth now began perceptibly to diminish, which gave us an idea of the distance at which we were from them.
Olivari perished at Orleans on the 25th of November, 1802. He had ascended in a Montgolfiere made of paper, strengthened only by some bands of cloth. His car, made of osiers, and loaded with combustible matter, was suspended below the grating; and when at a great elevation it became the prey of the flames.
It is difficult to understand what was his precise object in making this combination, for his ideas seem to have been confused upon the subject. It is probable that, by the addition of a Montgolfiere, he wished to free himself from the necessity of having to throw over ballast when he wished to ascend and to let off this gas when he wished to descend.
It had traversed upwards of a league of its journey, and had reached the height of 700 feet above sea level, when a wind from the west drove it back toward the shore, after having been twenty-seven minutes in the air. "At this moment the crowd beneath perceived that the voyagers were showing signs of alarm. They seemed suddenly to lower the grating of the Montgolfiere. But it was too late.
Bittorff made a great many successful ascents. He never used any machine but the Montgolfiere. At Manheim, on the 17th of July, the day of his death his balloon, which was of paper, sixteen metres in diameter, and twenty in height, took fire in the air, and the aeronaut was thrown down upon the town. His fall was mortal.
The fire of the Montgolfiere might, he probably supposed, be so regulated as to enable him to rise or fall at will. This mixed system has been justly blamed. It was simply "putting fire beside powder," said Professor Charles to Roziers; but the latter would not listen, and depended for everything on his own intrepidity and scientific skill of which he had already given so many proofs.
The longest course travelled by Montgolfiere balloons, and the highest elevation reached by them, were achieved by Roziers and Proust with the Montgolfiere la Marie Antoinette, at Versailles, on the 23rd of June, 1784. Roziers himself has left us a picturesque narrative of this excursion from Versailles to Compiegne. He says:
"The progress of the Montgolfiere was so sudden that one might almost have believed that it arose all inflated and furnished out of some chasm in the earth The air was calm, the sky without clouds, the sun very strong. Our fuel and instruments were put into the gallery, my companion, M. Louchet, was at his post, and I took mine.
He asked and obtained from government the sum of 40,000 livres, in order to construct his machine. It then became clear what sort of balloon he had contrived. He united in one machine the two modes previously made use of in aerostation. Underneath a balloon filled with hydrogen gas, he suspended a Montgolfiere, or a balloon filled with hot air from a fire.
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