AN AERONAUT PURSUED BY A STORM.

Press, Volume XLV, Issue 7157, 19 September 1888, Page 6

AN AERONAUT PURSUED BY A STORM.

Mr SimmnM, the aeronaut, whose death itaa since been reported by cable, supplied to the Pail Mail Gazette of August 10th the following interesting particulars of an Kscenxhe made in the balloon Bookwood from the grounds of the Anglo-Danish Exhibition:—" I left the Exhibition »t a 15 p.m.; at 6.20 I was between one thick doud stratum at an altitude of 6000 ft, and mother at an altitude of about 10,000 ft. I had Rome suspicion that there was a current from the west. X looked in. a direction which I conjectured to be east, and from that quarter came swooping oft a great mountain of purple fire. The rumbling I could scarcely distinguish Crom the buzz of London, and I felt assured that as long els the sound was so taint there was a great distance between cue and the storm; but at seven o'clock it •ras seam to mc. I tried then to get on i lateral lerel with it. but to this end I n^ a T c m y Precious store if ballast, and, finding the thunderstorm keeping up * stern chase, I peered below the cloud stratum to see if I had a chance to descend. I found myself in rather too close proximity to a town or village. I have no idea what place it was, batl was bound tpescape it by soaring again: and when I did so, I estimated that the thunderstorm was about sixty miles beefed toe to Ike N.E. Then tl 7J5 I had » •=Sas~We"tt»at~iat»"«ie sure oj»£"£ "Me. and 1 again came down. When 1 ■Uα so I was convinced, that the sound of wwhruß* bsTabcen » znlll-nce or a.

weir. I landed safely at Guildford, and the storm by which I had been so hotly panned did not burst upon the earth until I was on my way back to London."