UP IN A BALLOON.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIV, Issue XIII, 30 March 1895, Page 296

UP IN A BALLOON.

Cassell' t Family Magazine contains an interesting descriptive article of a woman's voyage en air. Her conveyance was the Aidershot war balloon. ‘ Thor.’ To most people a balloon is a balloon, and nothing more ; but it appears that there is a difference : —

* In every respect the war balloon is vastly superior to those of a kind usually associated with pleasure-trips—-sometimes of fatal termination. Withan “envelope,” not composed of silk or cambric, but wrought, by secret process of manufacture, to marvellous impermeability and strength, from so frail a thing as gold-beaters’ skin ; filled with hydrogen-gas, which, while far more portable than the coal-gas of civil balloons, is also of greater lifting power ; the net and cords all thoroughly trustworthy and of special manufacture, the war balloon inspires both trust and admiration in all who know her. . . The morning of my ascent was a pleasant and favourable one—fine, rather still ; while the atmosphere was fairly clear. An Engineer officer, lecturing on ballooning, remarked that everybody says, on a first ascent, that the country looks “like a map.” I maybe “contrary.” but certainly it would be at once a very ideal, and also an extremely realistic map that was capable of giving a like presentiment If one should ask me, “What then, is it like ?” I answer that this vast military settlement with its far-reaching War Department reservation of drill and manoeuvre ground, then, becomes to the balloonist’s eye a fine model in miniature (such as that of the battle of Waterloo in the United Service Institute) of a phase of army life at once characteristic and unique. Such a bird’s-eye view I will not call lovely, though the neighbourhood is singularly beautiful. Thither, away to the south-west, stretches Caesar's Camp, with Hungry Hill. How dwarfed, how flat I The long valley is but a patch —yellow and barren. The gardens of the Officers’ Club House have shrunk curiously. The little tin soldiers and the toy cavalcade seem to crawl. The canal winds on with diminished breadth in the direction of Fleet, whose pond would make a fair-sized ball-room mirror. Below me lie the Liliputian boats about the landing-stage. Eight miles to the north-east i« Bisley Vo unteer Camp Yet a little nearer is Sandhurst. Then may I look down ? Yes. but with caution Do I feel ill ? Wretched ? Nay, but a little queer. Does the car sway intolerably, and does an unutterable sinking come upon me as the earth, and things earthly, seem to fall suddenly from beneath me ? No, again ; for they are winding out slowly and easily my thousand feet. ... As we went up we paused for a second, and my inarticulate thought was :

“Oh, what will it be to go down—to rink!" In the event I found it very bearable. The anticipation had been the worst part of this, as of many other troubles. I walked home through the camp with slightly diminished colour—and that was all!’