University of Virginia Library

654. BALLOONS, Peril of.—

Though
navigation by water is attended with frequent
accidents, and in its infancy must have been
attended with more, yet these are now so
familiar that we think little of them, while that
which has signalized the two first martyrs to
the aëronautical art will probably deter very
many from the experiments they would have
been disposed to make.—
To Charles Thomson. Washington ed. i, 354.
(P. 1785)