653. BALLOONS, Fall from.—[continued].
The arts, instead of advancing,
have lately received a check which will
probably render stationary for awhile, that
branch of them which had promised to elevate
us to the skies. Pilatre de Roziere, who had
first ventured into that region, has fallen a sacrifice
to it. In an attempt to pass from Boulogne
over to England, a change in the wind
having brought him on the coast of France,
some accident happened to his balloon of inflammable
air, which occasioned it to burst,
and that of rarefied air combined with it being
then unequal to the weight, they fell to the
earth from a height, which the first reports
made six thousand feet, but later ones have
reduced to sixteen hundred. Pilatre de Roziere
was dead when a peasant distant one hundred
yards away, ran to him; but Romain, his companion,
lived about ten minutes, though speechless,
and without his senses.—
To Charles Thomson. Washington ed. i, 355.
(P.
1785)
