Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1874 — Sixteen Thousand Feet Above the Earth. [ARTICLE]

Sixteen Thousand Feet Above the Earth.

Tite following is taken from, an account, published 'in the Baltimore American, of a recent balloon ascension with Prof. Donaldson; Now came the most stirrjni? incident of our trip. From the height of 4,000 feet we steadily ascended, the country dwarfing into a panorama of toys below us. 1 had the aneroid barometer in my hand, and so marked our progress upward. At 6,000 feet our breaths became visible, just as they would be on a frosty morning. We already began to feel cold in the body, but the rays of the sun beat in Upon iis with a fierce inTehsify. The dex of the barometer steadily crept around the dial, marking off the thousands until it reached the fourteenth, then flying back again and starting f r om zero, from whence it progressed once more around.the dial until it halted on the verge of the two-thousandth, telling us that we were only about I'X) feet less than 16,000 feeVabove the earth. At this height the world was an obscurity tons, a vapory haze shut it out from our view, and we could detect nothing of it but the silver lines that marked theTgreat bays and rivers. From a contemplation of the indistinct scene I revert to my own feelings. The air was very .cold, and the sun was very warm. The thermometer stood at eighty-two degrees, the sun was intensely hot, as its rays fell upon us, but tbr all that we might as well have been in an Arctic re- - gion. This is one of the most curious phenomena of life above the clouds. The rarefaction of the air hardly accounts for the chilling cold which penetrates you through and through, while the thermometer and the heat of the solar rays are indicating a high summer temperature. At the height of 15,000 feet I was shivering, while my head seemed to be burning up, and all the blood in my body rushing toward it. I felt a very slight difficulty in breathing, but my ears were stopped Up, and I could hardly hear what Mr. Fox was saying to me when he was standing by my side. We did not remain long at this tremendous elevation. We slipped down through the atmosphere to between 11,000 and 12,000 feet above the earth, and it was there we had our grandest view. We had within our range of vision at the same moment Philadelphia, Baltimore and Harrisburg, the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, and all their upper tributaries, and also Annapolis and most of the smaller towns were included within this extended vision. But the grandest feature of all was when, gazing downwardly, we very plainly per ceived the Atlantic Ocean, There was no mistake about it; the mist had lifted a little and we could plainly see where the waters of tire Delaware Bay mingled with those of the Atlantic. The view at this time was above the possibility of language to picture. The peninsula of land between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays was but a thread of dark green upon the landscape; the Susquehanna River was hardly perceptible, except soy the dark line which we knew to be the great bridge across it; the country below us was but a checker board of "indistinct green and white squares: Baltimore and Philadelphia were only masses of shade upon the map; but the great ocean was a reality, and tc a view of it we constantly turned our eyes, with a feeling that here was some thing everlasting and enduring. The panorama that came within our scope ot vision was probably not less than 200 square miles, but from our height of KuOOO feet it seemed to be dwarfed to a space you might cover with your handkerchief. It seemed to us as if we were looking through the wrong end of our field-glass. When at this height of 16,000 feet, or over three miles above the earth. Prof. Donaldson told us that the balloon had obtained its equilibrium; that it was poised on exact balance, and that as soon as the gas commenced to condense, even in the slightest degree, we wqhld descend rapidly. And it was precisely in this fashion that we did go down.