Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1875 — The Adventures of an Inexperienced Aeronaut. [ARTICLE]

The Adventures of an Inexperienced Aeronaut.

Mr. George S. Peduzzi, the adventurous Brooklyn druggist who, withont {irevious experience, ascended in a baloon of his own make from the Capitoline grounds last week, cut himself loose in the basket and fell to the ground near Oyster Bay, has returned to Brooklyn and is confined to his bed with a severe bruise on Jus head and a wrenched knee. He will not be able to attend to business for two weeks more. He described his trip yesterday as follows: “ I went up nicely and had just a little trouble in getting off. The first mishap was a leak in a bag of sand, and I lost a deal of ballast before I knew it. I looked at my barometer, and I was 7,350 feet high and right over Canarsie Bay. Well, I did not want to get into an upper current and he swept out to sea, so I opened the valve and lowered myself. Then l was swept down low, and I thought I would land. I threw out my grapplinghook and called to a farmer to catch hold of the cable and throw it around a tree. He looked up at me and said: “To the deuce with your old balloonand I went a-bumping through the trees, and the hook got fastened. I had hold of the valve-rope all the time, and the gas was escaping in a great volume. The cable parted, and I bumped into a fence. I was thrown on my knees, and my head struck against the basket. I bounced over and the balleon followed a rise in the ground, crashing through the trees, making a terrible noise. As soon as I got to high ground I saw the sound before me, and I knew I would come down in the water- if I didn’t land somehow. So I cut loose eight of the ropes that held, the basket— I had ten in all—and let the gas poor out. As I reached the top of the hill I cut the ninth rope and I swept pretty low. Then I cut the tenth and the basket struck the ground and rolled down the hill to the brook With me in it. I looked out and saw my balloon sailing away like a carrier pigeon—and how sorry I was to see it go. “An old darky and his son came to me and the negro boy was very much frightened. He said: ‘ Fo’ de Lord! I tot it was a big tin pan failin’ down from heaven.’ They took me to a farm house in a wagon and I stayed there a week. - « I traveled fifty three miles in all and felt no change in the temperature. I did the best I could under the circumstances, and mean to try it again.” Mr. Peduzzi believes that bis balloon fell in the sound. — X. Y. Sun.