Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1875 — A Remarkable Balloon Ascent. [ARTICLE]

A Remarkable Balloon Ascent.

Mr. Henry Coxwell has written the following account of an ascent made on July 19: A public ascent having been announced from the Crystal Palace with my balloon, City of York, I was determined, notwithstanding meterological difficulties, to carry it out. At the specified time I rose, with five gentlemen, and we passed about eighty feet above the nortli tower, and in less than two minutes passed into a cloud of a misty, undefinable character, and soon became lost to view. At this moment, 5:33, the barometer stood at 8.8, and temperature was reduced six degrees; but at 5:41, at an altitude two-tenths less, warmth had increased five degrees; and at 5:50, barometer 28.2, the thermometer was still 68. At six o’clock, when we were only 1,000 feet over Sydenham hills, the, mist we had passed through assumed even at this elevation wave-like nebulous contour, such as cumuli have on their convex side in fine weather. The sky overhead, however, lacked the customary Prus-sian-blue aspect, and the sun’s rays were acting on an oppressive, murky atmosphere such as I have rarely seen. There were'really no clouds above, but a few noble-looking gatherings were trying, as it were, to mount up, but could make, apparently, no headway, ow ing to the thick state of the atmosphere. At five minutes past seven the barometer marked 26.1, and the thermometer 57. The fluctuations of pressure and the temperature were most capricious, but the chief feature of this ascent—and it is one which deserves notice —was the place of descent. As compared with some of my most noteworthy journeys in England, it stands out conspicuously, not for height or speed, but for another point, which I will explain. The quickest and longest trips I ever made in our own country were from Woolwich to Tavistock in five hours, a distance of over 200 miles; also from Winchester to Harrow in sixty-six minutes, a run of more than seventy miles. Now on Monday we had been up more than two hours and a half; we twice peeped through the clouds and observed open country, then reascended, and, finally, a little before eight o’clock, we were on the point of landing for good, when, to our astonishment, on breaking through the mist, we found ourselves almost perpendicularly over the north tower of the Crystal Palace, instead of miles and miles away, as we had anticipated. It would have been no difficult matter to come down in the company’s grounds, but as there was a dense mass of people in the neighborhood I was apprehensive of damage to the flower-beds; so we kept up a while, and ultimately fell in with a gentle breeze near the ground, which wafted us half a mile from the palace; hut if we had not had enough ballast and to spare we might have made an unscientific descent upon the housetops instead of a proper aeronautic halt in a grass-field at Dulwich.