Page:My Airships.djvu/308

 the open spaces so as to guide-rope as much as possible. When I came to trees I jumped over them. So, navigating through the cool air of the delicious dawn, I reached the Porte Dauphine and the beginning of the broad Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, which leads directly to the Arc de Triomphe. This carriage promenade of Tout-Paris was empty. "I will guide-rope up the avenue of the Bois," I said to myself gleefully. What this means you will perceive when I recall that my guide-rope's length is barely 40 metres (132 feet), and that one guide-ropes best with at least 20 metres (66 feet) of it trailing along the ground. Thus at times I went lower than the roofs of the houses on each side. I call this practical air-ship navigation because: (a) It leaves the aerial navigator free to steer his course without pitching and without care or effort to maintain his steady altitude. (b) It can be done with absolute safety from falling, not only to the navigator, but also to the air-ship—a consideration not without its merit when the cost, both of repairs and hydrogen gas, is taken into count; and (c) When the wind is against one—as it was