Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/493

 opening hangs the cord communicating with the valve at top. All seen through this hole is a transparent yellow, where the bright sun shines through the silk.

Our shadow on the clouds, which had been growing gradually smaller, now enlarges again as we fall. Soon it is nearly of full size, and then it becomes dim. The blue sky and the sun above look hazy, and round about we see and feel the cold mist. The shadow has vanished and we are in the white, moist cloud again. Down, down, down, although we feel it not, till the fog thins, becomes a mist, then a haze, and then vanishes, and we see mother earth below us again, and a white instead of a blue sky above.

But where is London? Where are the streets and the great buildings like pill-boxes, the shining river, and the bridges? Gone. All below is a vast patchwork quilt of varying colours and texture, green and yellow predominating, with no two patches of the same size or shape. It is the open country away in the north-west part of Essex, and what we see is a smiling English landscape of fertile fields. That glorious golden yellow is corn, and in those fields where it reddens we can point to the more forward of the crops. The hedges we only see as a join, and not a thick nor clumsy join either. The white streaks with the easy curves are roads and lanes, and the dark, heavily piled velvet is a wood.

We are away from under all clouds, and the sun shines gloriously over everything. Look below and a little forward in the direction of our course. A dark spot flies fast over the bright patchwork, clearer in the yellow and pale green, less distinguishable in the heavy brown and the deep pile of the woods. It keeps exact pace with us, being always a little in front and to the right. It is the balloon's shadow again, now lying on the earth 4,000 feet below.

It is a magnificent map which lies below us; but to the untrained eye all is as flat as in any other map, but the experienced Mr. Spencer can point out hills and high grounds. There is the Great Eastern Railway line. Follow the gravelly streak with the eye, and a little ahead you will find it looks broader. That is a cutting, consequently the ground rises there. Look a little further, and the line seems to end abruptly, beginning again a short distance further on. That is a tunnel, and we know that the rising ground has become a hill, and the space which breaks the line is the summit. Mr. Spencer can even judge pretty accurately, from the curves in the roads, where land rises and falls, and tells us that it is generally safe in these parts to assume that a long strip of uncultivated land marks the side of a hill.

For some time we follow the railway—a beautifully clean-cut line, with here and there a graceful, sweeping curve. By its side winds the river Stort, flowing to join the Lea a few miles behind us. There is also a canal, and both canal and river are mere tiny trickling threads of quicksilver. Away to the left lies a buff-coloured road following the same direction as the railway, the canal, and the river, and all four lie like a loose little bunch of coloured cords. Now we recognise the locality. We have lately passed Harlow, and the two or three little roofs which we are leaving away on the left are Sawbridgeworth. On we go above specks of villages till we pass over Bishop's Stortford—a mere little group of match boxes.