Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/176

160 great altitude, the gas had expanded, and the rope which surrounded it, saturated with water, and frozen with the intense cold, had yielded to the pressure, in jerks which caused the report and the shock.

"From time to time," continues Mason, "vast masses of clouds covered the lower regions of the atmosphere, and spread a thick, whitish veil over the earth, intercepting our view, and leaving us for some time uncertain if this was not a continuation of the same plains covered with snow which we had already noticed. From these masses of vapour, there seemed more than once during the night to come a sound as of a great fall of water, or the contending waves of the sea; and it required all the force of our reason, joined to our knowledge—such as it was—of the direction of our route, to repress the idea that we were approaching the sea, and that, driven by the wind, we had, been carried along the coasts of the North Sea or the Baltic. As the day advanced these apprehensions disappeared. In place of the unbroken surface of the sea, we gradually made out the varied features of a cultivated country, in the midst of which flowed a majestic river, which lost itself, at both extremities, in the mist that still lay on the horizon."

This river was the Rhine, and as the neighbourhood seemed suitable for a descent, and as the travellers did not wish to be carried too far into the heart of Europe, they allowed a portion of the gas to escape, came gradually down, and dropped their anchor.

It was then half-past seven in the morning. It was only then that the inhabitants, who had hitherto held themselves aloof, watching the movements of the strangers from under the brushwood, began to assemble from all sides. A few words in German spoken from the balloon dissipated their