Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/25

 CHAPTER II.

ATTEMPTS IN ANCIENT TIMES TO FLY IN THE AIR.

contemplating the sudden conquest of the aerial kingdom, as accomplished and proclaimed at the end of the last century, it is at once curious and instructive to cast a glance backward, and to examine, by the glimmering of ancient traditions, the attempts which have been made or imagined by man to enfranchise himself from the attraction of the earth.

The greater number of the arts and sciences can be traced along a chronological ladder of great length: some, indeed, "lose themselves in the night of time." The accomplishment of raising oneself in the air, however, had no actual professors in antiquity, and the discovery of Montgolfier seems to have come into the world, so to speak, spontaneously. By this it is to be understood that, unlike Copernicus and Columbus, Montgolfier could not read in history of any similar discovery, containing the germ of his own feat. At least, we have no proof that the ancient nations practised the art of aerial navigation to any extent whatever. The attempts which we are about to cite do not strictly belong to the history of aerostatics.

Classic mythology tells us of Dædalus, who, escaping with his son Icarus from the anger of Minos, in the Isle of Crete, saved himself from the immediate evil by the aid of wings, which he made for himself and his son, and by means of which they were enabled to fly in the air. The wings, it appears, were soldered with wax, and Icarus, flying too