English), the mercury suffering no sensible oscillation. From this I deduce a height of 1,524 fathoms (3,100 yards), or thereabouts, till I can be more exact in my calculation. In a few minutes more, my fingers were benumbed by the cold, so that I could not hold my pen. I was now stationary as to the rising and falling, and moved only in an horizontal direction. I rose up in the middle of the car to contemplate the scene around me. At my setting out the sun was set on the valleys; he soon rose for me alone, who was the only luminous body in the horizon, and all the rest of nature in shade; he, however, presently disappeared, and I had the pleasure of seeing him set twice in the same day. I beheld, for a few seconds, the circumambient air and the vapors rising from the valleys and rivers. The clouds seemed to rise from the earth and collect one upon the other, still preserving their usual form, only their color was gray and monotonous from the want of light in the atmosphere. The moon alone enlightened them, and showed me that I was tacking about twice; and I observed certain currents that brought me back again. I had several sensible deviations; and observed, with surprise, the effects of the wind, and saw the streamers of my banners point upwards. This phenomenon was not the effect of the ascent or descent, for then I moved horizontally. At that instant I conceived, perhaps a little too hastily, the idea of being able to steer one’s course. In the midst of my transport I felt a violent pain in my right ear and jaw, which I ascribed to the dilatation of the air, in the cellular construction of those organs, as much as to the cold of the external air. I was in a waistcoat and bareheaded. I immediately put on a woolen cap, yet the pain did not go off but as I gradually descended. For seven or eight minutes I had ceased to ascend; the condensation of the internal inflammable air rather made me descend. I now recollected my promise to return in half an hour, and, pulling the string of the valve, I came down. The globe was now so much emptied, that it appeared only a half globe. I perceived a fine ploughed field near the wood of Tour du Lay, and hastened my descent. When I was between twenty or thirty fathoms from the earth I threw out hastily two or three pounds of ballast, and became for a moment stationary, till I descended gently in the field, about a league from the place whence I set out. The frequent deviations and turnings about make me imagine that the voyage was near three leagues, and I was gone about thirty-three minutes. Such is the certainty of the combinations of our aërostatic machine, that I might have kept in the air at least for twenty-four hours longer.”