In two radically different types of flying-machines man has in the last decade aerially transnavigated great natural and geographic barriers in the form of the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Taurus Mountains, and the North, the Baltic, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean Seas. He has made these flights in all kinds of winds, weather, and atmospheric and polemic conditions. At last he has ascended higher than the lark and flown faster than the eagle and farther than the mightiest bird of prey. Small wonder then that he should consider the flight across the Atlantic by either the aeroplane or the Zeppelin as nothing but a question of time. As a matter of fact, man does not doubt that eventually not only the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Seven Seas, but even the globe itself will be aerially transnavigated. His only concern is how soon these feats will be accomplished facts. Several preparations—but only one real attempt—to fly across the Atlantic had been made up to January, 1919. The first effort to cross the ocean from America to Europe by air was made by Walter Wellman and a crew of five men in the dirigible _America_ on October 15, 1910. The airship measured 228 feet in length and 52 feet in diameter, with a lifting capacity of twelve tons. The envelope carrying the gas weighed approximately two tons. Attached to the bag was a car 156 feet long. The nine thousand pounds of gasoline necessary for the trip were stored under the floor of the car. The _America_ carried three eighty horse-power gasoline engines, one of which was a donkey, the two others being used to drive the propellers. Beneath the car hung a 27-foot lifeboat that was to be used in case they had to abandon the airship. A 330-foot equilibrator, consisting of a long steel cable on which were strung thirty spool-like steel tanks each carrying 75 pounds of gasoline, and forty wooden blocks, trailed from the cabin. The blocks were about twenty inches long. The object of the equilibrator was to eliminate ballast. It was intended that the balloon should sail along at a height of about two hundred feet; if it settled close to the water the wooden blocks and the tanks would float on the water and relieve it of some of its weight. The _America_ was also equipped with sextants, compasses, and other instruments for locating its position, the same as an ocean-liner. Besides Walter Wellman, the explorer and writer, were Melvin Vaniman, chief engineer; F. Murray Vaniman, navigator of airships; J. K. Irwin, wireless operator; Albert L. Loud and John Aubert, assistant engineers.