Lunardi continued his voyage over the town into the country beyond. His balloon apparently attained a considerable height, for he found that the condensed moisture round the neck had frozen, and the gas, which to begin with had only two-thirds filled the balloon, presently expanded so much that he was obliged to untie the mouth to relieve the strain. He had taken up with him as companions a dog and a cat. The cat was very ill at ease in the cold of the upper regions, and he resolved to put her out; so, coming down to the ground, he handed her to a country woman standing in a field. Throwing out ballast, he then rose again and continued his voyage for some distance, eventually descending in a meadow near Ware. Some labourers were at work on the spot, but they at first refused to come near him, and a young woman was the first whom he could induce to help him out of his car. A stone with a long inscription, set up in a meadow in the parish of Standon, near Ware, marks to this day the place where the first of all English balloons touched ground. The following year witnessed a yet bolder enterprise. Blanchard, a French aeronaut, and Dr. Jeffries, an American, determined on an attempt to cross the Channel. On a winter’s day, early in 1785, they had their balloon inflated with hydrogen at Dover and boldly cast off to sea. The cold air appeared to chill the gas more than they had foreseen, and long before they were across the Channel their balloon began settling down upon the water. They threw out all their ballast, then a number of books they were carrying, then their anchor, extra ropes, and other gear. Still it seemed very doubtful whether they would reach the French coast, and as a last resort they began even to throw away their clothes to lighten the balloon. Fortunately at this moment the balloon shot up into the air again, and eventually brought them down in safety near the forest of Guiennes.