"Before launching out into the construction of air-ships I took pains to make myself familiar with the handling of spherical balloons. I did not hasten, but took plenty of time. In all, I made something like thirty ascensions; at first as a passenger, then as my own captain, and at last alone. Some of these spherical balloons I rented, others I had constructed for me. Of such I have owned at least six or eight. And I do not believe that without such previous study and experience a man is capable of succeeding with an elongated balloon, whose handling is so much more delicate. Before attempting to direct an air-ship, it is necessary to have learned in an ordinary balloon the conditions of the atmospheric medium; to have become acquainted with the caprices of the wind, now caressing and now brutal, and to have gone thoroughly into the difficulties of the ballast problem, from the triple point of view of starting, of equilibrium in the air, and of landing at the end of the trip. To go up in an ordinary balloon, at least a dozen times, seems to me an indispensable preliminary for acquiring an exact notion of the requisites for the construction and handling of an elongated balloon, furnished with its motor and propeller." [Illustration: M. Santos-Dumont at Nineteen.] [Illustration: M. Santos-Dumont's First Balloon (Spherical).] His first ascent in a balloon was made in 1897, when he was 24 years old, as a passenger with M. Machuron, who had then just returned from the Arctic regions, where he had helped to start Andrée on his ill-fated voyage in search of the North Pole. He found the sensations delightful, being so pleased with the experience that he subsequently secured a small balloon of his own, in which he made several ascents. He also climbed the Alps in order to learn more of the condition of the air at high altitudes.