There was of course no particular difficulty involved in the flight across the Channel; but its obvious dangers, together with the suggestion as to the new possibilities of the use of the airship in war time,--the virtual elimination of that all-important barrier of water that had proved so effective against England's foes in the past,--gave to Blériot's flight a popular interest not exceeded by any preceding achievement even of the Wright brothers. We may add that Blériot's feat was presently duplicated by another Frenchman, Count Jacques de Lesseps by name, who crossed the Channel in an aeroplane in May, 1910; and excelled by the Hon. Charles S. Rolls, an Englishman, who on June 2nd, 1910, made a still more remarkable flight, in which he crossed the Channel, starting from the cliffs near Dover, and after circling over French soil without landing, returned to his starting-place. The aeroplanes used by the two Frenchmen were of the monoplane type; that used by Mr. Rolls was a Wright bi-plane. Just at the time when the first successful cross-Channel flight was made, the attention of aviators was focussed on the flights being made near Washington by Mr. Orville Wright in the attempt to fulfill the Government tests which had been so tragically interrupted the year before. On July 27th, 1909, Mr. Wright successfully met the conditions of the endurance test, by flying more than an hour carrying as a passenger Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm. Three days later a more spectacular flight, to a distance of five miles across country and return, over tree-tops, hills, and valleys, with a passenger (Lieutenant Foulois), was accomplished without mishap. This was in many respects the most important flight, as suggesting the possible practical utility of the aeroplane, that had hitherto been made. Later in the same year Mr. Orville Wright went abroad with his aeroplane and made a large number of flights at Berlin, demonstrating to the German people the points of superiority of the aeroplane as against the gigantic dirigible balloons to which that nation had heretofore paid chief attention. Mr. Wilbur Wright meantime remained in America to give flights about New York Harbor during the Hudson-Fulton Centenary Celebration. On October 4th (1909), he made a sensational flight up the Hudson from Governor's Island, circling about above the warships anchored in the river in the neighborhood of Grant's Tomb, and returning to land at his starting-point. What would probably have been a still more spectacular flight was prevented by an accident to Mr. Wright's motor just as he was about to start on the afternoon of the same day.