Among the unkilled American aeronauts undoubtedly the best known for professional skill and experience is Samuel A. King. He seems to have been a predestined air-sailor, for he made his first ascension (Philadelphia, 1851) in his twenty-third year, and during more than two hundred subsequent voyages, many of them extending over hundreds of miles, and some adding darkness and proximity to large bodies of water to the ordinary dangers, he has shown an intuitive knowledge of the construction and management of the balloon and an appreciation of aerial forces which, while they have not robbed his experiences of thrilling incidents, have kept them singularly free from disastrous consequences. One of the most memorable of these excursions was made from Plymouth, New Hampshire, September 26, 1872, on which occasion Mr. King was accompanied by his friend and frequent fellow-voyager, Luther L. Holden, of the _Boston Journal_. The balloon used only held twenty thousand cubic feet of gas, but was inflated with hydrogen. It was liberated at 4.18 P.M., and immediately manifested a determination to accompany some dense black clouds which were hurrying in a north-easterly direction toward the heart of the mountain-region on the verge of which Plymouth lies. Over Mount Washington and across the Androscoggin Valley it flew at the rate of fifty miles an hour. At six o'clock Lake Umbagog was floating beneath our adventurers, and before they realized their danger--so deceptive are time and space when reckoned from balloons--night surprised them in the great Maine wilderness. The alternative was between a descent in a trackless forest a hundred miles from human habitation, with scant provisions and no firearms or fishing-tackle, and an all-night voyage, trusting to luck and their ballast for getting beyond the wilderness. They had taken chances together before, and they went on now. If they failed to get out of the woods, they could tear up the balloon, and, encasing the wicker-basket with the waterproof material, float down some favoring stream. On and on for hours in an unknown direction, over an unknown region, winged by the wind and ally of the storm, they went, until, in the dismal watches of the early morning, to darkness, uncertainty and the intensity of isolation a new horror was added. The murmur of plashing forest-streams, which had hitherto been the only sound greeting them from the nether gloom, now gave place to the measured roll of the surf, and this, in turn, to complete silence. They were drifting out to sea, and were already far beyond the shore! The valve was opened at once, and as the balloon slowly settled into a dense, chilly fog the occupants of the basket momentarily expected a plunge-bath. The drag-rope, however, behaved with distinguished consideration, holding them a few feet above the waves, through which it whisked at a terrific rate. The weary and anxious watchers were thus kept in suspense for nearly half an hour,