I have considered the subject carefully, and discussed it with many people; the result of such reflection and conversation is a conviction that the prevalent popular estimate of the dangers of Commander Cheyne’s project extravagantly exaggerates them on almost all contingencies. I do not affirm that there is no risk, or that the attempt should be made with only our present practical knowledge of the subject, but I do venture to maintain that, after making proper preliminary practical investigations at home, a judiciously conducted aerostatic dash for the Pole will be far less dangerous than the African explorations of Livingstone, Stanley, and others that have been accomplished and are proposed. And further, that a long balloon journey starting in summer-time from Smith’s Sound, or other suitable Arctic station, would be less dangerous than a corresponding one started from London; that it would involve less risk than was incurred by Messrs. Holland, Mason, and Green, when they traveled from Vauxhall Gardens to Nassau. The three principal dangers attending such a balloon journey are: 1st. The variability of the wind. 2d. The risk of being blown out about the open ocean beyond the reach of land. 3d. The utter helplessness of the aeronaut during all the hours of darkness. I will consider these seriatim in reference to Arctic ballooning _versus_ Vauxhall or Crystal Palace ballooning. As regards the first danger, Vauxhall and Sydenham are in a position of special disadvantage, and all the ideas we Englishmen may derive from our home ballooning experience must tend to exaggerate our common estimate of this danger, inasmuch as we are in the midst of the region of variable winds, and have a notoriously uncertain climate, due to this local exaggeration of the variability of atmospheric movements. If instead of lying between the latitudes of 50° and 60°, where the N.E. Polar winds just come in collision with the S.W. tropical currents, and thereby effect our national atmospheric stir-about, we were located between 10° and 30° (where the Canary Islands are, for example), our notions on the subject of balloon traveling would be curiously different. The steadily blowing trade-wind would long ere this have led us to establish balloon mails to Central and South America, and balloon passenger expresses for the benefit of fast-going people or luxurious victims of sea-sickness. To cross the Atlantic—three thousand miles—in forty-eight hours, would be attended with no other difficulty than the cost of the gas, and that of the return carriage of the empty balloon.