The period of flight was an hour and three-quarters, which, for those early days of the art, was a pretty long voyage. By throwing over ballast the voyagers ascended, and by letting off gas they descended at pleasure; and they observed that during an hour, while they were exposed to the sun's rays, the gas was heated up to the temperature of fifty-five degrees of Fahrenheit's scale, which had the effect of sensibly increasing the buoyancy of the balloon. They descended safely on the meadow of Nesle, about twenty-five miles from Paris. But, not content with what he had accomplished, Monsieur Charles made a sudden resolve to have another flight alone. The shades of night were falling, and the sun had already set, when the enthusiastic aeronaut re-entered the car, and, casting off the grapnels, began his solitary night voyage. He was well rewarded. The balloon shot up with such celerity as to reach the height of about two miles in ten minutes, and the sun rose again to him in full orb! From his lofty station he watched it until it set again below the distant horizon. Probably Monsieur Charles was the first man in the world, on whom the sun thus rose and set twice in the same day! In such regions, at that romantic period of night, the aeronaut, as might have been expected, saw strange unearthly sights. Rising vapours concealed the lower world from view, and the moon shed her pale rays on accumulated masses of clouds, casting various hues over their fantastic and changing forms. No wonder that one thus surrounded by objects of awful grandeur and sublimity, left, as it were, more completely alone with God than any of his fellow-mortals, found it impossible to refrain from giving vent to his emotion in tears. Monsieur Charles did not remain long at this elevation. As the cold was excessive, and night advancing, he deemed it prudent to descend; opened the safety-valve, out of which the gas rushed like a misty vapour with a whistling noise, and, after the lapse of a little more than half an hour, alighted in safety near the wood of Tour du Lay, having travelled about nine miles. After this, balloon ascents became frequent. We cannot here give a particular account of each, even if it were desirable to do so, but, before passing to the consideration of the more recent voyages, we shall run over a few facts and incidents that occurred during the early period of aerial navigation. The first lady who went up in a balloon was a Madame Thible. She ascended from Lyons on 28th June 1784 with a Monsieur Fleurant in a fire-balloon. This lady of Lyons mounted to the extraordinary elevation of 13,500 feet--at least so it was estimated. The flagstaff, a pole of fourteen pounds weight, was thrown out and took seven minutes to reach the ground. The thermometer dropped to minus 43 degrees Fahrenheit, and the voyagers felt a ringing sensation in their ears.