As the "Giant" is the largest balloon that has yet been made, and as its experiences on the occasions of its first and second ascents were not only peculiar but terrible, we shall give an account of it in detail-- commencing with its construction, and ending with the thrilling termination of its brief but wild career. Monsieur Nadar, a photographer of Paris, was the enthusiastic and persevering aeronaut who called it into being, and encountered the perils of its ascents, from which he did not emerge scatheless, as we shall see. Besides being an experimental voyager in cloudland, Monsieur Nadar started a newspaper named _L'Aeronaute_, in which he gives an account of the "Giant," and his reasons for constructing it. These latter were peculiar. He is emphatic in asserting that the huge balloon was never intended by him to be an "end," but a mere stepping-stone to an end--which end was the construction of an _aeromotive_--a machine which was to be driven by means of a screw, and which he intended should supersede balloons altogether, so that his own "Giant" was meant to be the last of its race! In reference to this, Monsieur Nadar tells us that he was deeply impressed with the belief that the screw would ultimately become our aerial motor, but that, being ignorant of what it was likely the experiments of this first aeromotive would cost, he had resolved, instead of begging for funds to enable him to accomplish his great end, to procure funds for himself in the following manner:-- "I shall," says he, "make a balloon--the _last balloon_--in proportions extraordinarily gigantic, twenty times larger than the largest, which shall realise that which has never been but a dream in the American journals, which shall attract, in France, England, and America, the crowd always ready to run to witness the most insignificant ascent. In order to add further to the interest of the spectacle--which, I declare beforehand, without fear of being belied, shall be the most beautiful spectacle which it has ever been given to man to contemplate,--I shall dispose under this monster balloon a small balloon (_balloneau_), destined to receive and preserve the excess of gas produced by dilation, instead of losing this excess, as has hitherto been the case, which will permit my balloon to undertake veritable long voyages, instead of remaining in the air two or three hours only, like our predecessors. I do not wish to ask anything of any one, nor of the State, to aid me, even in this question of general, and also of such immense, interest. I shall endeavour to furnish myself the two hundred thousand francs necessary for the construction of my balloon. The said balloon finished, by public ascents and successive exhibitions at Paris, London, Brussels, Vienna, Baden, Berlin, New York, and everywhere, I know that I shall collect ten times the funds necessary for the construction of our first aeromotive."