determined than the rest, fired off guns at us. I saw several mammas pointing us out to stubborn babies, with an attitude which seemed to say that our balloon was Old Bogy. Old women raised their hands against us, and at their signal many ran away, making the sign of the cross. It is evident that in some of these villages we were taken to be the devil in person. On this point it is _apropos_ to cite a letter communicated to me which has been addressed to the _Courrier de Hanovre_. I translate it textually:-- "`This morning, at about six o'clock, we saw passing over our heads, at a prodigious height, an immense round form, to which was suspended some thing which looked like a square house of a red colour. Some people pretend to have seen animated beings in this strange machine, and to have heard issuing from it superhuman cries. What think you, Mr Editor? The whole country is in a state of alarm, and it will be long before our people recover their equanimity.' "At seven a.m. we crossed over a lake near Yssel; the wind then again pushed us in a new direction, nearly at right angles with that which we were taking before. In less than a quarter of an hour the balloon got into Westphalia near Renheim; then we crossed the great river Ems, the towns of Rheine and Ibbenburen, and returned to Hanover a little above Osnabruck. We traversed, without deigning to take notice of them, a little chain of mountains, and by way, no doubt, of relaxation after so long a journey, went all round a lake which is called in German Dummersee. We then got into a great plain, through which runs a road. At this time the balloon became almost motionless. The reason of this was, that the heat of the sun had caused the gas to expand. The thermometer was then at 145 degrees (about 59 degrees Fahrenheit [No! editor]). Louis Godard was very uneasy about this dilation. After two or three oscillations, our aerial courser decided upon going off rapidly in an eastern direction, with about two degrees variation towards the north. This course would have taken us to Hamburg and the Baltic; but we were all so completely absorbed by the splendour of the tableau before us that we took little note of the change. Our hippogriff passed over Wagenfeld-Steyerberg, where there is a river which flows into the Weser. We came within sight of the great river and Nienburg, a considerable town on one of its banks. We saw a steamboat going down the river from the town. The view here was charming. A rustling of the silk of our balloon made us look upwards; the monster, under the influence of the sun, now very hot, was palpably swelling. As it would have been supremely ridiculous, after having made such a first-rate journey, to have treated the inhabitants of Nienburg with the spectacle of seeing us blown up--to say nothing of the consequences of such a catastrophe to our own limbs--we resolved to come down. The remaining