the most dangerous place immediately
accessible, "is one of the great drawbacks to the use of balloons in
warfare. Unless a man has natural aptitude, and is specially trained
for the work, his observations from a balloon are of no use, a
bird's-eye view of a country giving impressions so different from the
actual position of places."

This dictum was illustrated by the scene spread out beneath us. Seen
from a balloon the streets of a rambling town resolve themselves into
beautifully defined curves, straight lines, and various other highly
respectable geometrical shapes.

We could not at any time make out forms of people. The white highways
that ran like threads among the fields, and the tiny openings in the
towns and villages which we guessed were streets, seemed to belong to
a dead world, for nowhere was there trace of a living person. The
strange stillness that brooded over the earth was made more uncanny
still by cries that occasionally seemed to float in the air around us,
behind, before, to the right, to the left, but never exactly beneath
the car. We could hear people calling, and had a vague idea they were
running after us and cheering; but we could distinguish no moving
thing. Yes; once the gentleman from Cambridge exclaimed that there
were some pheasants running across a field below; but upon close
investigation they turned out to be a troop of horses capering about
in wild dismay. A flock of sheep in another field, huddled close
together, looked like a heap of limestone chippings. As for the
fields stretched out in wide expanse, far as the eye could reach,
they seemed to form a gigantic carpet, with patterns chiefly diamond
shape, in colour shaded from bright emerald to russet brown.

At six o'clock the sun began to drop behind a broad belt of black
cloud that had settled over London. The mist following us ever since
we crossed the river had overtaken us, even passed us, and was
strewed out over the earth, the sky above our heads being yet a
beautiful pale blue. We were passing with increased rapidity over the
rich level land that stretches from the river bank to Chelmsford, and
there was time to look round at each other. Burnaby had come down from
the netting and disposed his vast person amongst us and the bags of
ballast. He was driven down by the smell of gas, which threatened to
suffocate us all when we started. M. Wilfrid de Fonvielle, kneeling
down by the side of the car, was perpetually "taking obse