which they had
never witnessed before.

The first aerial voyage across the sea was made by M. Blanchard, in
company with Dr. Jeffries, an American physician, who was then residing
in England. On the 7th January, 1785, a beautiful frosty winter day,
they ascended about one o'clock from the cliff of Dover, with the design
of crossing the Channel between England and France, a distance of about
twenty-three miles, and, at great personal risk, accomplished their
purpose in two hours and a half. The balloon at first rose slowly and
majestically in the air, but it soon began to descend, and, before they
had crossed the Channel, they were obliged to reduce the weight, by
throwing out all their ballast, several books, their apparatus, cords,
grapples, bottles, and were even proceeding to cast their clothes into
the sea, when the balloon, which had then nearly reached the French
coast, began to ascend, and rose to a considerable height, relieving
them from the necessity of dispensing with much of their apparel. They
landed in safety at the edge of the forest of Guiennes, not far beyond
Calais, and were treated by the magistrates of that town with the utmost
kindness and hospitality. M. Blanchard had the honor of being presented
with 12,000 livres by the King of France. Emboldened by this daring
feat, Pilatre de Rozier, already mentioned, and M. Romain, prepared to
pay back the compliment of M. Blanchard and Dr. Jeffries, by crossing
the Channel from France to England. To avoid the difficulty of keeping
up the balloon, which had perplexed and endangered Blanchard and his
companion during nearly their whole course, Rozier had recourse to the
expedient of placing underneath the hydrogen balloon a fire balloon of
smaller dimensions, which was intended to regulate the rising and
falling of the whole machine. This promised to unite the advantages of
both kinds of balloons, but it unhappily terminated in the melancholy
death of the two adventurers. They ascended from Boulogne, on the 15th
of June, 1785, but scarcely had a quarter of an hour elapsed from the
time of their ascent, when, at the height of 3000 feet, the whole
machine was discovered to be in flames. Its scattered fragments, with
the mangled bodies of the unfortunate aeronauts, who were probably
killed by the explosion of the hydrogen gas, were found near the
sea-shore, about four miles from Boulogne. This was the first fatal
accident which took place in balloon navigation,