e results of habit. It was certain that I could not do without sleep;
but I might easily bring myself to feel no inconvenience from being
awakened at intervals of an hour during the whole period of my repose.
It would require but five minutes to renew the air, and the only
difficulty was to contrive a method of arousing myself at the proper
moment for so doing.

This question caused me no little trouble to solve. I at length hit upon
the following plan. My supply of water had been put on board in kegs of
five gallons each and ranged securely around the interior of the car. I
unfastened one of these and, taking two ropes, tied them tightly across
the rim of the wicker-work from one side to the other, placing them
about a foot apart and parallel, so as to form a kind of shelf, upon
which I placed the keg and steadied it. About eight inches below these
ropes I fastened another shelf made of thin plank, on which shelf, and
beneath one of the rims of the keg, a small pitcher was placed. I bored
a hole in the end of the keg over the pitcher and fitted in a plug of
soft wood, which I pushed in or pulled out, until, after a few
experiments, it arrived at that exact degree of tightness at which the
water, oozing from the hole and falling into the pitcher below, would
fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty minutes. Having
arranged all this, the rest of the plan was simple. My bed was so
contrived upon the floor of the car as to bring my head, in lying down,
immediately below the mouth of the pitcher. It was evident that, at the
expiration of an hour, the pitcher, getting full, would be forced to run
over and to run over at the mouth, which was somewhat lower than the
rim. It was also evident that the water, falling from a height, could
not do otherwise than fall on my face and awaken me even from the
soundest slumber in the world.

It was fully eleven by the time I had completed these arrangements, and
I at once betook myself to bed with full confidence in my invention. Nor
in this matter was I disappointed. Punctually every sixty minutes I was
aroused by my trusty clock, when, having emptied the pitcher into the
bung-hole of the keg and filled the chamber with condensed air, I
retired again to bed. These regular interruptions to my slumber caused
me less discomfort than I had anticipated; and when I finally arose for
the day, it was seven o'clock and the sun was high above the horizon.

I found the balloon at an im