and as there were no boats in sight, I
chose the lesser evil. Seizing three of the cords, I swung out of the
ring, into the netting, the balloon careening on her side. I climbed
half way up the netting, opened my knife with my teeth, and cut a hole
about two feet long. The instant I cut the hole the gas rushed out so
fast that could scarcely get back to the ring. After reaching the ring
I lashed myself fast to it with a rope. While I was climbing up the
rigging to cut the hole in the side of the balloon, my cap fell off,
and so fast did I descend that before I got half way down I caught up
with and passed the cap. Continuing to descend, I struck the ground in
a large corn field, and was dragged nearly a thousand feet, the wind
blowing a perfect gale. Crashing against a rail fence, I was rendered
insensible. When I came to, I found myself hanging to one side of a
tree, and the balloon to the other side, ripped to shreds. This was
the _last tree_. I could have thrown a stone into the ocean from where
I landed. On this trip I travelled ten miles in seven minutes.

"Many want to know if the wind blows hard up there. They do not stop
to think that I am carried by the wind, and whether I am in a dead calm
or sailing at the rate of one hundred miles an hour, I am perfectly
still; and when I went the ten miles in seven minutes I did not feel
the slightest breeze; and when I cannot see the earth it is impossible
to tell whether I am going or hanging still."

Just as Donaldson was a bit of an artist and left many sketches
illustrating his experiences, so also he was a bit of a poet and left
many pieces describing in lofty thought, but crude versification, the
sentiments inspired by his ascents. The following is one of them:

"There's pleasure in a lively trip when sailing through the air,
The word is given, 'Let her go!' To land I know not where.
The view is grand, 'tis like a dream, when many miles from home.
My castle in the air, I love above the clouds to roam."

In prose Donaldson was very much more at home than in verse; indeed
many of his descriptions equal in clearness and beauty anything ever
written of the impressions that come to fliers in cloudland. Take, for
example, the following:

"It's a pleasure to be up here, as I sit and look at the grand cloud
pictures, the most splendid effects of light, unknown to all that cling
to the surface of the earth. The ever-shifting scenes, the bri