"My eye!" ejaculates the Wind-screen, "talk about a view!" And indeed
mere words will always fail to express the wonder of it. Six thousand
feet up now, and look! The sun is rising quicker than ever mortal on
earth witnessed its ascent. Far below is Mother Earth, wrapt in mists
and deep blue shadows, and far above are those light, filmy, ethereal
clouds now faintly tinged with pink And all about great mountains of
cloud, lazily floating in space. The sun rises and they take on all
colours, blending one with the other, from dazzling white to crimson
and deep violet-blue. Lakes and rivers here and there in the enormous
expanse of country below refract the level rays of the sun and, like so
many immense diamonds, send dazzling shafts of light far upwards. The
tops of the hills now laugh to the light of the sun, but the valleys are
still mysterious dark blue caverns, clowned with white filmy lace-like
streaks of vapour. And withal the increasing sense with altitude of
vast, clean, silent solitudes of space.

Lives there the man who can adequately describe this Wonder? "Never,"
says the Pilot, who has seen it many times, but to whom it is ever new
and more wonderful.

Up, up, up, and still up, unfalteringly speeds the Pilot and his mount.
Sweet the drone of the Engine and steady the Thrust as the Propeller
exultingly battles with the Drift.

And look! What is that bright silver streak all along the horizon? It
puzzled the Pilot when first he saw it, but now he knows it for the Sea,
full fifty miles away!

And on his right is the brightness of the Morn and the smiling Earth
unveiling itself to the ardent rays of the Sun; and on his left, so
high is he, there is yet black Night, hiding innumerable Cities, Towns,
Villages and all those places where soon teeming multitudes of men shall
awake, and by their unceasing toil and the spirit within them produce
marvels of which the Aeroplane is but the harbinger.

And the Pilot's soul is refreshed, and his vision, now exalted, sees
the Earth a very garden, even as it appears at that height, with discord
banished and a happy time come, when the Designer shall have at last
captured Efficiency, and the Man-who-takes-the-credit is he who has
earned it, and when kisses are the only things that go by favour.

Now the Pilot anxiously scans the Barograph, which is an instrument much
the same as the Altimeter; but in this case the expansion of the vacuum
box causes a pen to trace a lin