Article

Palo Alto Pilot de Emmetsburg (Iowa), 5 août 1875s1 Clark, J. E.: "mystery balloon, Illinois, Indiana, 1875", Magonia Exchange, mardi 11 décembre 2007

[From the Chicago Journal, 21st.]

A balloon, high up in the air, was seen passing over this city by credible witnesses yesterday forenoon, coming from the northeast across the lake [Lake Michigan], and passing away in a southwesterly direction. A similar balloon is reported to have been seen, also high up in the air, at Goshen, in Northern Indiana, passing easterly, on Saturday morning [July 17]. A report from Fort Wayne, Ind., states that on Sunday at noon a balloon was seen sailing southeasterly, at that place, at great height; and another report states that at midnight on Sunday night persons at Richmond, Ind., saw a balloon, by the bright moonlight, sailing southwesterly. Now, inasmuch as we have no information of a balloon ascension recently in any part of the West, except those made from this city last week, the question that naturally suggests itself is whether this mysterious balloon, seen by different persons in different localities during the past three days, is not Donaldson's air-ship. Can it be that the balloon is still floating about in the high upper atmosphere?  that the aeronauts, seeing the approach of the storm which threatened to overtake them, threw out all their ballast in order to lighten their vessel sufficiently to rise above and escape it?  that, ascending to an altitude where the atmosphere was so extremely rare that breathing became impossible, the balloonists sank lifeless into the bottom of their basket, and have ever since been wafted about, in various directions, by changing currents, the balloon having no one to guide or control it? The theory is plausible as far as the throwing out of the ballast and the rising into the upper strata of atmosphere is concerned; and equally plausible is the supposition that the balloon's passengers, reaching a height where breathing became impossible, sank into the bottom of their basket insensible; but the doubtful part of the matter is the possibility of the gas-filled globe, to which their basket was attached, maintaining itself in the air so long. The science of aerology, as at present understood, would decide against this possibility; but the theories and hypotheses of this department of science are by no means infallible. There is a chance that the missing balloon is still drifting about in the high atmosphere, its passengers lifeless, and the vessel at the mercy of the currents.