"And what an additional outlay of time and brains,"
thought I, "must have been required, to devise the scheme and construct
the machine itself, so as to elevate the ingenious ideal into an
absolute working reality!" These drawings, Mr. Bonflon informed me,
were duplicates of others which had been privately deposited in the
Patent-Office at Washington.
The one which chiefly attracted my attention was that which represented
the monster steamer complete, with all its appendages and complement of
passengers, in its majestic flight through the air. Below it were the
drifting clouds. Its course lay quite above the storms and hurricanes
and conflicting wind-currents which vex the lower strata of the
atmosphere, where it comes in contact with the earth's uneven surface,
and is kept in motion by the contractions and expansions of alternate
cold and heat, and is broken and set whirling by the forests and gorges
and mountain-tops among which it is compelled to force its way. Above
all this, Mr. Bonflon assured me, as aeronauts report, there is ever a
smooth, quiet atmospheric sea.
"But how is life to be sustained for any considerable time in that
rarefied medium?" inquired I, "when it is asserted that even in
ascending high mountains, the texture of the soft parts of the human
body becomes so loose and flabby from diminished atmospheric pressure
as to cause one, so to speak, to sweat blood,--which oozes perceptibly
from the mouth and nose and eyes, and even from under the
finger-nails?"
Mr.
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