to reap the benefit of my invention.  Once again I breathed with perfect freedom and ease —­ and indeed why should I not?  I was also agreeably surprised to find myself, in a great measure, relieved from the violent pains which had hitherto tormented me.  A slight headache, accompanied with a sensation of fulness or distention about the wrists, the ankles, and the throat, was nearly all of which I had now to complain.  Thus it seemed evident that a greater part of the uneasiness attending the removal of atmospheric pressure had actually worn off, as I had expected, and that much of the pain endured for the last two hours should have been attributed altogether to the effects of a deficient respiration.

“At twenty minutes before nine o’clock —­ that is to say, a short time prior to my closing up the mouth of the chamber, the mercury attained its limit, or ran down, in the barometer, which, as I mentioned before, was one of an extended construction.  It then indicated an altitude on my part of 132,000 feet, or five-and-twenty miles, and I consequently surveyed at that time an extent of the earth’s area amounting to no less than the three hundred-and-twentieth part of its entire superficies.  At nine o’clock I had again lost sight of land to the eastward, but not before I became aware that the balloon was drifting rapidly to the N. N. W. The convexity of the ocean beneath me was very evident indeed, although my view was often interrupted by the masses of cloud which floated to and fro.  I observed now that even the lightest vapors never rose to more than ten miles above the level of the sea.

“At half past nine I tried the experiment of throwing out a handful of feathers through the valve.  They did not float as I had expected; but dropped down perpendicularly, like a bullet, en masse, and with the greatest velocity —­ being out of sight in a very few seconds.  I did not at first know what to make of this extraordinary phenomenon; not being able to believe that my rate of ascent had, of a sudden, met with so prodigious an acceleration.  But it soon occurred to me that the atmosphere was now far too rare to sustain even the feathers; that they actually fell, as they appeared to do, with great rapidity; and that I had been surprised by the united velocities of their descent and my own elevation.

“By ten o’clock I found that I had very little to occupy my immediate attention.  Affairs went swimmingly, and I believed the balloon to be going upward with a speed increasing momently although I had no longer any means of ascertaining the progression of the increase.  I suffered no pain or uneasiness of any kind, and enjoyed better spirits than I had at any period since my departure from Rotterdam, busying myself now in examining the state of my various apparatus, and now in regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber.  This latter point I determined to attend to at regular intervals of forty minutes, more on account of the