“April 15th.  Not even the outlines of continents and seas could now be traced upon the earth with anything approaching distinctness.  About twelve o’clock I became aware, for the third time, of that appalling sound which had so astonished me before.  It now, however, continued for some moments, and gathered intensity as it continued.  At length, while, stupefied and terror-stricken, I stood in expectation of I knew not what hideous destruction, the car vibrated with excessive violence, and a gigantic and flaming mass of some material which I could not distinguish, came with a voice of a thousand thunders, roaring and booming by the balloon.  When my fears and astonishment had in some degree subsided, I had little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic fragment ejected from that world to which I was so rapidly approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and termed meteoric stones for want of a better appellation.

“April 16th.  To-day, looking upward as well as I could, through each of the side windows alternately, I beheld, to my great delight, a very small portion of the moon’s disk protruding, as it were, on all sides beyond the huge circumference of the balloon.  My agitation was extreme; for I had now little doubt of soon reaching the end of my perilous voyage.  Indeed, the labor now required by the condenser had increased to a most oppressive degree, and allowed me scarcely any respite from exertion.  Sleep was a matter nearly out of the question.  I became quite ill, and my frame trembled with exhaustion.  It was impossible that human nature could endure this state of intense suffering much longer.  During the now brief interval of darkness a meteoric stone again passed in my vicinity, and the frequency of these phenomena began to occasion me much apprehension.

“April 17th.  This morning proved an epoch in my voyage.  It will be remembered that, on the thirteenth, the earth subtended an angular breadth of twenty-five degrees.  On the fourteenth this had greatly diminished; on the fifteenth a still more remarkable decrease was observable; and, on retiring on the night of the sixteenth, I had noticed an angle of no more than about seven degrees and fifteen minutes.  What, therefore, must have been my amazement, on awakening from a brief and disturbed slumber, on the morning of this day, the seventeenth, at finding the surface beneath me so suddenly and wonderfully augmented in volume, as to subtend no less than thirty-nine degrees in apparent angular diameter!  I was thunderstruck!  No words can give any adequate idea of the extreme, the absolute horror and astonishment, with which I was seized possessed, and altogether overwhelmed.  My knees tottered beneath me —­ my teeth chattered —­ my hair started up on end.  “The balloon, then, had actually burst!” These were the first tumultuous ideas that hurried through my mind:  “The balloon had positively