ARCTIC REGIONS AERIAL EXPLORATIONS. 175 



of the subject, but I do venture to maintain that, after 

 making proper preliminary practical investigations at home, 

 a judiciously conducted aerostatic dash for the Pole will be 

 far less dangerous than the African explorations of Living- 

 stone, Stanley, and others that have been accomplished and 

 are proposed. And further, that a long balloon journey start- 

 ing in summer-time from Smith's Sound, or other suit- 

 able Arctic station, would be less dangerous than a corres- 

 ponding one started from London ; that it would involve 

 less risk than was incurred by Messrs. Holland, Mason, 

 and Green, when they traveled from Yauxhall Gardens 

 to Nassau. 



The three principal dangers attending such a balloon 

 journey are : 1st. The variability of the wind. 2d. The 

 risk of being blown out about the open ocean beyond the 

 reach of land. 3d. The utter helplessness of the aeronau- 

 during all the hours of darkness. I will consider these set 

 riatim in reference to Arctic ballooning versus Yauxhall 

 or Crystal Palace ballooning. 



As regards the first danger, Vauxhall and Sydenham are in 

 a position of special disadvantage, and all the ideas we Eng- 

 lishmen may derive from our home ballooning experience 

 must tend to exaggerate our common estimate of this danger, 

 inasmuch as we are in the midst of the region of variable 

 winds, and have a notoriously uncertain climate, due to this 

 local exaggeration of the variability of atmospheric move- 

 ments. If instead of lying between the latitudes of 50 and 

 60, where theN.E. Polar winds just come in collision with 

 the S.W. tropical currents, and thereby effect our national 

 atmospheric stir-about, we were located between 10 and 30 

 (where the Canary Islands are, for example), our notions on 

 the subject of balloon traveling would be curiously dif- 

 ferent. The steadily blowing trade-wind would long ere 

 this have led us to establish balloon mails to Central and 

 South America, and balloon passenger expresses for the 

 benefit of fast-going people or luxurious victims of sea-sick- 

 ness. To cross the Atlantic three. thousand miles in 

 forty-eight hours, would be attended with no other diffi- 

 culty than the cost of the gas, and that of the return car- 

 riage of the empty balloon. 



