AN INTERESTING RUMOR CONCERNING ANDREE 



The recent publication in the daily newspapers of a dispatch 

 from Stockholm to the effect that Professor Nordenskjold had 

 informed the Swedish Academy of Science that he regarded as 

 of sufficient importance to call for a closer investigation the in- 

 telligence received by the Swedish Foreign Office that several 

 persons worthy of credence saw Herr Andree's balloon in the 

 Caribou District of British Columbia in August last led President 

 Bell, of the National Geographic Society, to immediately ask the 

 American Minister at Stockholm, by cable, what news of Herr 

 Andree the Swedish Foreign Office was really in possession pf. 

 The following day a reply was received referring President Bell 

 to the Swedish Consul at San Francisco, who, in answer to a 

 telegram that was forthwith sent him, replied to President Bell, 

 by telegraph, as follows : 



" Statement of a balloon passing over the Horse- Fly Hydraulic Mining 

 Camp in Caribou, British Columbia, in latitude fifty-two degrees twenty 

 minutes and longitude one hundred and twenty-one degrees thirty min- 

 utes. — From letters of J. B. Hobson, manager Caribou Hydraulic Mining 

 Company, and of Mrs William Sullivan, the blacksmith's wife there, and 

 statement of Mr John J. Newsom, San Francisco, then at the camp, 

 about two or three o'clock in afternoon, between fourth and seventh 

 August last, weather calm and cloudless, Mrs Sullivan, while looking 

 over the Hydraulic bank, noticed a round, gray-looking object in the sky 

 to the right of the sun. As she watched, it grew larger and was descend- 

 ing. She saw the larger mass of the balloon above and the small mass 

 apparently suspended to the larger. It continued to descend until she 

 plainly recognized it as a balloon and a large basket hanging thereto. It 

 finally commenced to swing violently back and forth and move very fast 

 toward the eastward and southward. She then called her daughter, 

 eighteen years old, and after pointing the balloon out to her they both 

 watched it rise rapidly until it disappeared in an easterly direction. Mr 

 Hobson writes that Mrs Sullivan and daughter are intelligent, and he is 

 disposed to believe their statement. Mrs Hobson had at about time 

 stated noticed Mrs Sullivan looking into the sky at something, and that 

 she called her daughter, who went to her side, looked in the direction* 

 indicated, and both watched some object for several minutes, turning 

 their faces from southerly to easterly direction. Mr Newsom reports 

 that something was thrown out from the balloon when lowest, and subse- 

 quently people thought it might have been some message, but the coun- 

 try is too wooded to warrant any search. When Mr Newsom returned 



