Prof. Samuel A. King, the aeronaut, made his two hundred and eleventh ascension on Saturday from Scranton. The balloon used for the occasion was the mammoth “King Carnival,” which requires 25,000 feet of gas for inflation. The story of the voyage can best be told in the words of the aeronaut himself:
“When I escaped the steeple,” he narrated last night, “I turned to salute the crowd, but I was traveling so fast that I guess they failed to see me. It was blowing a perfect gale. Seven minutes after the start I was on a level with the lower cloud strata, or 4,000 feet above the earth. Down below I could see nothing but woods and mountains. I was then rushing through the air at a terrible rate. I had never experienced anything like it before since my Boston ascension several years ago, when I made thirty miles in twenty-five minutes. In nine minutes from the start I got into the second strata of clouds and passed from sight. I then endeavored to keep the balloon down by allowing the gas to escape, so as to keep it from getting into the sunshine. The heat of the clouds, however, caused the gas to expand, and I passed upward again. Looking up I saw a mist, or haze. In a moment more I was above this again, and by making calculations I found that I was two miles up. At the juncture the expansion caused the gas to overflow, and I began to descend; nearing the earth I found nothing under me but woods and forests. The wind was howling through them, and the swaying of the trees produced a sound like a mighty roar. The idea of making a landing there was frightful, and so, throwing out ballast, I went up again. This time I went up into clear air, with nothing above me but the clear, blue sky. All this time I was rushing along at a glorious rate. At an altitude of three miles the sun was very hot, a circumstance which helped me to get rid of the chills which the wind had given me. After traveling on at this altitude about an hour and a half, I determined to make a descent. When I reached the clouds, the sudden coolness caused accelerated speed downward, and I had to throw out all the ballast I had to check it. Through the rifts in the clouds I could see that the country I was passing over was richly cultivated. I got the drag-rope and anchor ready. Presently I heard the noise of a river, which I took to be the Delaware, but which afterward proved to be the Schuylkill. I continued to descend, and at last came to the ground in a field. I threw out the drag-rope, which trailed along the tops of the trees, serving to break my speed. Reaching about thirty feet from the ground, I threw out my anchor, and, taking my collapsing cord in one hand and the valve cord in the other, waited to see what would turn up. Presently the force of the wind sent the balloon over till it touched the ground, uprooting the anchor, and the car, suddenly released, was thrown forward with terrific force toward a pile of fences. These I managed to clear, and then realizing the danger, I decided to use the collapsing cord, which slit the balloon open on one side from top to bottom. The movement of the car was, however, so rapid that in a moment it dashed against a long fence, which it knocked down like a piece of paper, and went away across a field, coming like a broadside against a tree. I managed to jump out just in time to escape the crash. It still continued to rock to and fro and in a little while the branches of the tree had torn it to pieces. Shortly afterward a crowd of countrymen came up and I found that I was in the grounds of the Perkiomen Company, three-quarters of a mile from Oak Station, Montgomery County. When I first touched earth it was ten minutes to two o’clock, so that I had made 140 miles inside of two hours. The country men helped me to pack up the fragments, and here I am again, as safe and sound as ever. But I have never been through the air at that rate, I can tell you, and the landing was anything but a pleasant experience. It is one consolation that, gale or no gale, I shall have no terra firma to encounter in my ocean voyage.”–Philadelphia Record.