“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 preservation of my health, than from so
      frequent a renovation being absolutely necessary. In the
      meanwhile I could not help making anticipations. Fancy revelled
      in the wild and dreamy regions of the moon. Imagination, feeling
      herself for once unshackled, roamed at will among the
      ever-changing wonders of a shadowy and unstable land. Now there
      were hoary and time-honored forests, and craggy precipices, and
      waterfalls tumbling with a loud noise into abysses without a
      bottom. Then I came suddenly into still noonday solitudes, where
      no wind of heaven ever intruded, and where vast meadows of
      poppies, and slender, lily-looking flowers spread themselves out
      a weary distance, all silent and motionless forever. Then again I
      journeyed far down away into another country where it was all one
      dim and vague lake, with a boundary line of clouds. And out of
      this melancholy water arose a forest of tall eastern trees, like
      a wilderness of dreams. And I have in mind that the shadows of
      the trees which fell upon the lake remained not on the surface
      where they fell, but sunk slowly and steadily down, and
      commingled with the waves, while from the trunks of the trees
      other shadows were continually coming out, and taking the place
      of their brothers thus entombed. “This then,” I said
      thoughtfully, “is the very reason why the waters of this lake
      grow blacker with age, and more melancholy as the hours run on.”
      But fancies such as these were not the sole possessors of my
      brain. Horrors of a nature most stern and most appalling would
      too frequently obtrude themselves upon my mind, and shake the
      innermost depths of my soul with the bare supposition of their
      possibility. Yet I would not suffer my thoughts for any length of
      time to dwell upon these latter speculations, rightly judging the
      real and palpable dangers of the voyage sufficient for my
      undivided attention. “At five o’clock, p.m., being engaged in regenerating the
      atmosphere within the chamber, I took that opportunity of
      observing the cat and kittens through the valve. The cat herself
      appeared to suffer again very much, and I had no hesitation in
      attributing her uneasiness chiefly to a difficulty in breathing;
      but my experiment with the kittens had resulted very strangely. I
      had expected, of course, to see them betray a sense of pain,
      although in a less degree than their mother, and this would have
      been sufficient to confirm my opinion concerning the habitual
      endurance of atmospheric pressure. But I was not prepared to find
      them, upon close examination, evidently enjoying a high degree of
      health, breathing with the greatest ease and perfect regularity,
      and evincing not the slightest sign of any uneasiness whatever. I
      could only account for all this by extending my theory, and
      supposing that the highly rarefied atmosphere around might
      perhaps not be, as I had taken for granted, chemically
      insufficient for the purposes of life, and that a person born in
      such a medium might, possibly, be unaware of any inconvenience
      attending its inhalation, while, upon removal to the denser
      strata near the earth, he might endure tortures of a similar
      nature to those I had so lately experienced. It has since been to
      me a matter of deep regret that an awkward accident, at this
      time, occasioned me the loss of my little family of cats, and
      deprived me of the insight into this matter which a continued
      experiment might have afforded. In passing my hand through the
      valve, with a cup of water for the old puss, the sleeves of my
      shirt became entangled in the loop which sustained the basket,
      and thus, in a moment, loosened it from the bottom. Had the whole
      actually vanished into air, it could not have shot from my sight
      in a more abrupt and instantaneous manner. Positively, there
      could not have intervened the tenth part of a second between the
      disengagement of the basket and its absolute and total
      disappearance with all that it contained. My good wishes followed
      it to the earth, but of course, I had no hope that either cat or
      kittens would ever live to tell the tale of their misfortune.