faintest sound of a reed. make it reverb or echo.

There was no object near to

My 10 barometer now denoted an immense height; and as I looked upward and around, the concave above seemed like a mighty waste of purple air, verging to blackness.

Below, it was lighter; but a long, 11lurid bar of cloud stretched along the west, temporarily excluding the sun. The shadows rushed afar into the void, and a solemn sabbath twilight reigned around. I was now startled by a fluttering in my gondola. It was my carrier pigeon.

I had forgotten him entirely. I attached a string to his neck, with a label, announcing my height, then nearly four miles, and the state of the barometer.

As he sat on the side of the car, and turned his tender eyes upon me in mute supplication, every feather shivering with apprehension, I felt that it was a guilty act to push him into the waste beneath. But it was done. He attempted to rise, but I outsped him; he then fell obliquely, fluttering and moaning, till I lost him in the haze. My greatest altitude had not yet been reached. I was now five miles from terra firma. I began to breathe with difficulty. The atmosphere was too rare for safe respiration.

I pulled my valve cord to descend. It refused to obey my hand. For a moment I was horror-stricken. What was to be done? If I ascended much higher, the balloon would explode. I threw over some tissue paper to test my progress. It is well known that this will rise very swiftly. It fell, as if blown downwards by a wind from the 12 zenith. I was going upward like an arrow. I attempted to pray, but my parched lips could not move. I seized the cord again with desperate energy. Blessed Heaven! it moved. I threw out more tissue. It rose to me like a wing of joy. I was descending. Though far from sunset, it was now dark about me, except a track of blood-red haze in the direction of the sun. I encountered a strong current of wind. Mist was about me; it lay like dew upon my coat. At last, a thick bar of vapour being passed, what a scene was disclosed! A storm was sweeping through the sky, nearly a mile beneath; and I looked down upon an ocean of rainbows, rolling in indescribable grandeur, to the music of the thunder-peal, as it moaned afar and near, on the coming and dying wind.

A frightened eagle had ascended through the tempest, and sailed for some minutes by my side, looking at me with

panting weariness and quivering 13 mandibles, but with a dilated eye, whose keen iris flashed unsubdued. Proud emblem of my country! As he fanned me with his heavy wing, and looked with a human intelligence at the car, my pulse bounded with exulting rapture. Like the genius of my native land, he had risen above every storm, unfettered and free.

But my transports were soon at an end. He attempted to light on the balloon, and my heart sank; I feared his huge claws would tear the silk. I pulled my cord; he rose as I sank, and the blast swept him from my view in a moment. A flock of wild-fowl, beat by the storm, were coursing below, on bewildered pinions; and as I was nearing them, I knew I was descending. A breaking rift now admitted the sun. The rainbows tossed and gleamed; chains of fleecy 15 rack, shining in prismatic rays of gold and purple, and emerald, "beautiful exceedingly," spread on every hand.

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Vast curtains of clouds "pavilioned the immensity, brighter than celestial roses; masses of mist were lifted on high, like strips of living fire, more radiant than the sun himself when his glorious noontide 18 culminates from the equator. A kind of aërial 19 Euroclydon now smote my car, and three of the cords parted, which tilted my gondola to the side, filling me with terror. I caught the broken cords in my hand, but could not tie them.

The storm below was now rapidly passing away, and beneath its waving outline, to the south-east, I saw the ocean. Ships were speeding on their course, and their bright sails melting into distance; a rainbow hung afar; and the rolling anthems of the Atlantic came like celestial hymnings to my ear. Presently all was clear below me. The fresh air played around. I had taken a noble circuit; and my last view was better than the first. I

was far over the bay, "afloating sweetly to the west." The city, coloured by the last blaze of day, brightened remotely to the view.

Below, ships were hastening to and fro through the Narrows, and the far country lay smiling like an Eden. Bright rivers ran like ribbons of gold and silver, till they were lost in the vast inland, stretching beyond the view; the gilded mountains were flinging their purple shadows over many a vale; bays were blushing to the farewell daybeams; and now I was passing over a green island. I sailed to the mainland: saw the tall old trees waving to the evening breeze; heard the rural lowing of herds, and the welcome sound of human voices; and finally, sweeping over forest tops and embowered villages, descended with the sun, among a kind-hearted, surprised, and hospitable community, in as pretty a town as one could desire to see, "safe and well."

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

1 aëronaut, one who sails or floats in the air (by means of a balloon). ecstacy, being out of one's self, as it were, through excessive joy or other overwhelming feeling. gondola, a long, narrow, flat-bottomed boat used on the canals of Venice.

4

6

' diagram, a figure, plan.

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9

3

Here it

means the car of the balloon, made in the form of a gondola. rotary, turning round like a wheel. physical, natural, bodily. aërostat, a machine for supporting weights in the air, a balloon. Long Inland, an island near New York, in the United States. reverb, to bound or fly back. 10 barometer, see App. lurid, dismal, gloomy. 12 zenith, the point in the sky exactly overhead. 13 mandible, the jaw (of a bird). Hiris, properly a rainbow; the ring which encircles the pupil or black spot in the centre of the eye. 15 rack, thin, light clouds. 1 prismatic, broken up, and displaying the colours of the rainbow. "pavilioned, covered like a tent; a pavilion is a tent. 18 culminate, to come to its full height. 19 Euroclydon, a tempestuous wind, spoken of in Acts xxvii. 14.

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In order that the reader may better understand those incidents of our narrative which we are about to relate, it may be well to say a word of the geographical features of the region in which they occurred. At the southern extremity of the American continent is a cluster of islands, which are dark, 1sterile, rocky, and most of the year covered with snow. Evergreens relieve the aspect of sterility in places that are a little sheltered, and there is a meagre vegetation in spots that serves to sustain animal life. The first strait which separates this cluster of islands from the main is that of Magellan, through which vessels occasionally pass, in preference to going farther south. Then comes Terra del Fuego, which is much the largest of all the islands. To the southward of Terra del Fuego lies a cluster of many small islands, which bear different names, though the group farthest south of all-which it is usual to consider as the southern termination of the noble continent of America, but which is not on the continent at all-is known by the appropriate appellation of the Hermits. If solitude and desolation and want, and a contemplation of some of the sublimest features of this earth, can render a spot fit for a hermitage, these islands are very judiciously named. The one that is farthest south contains the cape itself, which is marked by a ragged pyramid of rock, placed there by nature, a never-tiring sentinel of the war of the elements. Behind this cluster of the Hermits it was that Stimson advised his officer to take refuge against the approaching gale, of which the signs were now becoming obvious and VI.-Moffatt's Ex. Reader.

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