Mexico Weekly Ledger

Knew When He Had Enough.

John A. Haddock in the Philadelphia Times.

In the year 1858 I made the celebrated trip with Prof. John La Mountain from Watertown, New York, which was the second longest trip ever made by an air-ship, and the only one I ever heard of where a second ascension was made after remaining eight hours at night tied up to the top of a tree. Like Prof. Wise's late ascension, we started near night, and in the same month—September. We traveled over four hundred miles in a little over four hours, but whither we were being borne, or how fast we were traveling, we were as ignorant as two children, for it was dark night, and in a balloon you can never tell your course of flight unless you can see the earth. Instead of being thirty or forty miles from home, as we supposed when we anchored to a tall tree for daylight, we were 400 miles from our starting point, and instead of being in an inhabited country not far from some friendly farm house, we were in the great Baskatong wilderness of Canada, which extends from the river Ottawa on the south to the arctic circle on the north. I will not further enter upon details, save to say that, after thirteen days of the most painful absence, we at last worked our way into civilization, two of the raggedest and dirtiest, but gladdest men that ever lived. From that time three square meals a day, and store clothes, and telegraph offices, all assumed new importance to us, and I made up my mind that a balloon might be a good thing for "professors" to fool around with, but for a "steady thing" the solid earth was good enough for me.