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LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE
THE BALLOON TO EUROPE - A LETTER FROM PROF. WISE.
To the Editor of the New-York Times:
In your well-digested article upon transatlantic balloons, it is to be regretted that you bring into question Mr. Low and his balloon, "The City of New-York." Mr. Low had no belief in the project, and that balloon project was instituted entirely upon the money-making principle, and inaugurated immediately upon the success of the St. Louis voyage. The money for the outfit was furnished by a party of gentlemen of this City; but who, it is unnecessary to name. The balloon was built strictly to the plan laid down in my work on aeronautics, and partly under my personal directions. The network was made by my brother, and the sewing and cutting was done under the supervision of Dr. Hollis, the same gentleman who cut out and supervised the construction of the balloon Atlantic, furnished by Mr. B. A. Gager for the St. Louis voyage, and of which I became one-fifth owner and director in chief, by article of agreement.
Mr. Low's balloon was well-constructed, and while the work was going on he held out inducements to have me accompany him in the voyage, to which I acceded on condition that the details of the outfit would be made so as to justify the adventure. These details were duly furnished, and then I demanded a written agreement that I should be one of the party to go as a condition preliminary to acting personally in the preparations. While we were dining together in Mr. Low's private room  in the Girard House, and talking the matter over, Mr. Low remarked that there was one great objection in his mind to my being a party in the voyage, and it was this: "If you go along you will get all the credit of the enterprise." Finding that I could not go, and believing that Mr. Low would not go himself, I never again touched the matter in his hands. Before we separated I said to him I hoped he would go and distinguish himself, to which he replied that I wouldn't mind seeing him going to the bottom of the ocean while I would be safe on dry land. 
That is the truth of history. I would not have written this, having no desire to build up a reputation upon the exposure of other men's fraudulent pretensions, but as that great and fraudulent experiment is so often quoted as an example of the uncertainty of transatlantic ballooning, I deemed this little retrospect of the matter not out of place. And I repeat again, what I have often stated before, that I believe Mr. Low would have made a success if he had started out on the voyage with that balloon, instead of collapsing it, as he did, when he was ordered to go by the proprietors of it.
To your well-considered criticism as to direction, allow me to say that, as a general thing, we find the south-west and the north-west winds at the same time in the temperate zone, and especially so in the parallel of New-York and within five degrees north and south. In the early part of Summer the most prevalent wind is from the south-west; in the Fall and Winter, from the north-west. In the well-digested article upon the law of atmospheric motion, by Dr. Ramsay, he lays it down as a rule that the direction of the wind is perpendicular to the line of illumination. This would give us a due eastward direction at the equinoxes. Experience has taught me that in the Fall of the year my trips were generally to the south of east. Three years ago I started from Orrville, Ohio, late in October, and landed in Brook County, West Virginia. On this occasion I nevertheless found a south-west wind at the highest altitude attained. Again, a year later, I ascended from Gettysburg, Penn., and in the ascent went through every point of the compass between a north and south direction toward the east, and landed