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THE GREAT BALLOON VOYAGE.
The great ballon that is to attempt the passage of the Atlantic under the guidance of Professors Wise and Donaldson, has been completed. It will start on its aerial voyage between this and the 12th of September. We learn that its departure from New York will be witnessed by thousands of spectators from all parts of the country, and that the public is becoming very impatient for the day to come on which the occasion is to take place.
The exploit is the most daring perhaps that was ever conceived; and that task a gigantic one. Many will say it is a fool hardy undertaking. But was not Columbu’ voyage considered fool hardy? Was not the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a steam vessel at one time considered an impossibility; and how few were there among the most knowing of men who ever thought it possible to bind the old and new world together by electric chains, before the gigantic task of laying the Atlantic cable was accomplished? It is only the daring who accomplish things that to ordinary minds seem absolute impossibilities. This balloon venture may prove a success; and then great will be the results. Balloon lines to Europe may be established, and sailing through the air from the shores of the new to the coast lines of the old world become as common in the future as sailing in vessels over the blue and rolling deep is now. 
But these daring aeronauts may meet with a disastrous failure. It is a perilous journey-the most perilous that was ever undertaken by mortal man; and the balloon must encounter the perils of wind, and storm, and tide. It may go down into the sea before it is out of sight of lands; it may be borne on the wings of the wind to the burning sands of some wild desert in the Southern hemisphere; or swept by some perilous, unrelenting gale northward to the ice bound regions of the Arctic.
But we hope for the best. 
Charlotte Observer. (n.c.)