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33
1907. June 1. Saturday at Baddeck. 

Tribune New York 
18 Mar 1907 
SUCCESSFUL GAS TEST IN ST. LOUIS. 
Ascension in Interest of International Races Covered Forty-three Miles. 
St. Louis, March 17.-A test balloon ascension was made to-day by J. K. Campbell in the interest of the international balloon races to be held here on October under the auspices of the Aero Club of America. The aeronauts were up 160 minutes and travelled forty-three miles northest, landing at Sorrento, Ill. The trip was declared a successful test of the gas to be used for the races. 

World New York 
18 Mar 1907 
MADE 43-MILE AERIAL TRIP. 
ST. LOUIS, March 17.-A test balloon ascension was made to-day by J. K. Campbell in the interest of the international balloon races to be held here on October under the auspices of the Aero Club of America. 
The aeronaut was up two hours and forty minutes and travelled 43 miles northeast, landing at Sorrento, Ill. 
The trip was declared a successful test of the gas to be used for the races. 

World New York 
18 Mar 1907. 
HONEYMOON IN AIRSHIP. 
SYRACUSE, March 17.-J. Albert Plant married Miss Amelia Weller and startled his friends to-day by announcing a honeymoon in an airship. 
The idea of the machine came to the young inventor two years ago in Texas and he began work. He finished the airship here in his barn. 
The machine is run by fans and a twenty-horse power motor and in a thirty-mile wind can go forty miles an hour, says the inventor. It will be equipped with fuel enough to last two days. 
Plant plans to go to France next year to fly his machine in the $50,000 races. He says the secret of aerial navigation is so simple that navigators will kick themselves when they see his airship. 

Times Troy NY.
18 Mar 1907 
Text Balloon Ascension. 
St. Louis, Mo., March 18.-A test balloon ascension was made yesterday by J. K. Campbell of St. Louis in the interest of the international balloon race to be held there in October under the auspices of the Aero Club of America. Mr. Campbell was up two hours and forty minutes and traveled forty-three miles northeast, landing at Corento, Ill. The trip was declared a successful test of the gas to be used during the races. 

Pioneer Press. St Paul. 
17 Mar 1907 
By John Y. Alexander 
SINCE the earliest days of the world's history, races of all kinds have had a strange attraction for man. The Romans had their chariot races and we know to our national sorrow that we have our horse races. But surely a balloon race must be regarded as an exception to Solomon's rule. It may be asserted with some confidence that never before had such an event taken place. Think of the audacity of the idea! A race through the clouds! Even the struggle for the America's cup lacks excitement when compared to that.
This great aerial contest took place at the beginning of October, 1900, and was regarded as the most remarkable feature of the Paris exposition. Many notable French aeronauts entered for the prizes that were offered, and the conditions of the race debarred all forms of aerostats other than the ordinary balloon from competing. Although the rules and regulations, with characteristic French volubility, filled fifty-eight pages of small type, the conditions were simplicity itself. There was to be no handicapping; each competitor was free to use a balloon of any shape or size, to carry as much ballast as he cared for, to avail himself of as many fads as he fancied and to make use of either hydrogen gas or the ordinary carbureted kind, according to the length of his purse. These conditions were liberal enough to produce the best and most interesting results. 
There had been a number of preliminary races of a trial nature, but the two principal events were fixed for Sept. 30 and Oct. 9. The former date was a Sunday, and on the Vincennes field many thousands of Parisians had turned out to enjoy the novel spectacle-novel even in that godless city of sensations. Scene was a curious one, touched at first with some degree of dullness, for there was nothing very exhilarating in watching a dozen shapeless masses of canvas and silk lying on the ground and slowly distending as the gas is introduced into them. 
But gradually, as the balloons begin to take shape before the eyes of the spectators, interest awakens, and the jaunty aeronauts who move about superintending their flimsy craft become objects of much curiosity. These are the men who are going to brave unknown dangers in the skies, and your Parisian is ever full of admiration for those who seem to be doing something suggestive of heroism. 
The baskets are now being attached to the swaying balloons; ballast, scientific instruments, food-no Frenchman is ever wanting there-are placed in the cars, and presently the dauntless competitors themselves are seen gracefully bestowing themselves inside the wickerwork, each as conscious of his dignity and his great role on the world's stage as if he were Napoleon himself. The aeronaut examines all the arrangements, counts his bags of ballast, is satisfied that all is well. The official judges, oozing importance and authority at every pore, are present. The moment for which the good humored crowd has waited so patiently is at hand. Workmen skilfully detach the sand bags which are weighting the balloon to earth, the mooring ropes are severed at a slash, and a mighty cheer bursts from the crowd as the first aerostat bounds upward into space, catches a breeze blowing northeast and speedily disappears from view dragging its tiny car beneath it.
It is the "Conte" that has just set off, and the two gentlemen who have waved a theatrical adieu as they mounted into the sky are civil employes of the Meudon university. Five minutes later the "Urania" shoots into the heavens. Capt. Vernanchet sits in his car, shaped like a boat and painted red. He has a burlesque steering apparatus in the bow and at the stern in an umbrella which he works violently as though he were sculling his boat over a celestial sea. Cheers and hilarious laughter greet the operations, for this is the gallant captain's little way of protesting against the decision to exclude steerable balloons-so-called-from the competition. 

The crowd in now in ecstasies of delight, for every five minutes another balloon pops up and is borne away in the northeast wind. The third to go is M. Jacques Faure," and his balloon is called the "Aero Club." The fourth is the famous "Centaure," in which the young Count de la Vaulx has already established long distance records. As he rises now, bowing, cap in hand to the multitude, he is greeted with cries of "Vive la Russie!" Prophetic cries, for the northeast wind has caught him in its embrace and is hurrying him toward the kingdom of the tsar. See how the heavens favor the Franco-Russian alliance! 

"Here is a veteran of more than thirty ascents during the last year and a half," said an expert as the Centaure arose in the air-"a fatigued and well worn veteran which has been ripped with wounds hastily patched up, made heavy by successive revarnishings and repairs. It is a balloon of medium size, having a disposable ballast of only 1,760 pounds. It is a cheap construction too, a simple cotton affair that costs scarcely more than the price of a voiturete, and yet it goes further, quicker and more certainly than its more costly rivals. Why, I do not know. Born under a ucky [[lucky]] star, I suppose. 

The fifth balloon to get away is the gigantic St. Louis, the capacity of which is 3,000 cubic meters. Her captain is M. Jacques Balsan, another of the gilded youths of Paris who has found a new sensation in ballooning He carries two passengers with him. In quick succession follow the remaining seven balloons, signalled by volley after volley of cheers. The boulevards hum that evening with talk of aeronautics. In materialistic Paris it is seldom that one hears so much about the heavens; rarely do the thoughts of the populace mount even as high as the Centaure. 

Next afternoon excitement is renewed as the telegrams come in telling of the fortunes which have at ended the various competitors. Two have landed in Holland, one has come down in Westphalia, four have not got out of France, and the humorous Vernanchet only got a little way out from Paris. One had arrived on the edge of the Baltic after a voyage of 496 miles, lasting fourteen hours. But this was nothing. The Centaure had done that and better already. Nor did M. Faure accomplish a wonder by traveling to Mamlitz, in Eastern Prussia, 753 miles away. 

But there still remained the Centaure and the St. Louis to account for. And soon the news came that the former had descended near Wloclaweck, in Russian Poland, having made the journey of 766 miles in twenty-one hours and thirty-four minutes, while M. Balsan's balloon had come down in Eastern Prussia, near Dantzig, 757 miles away, in twenty-two hours. Count de la Vaulx was the winner, with Balsan second, and Paris went mad with joy over the first balloon voyage into the country of France's "ally." 

"I could have gone some distance further," said De La Vaulx himself on his return to Paris a few days later, "as I had on hand more than 200 pounds of ballast. But I was afraid of getting so far into the interior of Russia, away from the railways and telegraphs, that I could not get back in time for the next race. So I decided to land. It was well that I did. Though they had the telegraph at hand, they kept me in jail for twenty-four hours till my case could be officially investigated." 

The opening of the aerial route "from France to Russia," as the Parisian press put it, created immense excitement among a people who are easily excited, and the final balloon race on Oct. 9 was a scene of even more remarkable enthusiasm than that which we have just described. There were six competitors. The Count de la Vaulx was the only one who used the expensive hydrogen for inflation, and he was accompanied on this occasion by the Count de Castillon. But the hydrogen generator did not work effectively, and after some hours of effort he was fain to pay out with ordinary gas.
 
The results of the final race left the two who were first in the previous race again in the same relative positions. Here is the official record of the event:

First-M. le Comte Henri de La Vaulx, descending, after thirty-five hours and forty-five minutes of voyage at Korosticheff, in Russia, traveled a bird's flight distance of 1,925 kilometres (1,193 miles), from the point of departure. altitude, 5,700 metres (18,810 feet).

Second-M. Jacques Balsan, descending, near Rodom, in Russia, after twenty-seven hours and twenty-seven minutes of voyage, traveled a bird's flight of 1,360 kilometres (845 miles) from the point of departure. Maxiumum altitude, 6,540 metres (21,582 feet). 

The other contestants had distances varying from 550 to 950 kilometers.

Count de La Vaulx was naturally the hero of the hour in Paris, for had he not broken all aeronautical records both for length of journey and duration of voyage, and landed twice within a fortnight in Russia, and he was not Pa risian?

Mr. Walter Wellman has been able to publish some interesting extracts from the log book of the Centaure. "After day has fully come," a note says, "we are in a mountainous country, Bavaria without ballast." The entry ended with a mark of interrogation, nevertheless. "This." said De La Vaulx, descanting upon the joys of ballooning, "is the whole thing. The balloonist becomes an explorer. Say you are a young man who would like to roam a little, you would like adventures, you want to penetrate the unknown, but you are tied down at home by family, business, what not. Well, you take to ballooning. At noon you have luncheon with your family and at 2 o'clock you ascend. Fifteen minutes later you are no longer a commonplace denixen of the easy-going town; you are an adventurer into the unknown, as surely as any who melt in Africa or freeze in the Arctic. You do not know any too well where you are at any given

Transcription Notes:
from "the results of the final race" onward transcription gaps from the cutoff were done via page 102.