Let the reader recall the marks of
enthusiasm which the discovery of the islands on the east coast
of America excited in Andalusia, in Catalonia, in Aragon and
Castile--let him read the narrative of the honours paid by town
and village, not only to the hero of the enterprise, but even to
his commonest sailors, and then let him search the records of the
epoch for the degree of sensation produced by the discovery of
aeronautics in France, which stands in the same relationship to
this event as that in which Spain stands to the other. The
processions of Seville and Barcelona are the exact prototypes of
the fetes of Lyons and Paris. In France, in 1783, as in Spain
two centuries previously, the popular imagination was so greatly
excited by the deeds performed, that it began to believe in
possibilities of the most unlikely description. In Spain, the
conquestadores and their followers believed that in a few days
after they had landed on American soil, they would have gathered
as much gold and precious stones, as were then possessed by the
richest European Sovereigns. In France, each one following his
own notions, made out for himself special benefits to flow from
the discovery of balloons. Every discovery then appeared to be
only the precursor of other and greater discoveries, and nothing
after that time seemed to be impossible to him who attempted the
conquest of the atmosphere.
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