CHAPTER I
THE COFFEE PLANTATION
FROM the way in which the partisans of Nature have fallen on me I might well be the uninformed and visionary Luis of the fable, for has it not been taken for granted that I began my experiments ignorant alike of mechanics and ballooning? And before my experiments succeeded, were they not all called impossible?
Does not the final condemnation of the common-sense Pedro continue to weigh on me?
After steering my ship through the sky at will I am still told that flying creatures are heavier than the air. A little more and I should be made responsible for the tragic accidents of others who had not my experience of mechanics and aeronautics.
On the whole, therefore, I think it is best to begin at the coffee plantation where I was born in the year 1873.
Inhabitants of Europe comically figure those
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