Naval Exhibition, with all the people thereupon, begin to sink away from under us. We look down upon a thousand upturned faces and open mouths, and we press the button of the detective camera. Snap! We have our first picture. But now that we look again at all those fast-receding people, it becomes plain that they cannot be people at all; they are black cribbage pegs, stuck carelessly into holes, and leaning in all kinds of impossible directions. Perhaps, however, since they move, they are people after all, in which case the yellow ground near the trawler must be a skating-rink, and they must all be in the act of curling about on the outside edge, at angles portending numberless "howlers." For such is the appearance of a crowd from a rising balloon.
The Embankment and Exhibition Grounds.
Now the people become neither skaters nor cribbage pegs, but a larger kind of ant, and the Exhibition grounds and buildings seem an architect's coloured plan on a small scale. We find ourselves in a current of air which carries us slowly over the Embankment and the river. We have snapped the shutter of our camera northward, over Embankment and grounds; and now, at a greater elevation, we turn to the other side, and take our third picture—of the river, Victoria Pier and two bridges, the dark railway bridge contrasting well with Chelsea bridge, glorious in white, yellow, and gold. But here stretches before us a picture which neither camera nor pen may do justice to, for London is all below, lying away for miles in every direction. From Richmond to the docks, from the Crystal Palace to the northern hills, the eye may sweep by the mere turn of the head; and still we rise and rise. Away through the centre of the mighty panorama lies the Thames, like an inlay of shining steel, crossed by bridge after bridge, each growing narrower and blacker away toward the docks, where the ship-masts stand like fields
Victoria Pier and Chelsea Bridge.
