July 25, Twenty five years ago a compara tively young man was awakened from his sleep before dawn. It was a Sunday, a day when at least all the Christian world expects to sleep a little later, but Alfred LeBlanc, hustled his friend, L. Bleriot, out of bed and out to a field on a little farm near Calais for some _preli-minery practice flying. The weather had proved favourable that morning, and with a little luck Bleriot hoped to cross the Channel in his monoplane No. XI, and so win the prize of £10,000 offered by the "Daily Mail" for the first aviator to do so, Hubert Latham had attempted the same feat but six days before, when spark failure brought him down six miles from the French coast to be picked up by an accompanying torpedo boat destroyer, the crew of which found him sitting serenely in his machine, buoyed up by the great hollow wings, smoking a cigarette. Rough handling of the aeroplane, however, resulted in its being landed very. much wrecked and for the time he was out of the running. Bleriot reached the field on his crutenes, having suffered from a burned foot in a recent accident, but discarding those aids he climbed into his chine, remarking as he did so "It Teannot walk I will show the world Tecan fly." For some minutes he circled "about the ground where even at that hour some scores of spectators. had assembled. The flyer was in admirable trim, the pilot in buoyant spirits, and_ the destroyer Escopette well out at sea to escort her swift aerial charge as well as might be, swift in those days, for forty-five miles an hour was considered speedy indeed.
Mr. Alfred Francis Zahm, in his informative history of aerial navigation describes what follows in so graphic a style that it will well deserve repetition here:
The moment of departure had Bleriot, buttoned in his iting sult and hood, sat on jed machine, headed ind surrounded by a swishers. At 4.35 th raft with propeller whirring, sped along" the ground, rose gracefully in the air and shot bravely over the precipice, with the hustling aviator on its back. The admiring spectators were wild with excitement and joy. But there was tone sad group in Calais that morning, Gotham and his watchers, who had been waiting for better wea ther, rose in time to see his Fival on the wing, but too late for pursuit, as the wind had suddenty' risen' The unwary boy remained behind, weeping with disappointment.
Blerfot was now soaring high ove: the sea, faring toward Dover without a guide or a compass. "For some time he could observe the Escopette following him, her great column of smoke obscuring the new risen sun, Presently both shores vanished, and for ten minutes he could descry neither land nor signal of any kind. He was sailing over the sea at forty miles an hour and drifting with the air he knew not whither; but he allowed his tery steed to follow {ts instinct, as a bewildered horseman does" sometimes. "Along the horizon now appeared the white cliffs of the English shore. He was headed not for Dover put for Deal, carried adrift by the southwest ' wind. Three Doats crossing his course seemed plying for some port on his left, and Kalled him with lively greeting. He could not well inquire the way, but he followed the general course of the vessels, soaring high aloft, At length he saw a man. on. the lift violently waving a tricolor, and strenuously shouting: "Bravo! Bravo!" He plunged in the direetion of the signaller, whom he knew to be his friend M. Montaine. On nearing the earth he was caught in a violent turmoil of air and whirled about. Wishing to land at once, he stopped his power sixty feet aloft, and swooped abruptly down with an awakening thud upon the old English sell, sleeping in the peaceful sunlight' of a Sabbath morning.
Bleriot's landing was the greatest jolt fo British insularity since the birth of steam navigation. Neverthe
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