The balloon was one of the two Boyce balloons and had never been tried.

It was small, of twelve thousand cubic feet capacity, as compared with the seventy thousand foot balloons that do the racing.

It was also being tried at an altitude of over five thousand feet under uncertain wind and heat conditions, and so the element of uncertainty was aggravated.

We felt that if we could go up in a new balloon of a small size it might demonstrate whether we should later go up a tree or stand pat against a charging menagerie.
There was a great crowd gathered on the hill where this balloon was being inflated.

Since five o'clock in the morning the gas had been generating in the wooden tanks, and from these was being conducted by a cloth tube to the mouth of the balloon.