About 11 o'clock it was necessary to get a fresh supply of air, when my companion cautiously turned one of the two stop-cocks to let out that which was no longer fit for respiration, requesting me, at the same time, to turn the other, to let in a fresh supply of condensed air; but being awkward in the first attempt to follow his directions, I was so affected by the exhaustion of the air through the vent now made for it, that I fainted; and having, at the same time, given freer passage to the condensed air than I ought, we must in a few seconds have lost our supply, and thus have inevitably perished, had not the watchful Hermit seen the mischief, and repaired it almost as soon as it occurred. This accident, and the various agitations my mind had undergone in the course of the day, so overpowered me, that at an early hour in the afternoon I fell into a profound sleep, and did not awake again for eight hours.
While I slept, the good Brahmin had contrived to manage both stop-cocks himself. The time of my waking would have been about 11 o'clock at night, if we had continued on the earth; but we were now in a region where there was no alternation of day and night, but one unvarying cloudless sun. Its heat, however, was not in proportion to its brightness; for we found that after we had ascended a few miles from the earth, it was becoming much colder, and the Brahmin had recourse to a chemical process for evolving heat, which soon made us comfortable: but after we were fairly in the great aerial void, the temperature of our machine showed no tendency to change.
The sensations caused by the novelty of my situation, at first checked those lively and varied trains of thought which the bird's-eye view of so many countries passing in review before us, was calculated to excite: yet, after I had become more familiar with it, I contemplated the beautiful exhibition with inexpressible delight. Besides, a glass of cordial, as well as the calm, confiding air of the Brahmin, contributed to restore me to my self-possession. The reader will recollect, that although our motion, at first, partook of that of the earth's on its axis, and although the _positive_ effect was the same on our course, the _relative_ effect was less and less as we ascended, and consequently, that after a certain height, every part of the terraqueous globe would present itself to our view in succession, as we rapidly receded from it. At 9 o'clock, the whole of India was a little to the west of us, and we saw, as in a map, that fertile and populous region, which has been so strangely reduced to subjection, by a company of merchants belonging to a country on the opposite side of the globe--a country not equal to one-fourth of it, in extent or population. Its rivers were like small filaments of silver; the Red Sea resembled a narrow plate of the same metal. The peninsula of India was of a darker, and Arabia of a light and more grayish green.