Perhaps it was the clear blue sky of his native land, and the dense, almost impenetrable thickets below, as Santos-Dumont himself has suggested, that made him think how fine it would be to float in the air above the tangle, where neither rough ground nor wide streams could hinder.  At any rate, the thought came into the boy’s mind when he was very small, and it stuck there.

His father owned great plantations and many miles of railroad in Brazil, and the boy grew up in the atmosphere of ponderous machinery and puffing locomotives.  By the time Santos-Dumont was ten years old he had learned enough about mechanics to control the engines of his father’s railroads and handle the machinery in the factories.  The boy had a natural bent for mechanics and mathematics, and possessed a cool courage that made him appear almost phlegmatic.  Besides his inherited aptitude for mechanics, his father, who was an engineer of the Central School of Arts and Manufactures of Paris, gave him much useful instruction.  Like Marconi, Santos-Dumont had many advantages, and also, like the inventor of wireless telegraphy, he had the high intelligence and determination to win success in spite of many discouragements.  Like an explorer in a strange land, Santos-Dumont was a pioneer in his work, each trial being different from any other, though the means in themselves were familiar enough.

[Illustration:  SANTOS-DUMONT PREPARING FOR A FLIGHT IN “SANTOS-DUMONT NO. 6” The steering-wheel can be seen in front of basket, the motor is suspended in frame to the rear, the propeller and rudder at extreme end.]

The boy Santos-Dumont dreamed air-ships, planned air-ships, and read about aerial navigation, until he was possessed with the idea that he must build an air-ship for himself.

He set his face toward France, the land of aerial navigation and the country where light motors had been most highly developed for automobiles.  The same year, 1897, when he was twenty-four years old, he, with M. Machuron, made his first ascent in a spherical balloon, the only kind in existence at that time.  He has described that first ascension with an enthusiasm that proclaims him a devotee of the science for all time.

His first ascension was full of incident:  a storm was encountered; the clouds spread themselves between them and the map-like earth, so that nothing could be seen except the white, billowy masses of vapour shining in the sun; some difficulty was experienced in getting down, for the air currents were blowing upward and carried the balloon with them; the tree-tops finally caught them, but they escaped by throwing out ballast, and finally landed in an open place, and watched the dying balloon as it convulsively gasped out its last breath of escaping gas.

After a few trips with an experienced aeronaut, Santos-Dumont determined to go alone into the regions above the clouds.  This was the first of a series of ascensions in his own balloon.  It was made of very light silk, which he could pack in a valise and carry easily back to Paris from his landing point.  In all kinds of weather this determined sky navigator went aloft; in wind, rain, and sunshine he studied the atmospheric conditions, air currents, and the action of his balloon.