THE FIRST AIRSHIP STATION
are dangers and inconveniences against which we come in time to be on our guard by actual and often dire experience.
During the spring and summer of 1902 I took trips to England and the United States, of which I shall have a word to say later. Returning from those trips to Paris I at once set about selecting the site of an aerodrome that should be all my own and in which the experience gained at such cost should be taken advantage of. This time I resolved my air-ship house should have an ample space around it. And, succeeding in a way, I realised—if I may say it—the first of the air-ship stations of the future.
After long search I came on a fair-sized lot of vacant ground surrounded by a high stone wall, inside the police jurisdiction of the Bois de Boulogne, but private property, situated on the Rue de Longchamps, in Neuilly St James. First, I had to come to an understanding with its owner; then I had to come to an understanding with the Bois authorities, who took time to give a building permit to such an unusual construction as a house from which air-ships would go and come.
The Rue de Longchamps is a narrow suburban street, little built on at this end, that gives on
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