More Airships

Woodland [California] Daily Democrat, 28 novembre 1896

A Well-Known Lawyer Sees an Electric
Light in the Skies

If It Was a Mechanical Contrivance a
Man on the Ground Could Not
Have Operated It

If the so called airship is an illusion it is a very clever one, and the man who is manipulating it thoroughly understands the business and is having a great deal of fun at the expense of people who are credulous.

That an unusual light has been seen floating in the atmosphere we do not doubt. Too many people whose veracity and sobriety are above suspicion have seen this light for us to question this fact.

The people of Woodland heard the remarkable story told by Ed Archer and Obe Lowe. It was fully corroborated by some of the most reliable men in Sacramento.

Friday night [November 27], about 10 o'clock, a well-known attorney who does not court any notoriety, and hesitates to make his name public because he does not want to lose his well-earned reputation for sobriety, discerned a bright but unusual light in the skies to the southwest of Woodland, traveling in a southwesterly direction.

The attention of the members of his family was called to the light, and nearly all the neighbors living close by were also aroused and saw the phenomenon, if such it may be called.

The attorney's first impression was that it was a group of stars, but he soon became convinced that it was an illumination produced by the agency of electricity, and of that he now has no doubt, although this must not be construed into an admission that he believes it was an airship.

Of course in estimating the rate of speed at which it was traveling the distance is an important factor. Assuming that it was no farther away than Sacramento, and five or six hundred feet high, it traveled a distance of about twenty-five miles an hour.

All the people who saw the light agree that it was in sight fully an hour, and some fix the time considerably longer. Our informant sat at his window fully that long, but he does not know how long it may have been in the heavens before he discovered it.

He is fully satisfied upon another point. If it was a mechanical contrivance it could not have been manipulated by a person standing on the ground. The electric light can only be accounted for upon the theory that the contrivance was supplied with a storage battery.

About the same hour two officers of the Salvation Army were returning from Knights Landing. They also saw the light and fully corroborate the statements made above.