Is it an air ship?

Some Aerial Conveyance Has Crossed the Continent

Readers of the Spectator will remember that about the time Andree started on his balloon voyage to the pole reports came in from various points. The following from the Canadian Engineer tends to show that some sort of air ship was en route across the continent at that time:

"On Aug. 13, at Vancouver, an object was seen in the sky travelling eastward, which had all the appearance of an air ship, and what was said to be a balloon was reported at three or four different points in Manitoba and the Territories. At 12.40 on the morning of the 16th, C. W. Spencer, superintendent of the eastern division of the C. P. R. was sitting with Thos. Hay, his assistant, in the observation car of the train which had left Port Arthur for Sudbury, and as they were approaching Gravel River, and sat admiring the clear starlit heavens, they saw, in the words of Coleridge, “a something in the sky.” There was a large white light, and at an angle above it on the left a red light, and at an angle on the right a white light. The object appeared to be about half a mile above the earth, and when first seen was at an angle of 30 to 40 degrees above the horizon.  It seemed to be moving with the wind about 30 miles an hour, as the train was running at 45 miles an hour, and the object appeared to fall in their wake, when they had watched it about three minutes the train turned inland from the shore of Lake Superior, and before it was hid behind the bluffs it tilted and turned inland, apparently following them up the valley. As it turned the red light became blue, and there was disclosed in line with the main headlight a row of four lights terminated by a circle or ellipse of a dozen lights, in the midst of which was the dark body of the air ship. The light had the steady clearness of electric or acetylene light, and Mr. Spencer and Mr. Hay could form no other opinion than it was an air ship, and if the object seen at Vancouver was the same it must have travelled to this point, 2100 miles, at the rate of about 700 miles a day. It is quite possible that some inventor has set to work quietly and unostentatiously, and thus put his theories in practice before announcing his discoveries to the world; and if he has not come to grief in the wilds north of Lake Superior, we shall soon know that air navigation has been first accomplished on Canadian territory.”