A Voyage to the Moon | Page 3

day mentioned, that in
France, water, at one time of the year, became a solid substance, the Siamese prince
indignantly exclaimed,--"Hold, sir! I have listened to the strange things you have told me,
and have hitherto believed them all; but now when you wish to persuade me that water,
which I know as well as you, can become hard, I see that your purpose is to deceive me,
and I do not believe a word you have uttered."
But as the present patriotic preference for home-bred manufactures, may extend to
anecdotes as well as to other productions, a story of domestic origin may have more
weight with most of my readers, than one introduced from abroad.
The chief of a party of Indians, who had visited Washington during Mr. Jefferson's

presidency, having, on his return home, assembled his tribe, gave them a detail of his
adventures; and dwelling particularly upon the courteous treatment the party had received
from their "Great Father," stated, among other things, that he had given them ice, though
it was then mid-summer. His countrymen, not having the vivacity of our ladies, listened
in silence till he had ended, when an aged chief stepped forth, and remarked that he too,
when a young man, had visited their Great Father Washington, in New-York, who had
received him as a son, and treated him with all the delicacies that his country afforded,
but had given him no ice. "Now," added the orator, "if any man in the world could have
made ice in the summer, it was Washington; and if he could have made it, I am sure he
would have given it to me. Tustanaggee is, therefore, a liar, and not to be believed."
In both these cases, though the argument seemed fair, the conclusion was false; for had
either the king or the chief taken the trouble to satisfy himself of the fact, he might have
found that his limited experience had deceived him.
It is unquestionably true, that if travellers sometimes impose on the credulity of mankind,
they are often also not believed when they speak the truth. Credulity and scepticism are
indeed but different names for the same hasty judgment on insufficient evidence: and, as
the old woman readily assented that there might be "mountains of sugar and rivers of
rum," because she had seen them both, but that there were "fish which could fly," she
never would believe; so thousands give credit to Redheiffer's patented discovery of
perpetual motion, because they had beheld his machine, and question the existence of the
sea-serpent, because they have not seen it.
I would respectfully remind that class of my readers, who, like the king, the Indian, or the
old woman, refuse to credit any thing which contradicts the narrow limits of their own
observation, that there are "more secrets in nature than are dreamt of in their philosophy;"
and that upon their own principles, before they have a right to condemn me, they should
go or send to the mountains of Ava, for some of the metal with which I made my
venturous experiment, and make one for themselves.
As to those who do not call in question my veracity, but only doubt my sanity, I
fearlessly appeal from their unkind judgment to the sober and unprejudiced part of
mankind, whether, what I have stated in the following pages, is not consonant with truth
and nature, and whether they do not there see, faithfully reflected from the Moon, the
errors of the learned on Earth, and "the follies of the wise?"
JOSEPH ATTERLEY.
Long-Island, September, 1827.

VOYAGE TO THE MOON.
CHAPTER I.
_Atterley's birth and education--He makes a voyage--Founders off the Burman

coast--Adventures in that Empire--Meets with a learned Brahmin from Benares._
Being about to give a narrative of my singular adventures to the world, which, I foresee,
will be greatly divided about their authenticity, I will premise something of my early
history, that those to whom I am not personally known, may be better able to ascertain
what credit is due to the facts which rest only on my own assertion.
I was born in the village of Huntingdon, on Long-Island, on the 11th day of May, 1786.
Joseph Atterley, my father, formerly of East Jersey, as it was once called, had settled in
this place about a year before, in consequence of having married my mother, Alice
Schermerhorn, the only daughter of a snug Dutch farmer in the neighbourhood. By means
of the portion he received with my mother, together with his own earnings, he was
enabled to quit the life of a sailor, to which he had been bred, and to enter into trade.
After the death of his father-in-law, by whose will he received a handsome accession to
his property, he sought, in the