The Moon-Voyage | Page 6

wish to speak to you
about the Queen of Night. It is, perhaps, our lot to be the Columbuses
of this unknown world. Understand me, and second me as much as you
can, I will lead you to its conquest, and its name shall be joined to those
of the thirty-six States that form the grand country of the Union!"
"Hurrah for the moon!" cried the Gun Club with one voice.
"The moon has been much studied," resumed Barbicane; "its mass,
density, weight, volume, constitution, movements, distance, the part it
plays in the solar world, are all perfectly determined; selenographic
maps have been drawn with a perfection that equals, if it does not

surpass, those of terrestrial maps; photography has given to our satellite
proofs of incomparable beauty--in a word, all that the sciences of
mathematics, astronomy, geology, and optics can teach is known about
the moon; but until now no direct communication with it has ever been
established."
A violent movement of interest and surprise welcomed this sentence of
the orator.
"Allow me," he resumed, "to recall to you in few words how certain
ardent minds, embarked upon imaginary journeys, pretended to have
penetrated the secrets of our satellite. In the seventeenth century a
certain David Fabricius boasted of having seen the inhabitants of the
moon with his own eyes. In 1649 a Frenchman, Jean Baudoin,
published his _Journey to the Moon by Dominique Gonzales, Spanish
Adventurer_. At the same epoch Cyrano de Bergerac published the
celebrated expedition that had so much success in France. Later on,
another Frenchman (that nation took a great deal of notice of the moon),
named Fontenelle, wrote his _Plurality of Worlds_, a masterpiece of his
time; but science in its progress crushes even masterpieces! About 1835,
a pamphlet, translated from the _New York American_, related that Sir
John Herschel, sent to the Cape of Good Hope, there to make
astronomical observations, had, by means of a telescope, perfected by
interior lighting, brought the moon to within a distance of eighty yards.
Then he distinctly perceived caverns in which lived hippopotami, green
mountains with golden borders, sheep with ivory horns, white deer, and
inhabitants with membraneous wings like those of bats. This treatise,
the work of an American named Locke, had a very great success. But it
was soon found out that it was a scientific mystification, and
Frenchmen were the first to laugh at it."
"Laugh at an American!" cried J.T. Maston; "but that's a _casus belli_!"
"Be comforted, my worthy friend; before Frenchmen laughed they were
completely taken in by our countryman. To terminate this rapid history,
I may add that a certain Hans Pfaal, of Rotterdam, went up in a balloon
filled with a gas made from azote, thirty-seven times lighter than
hydrogen, and reached the moon after a journey of nineteen days. This
journey, like the preceding attempts, was purely imaginary, but it was
the work of a popular American writer of a strange and contemplative
genius. I have named Edgar Poe!"

"Hurrah for Edgar Poe!" cried the assembly, electrified by the words of
the president.
"I have now come to an end of these attempts which I may call purely
literary, and quite insufficient to establish any serious communications
with the Queen of Night. However, I ought to add that some practical
minds tried to put themselves into serious communication with her.
Some years ago a German mathematician proposed to send a
commission of savants to the steppes of Siberia. There, on the vast
plains, immense geometrical figures were to be traced by means of
luminous reflectors; amongst others, the square of the hypothenuse,
vulgarly called the 'Ass's Bridge.' 'Any intelligent being,' said the
mathematician, 'ought to understand the scientific destination of that
figure. The Selenites (inhabitants of the moon), if they exist, will
answer by a similar figure, and, communication once established, it
will be easy to create an alphabet that will allow us to hold converse
with the inhabitants of the moon.' Thus spoke the German
mathematician, but his project was not put into execution, and until
now no direct communication has existed between the earth and her
satellite. But it was reserved to the practical genius of Americans to put
itself into communication with the sidereal world. The means of doing
so are simple, easy, certain, unfailing, and will make the subject of my
proposition."
A hubbub and tempest of exclamations welcomed these words. There
was not one of the audience who was not dominated and carried away
by the words of the orator.
"Hear, hear! Silence!" was heard on all sides.
When the agitation was calmed down Barbicane resumed, in a graver
tone, his interrupted speech.
"You know," said he, "what progress the science of ballistics has made
during the last few years, and to what degree