his own eyes the inhabitants of the moon. In 1649 a Frenchman,
one Jean Baudoin, published a `Journey performed from the Earth
to the Moon by Domingo Gonzalez,' a Spanish adventurer. At the
same period Cyrano de Bergerac published that celebrated
`Journeys in the Moon' which met with such success in France.
Somewhat later another Frenchman, named Fontenelle, wrote `The
Plurality of Worlds,' a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of its time. About 1835
a small treatise, translated from the New York _American_, related
how Sir John Herschel, having been despatched to the Cape of
Good Hope for the purpose of making there some astronomical
calculations, had, by means of a telescope brought to perfection
by means of internal lighting, reduced the apparent distance of
the moon to eighty yards! He then distinctly perceived caverns
frequented by hippopotami, green mountains bordered by golden
lace-work, sheep with horns of ivory, a white species of deer
and inhabitants with membranous wings, like bats. This _brochure_,
the work of an American named Locke, had a great sale. But, to
bring this rapid sketch to a close, I will only add that a
certain Hans Pfaal, of Rotterdam, launching himself in a balloon
filled with a gas extracted from nitrogen, thirty-seven times
lighter than hydrogen, reached the moon after a passage of
nineteen hours. This journey, like all previous ones, was purely
imaginary; still, it was the work of a popular American author--
I mean Edgar Poe!"

"Cheers for Edgar Poe!" roared the assemblage, electrified by
their president's words.

"I have now enumerated," said Barbicane, "the experiments which
I call purely paper ones, and wholly insufficient to establish