Barbicane, Michel Ardan, Nicholl, and the delegates of the Gun Club, returning without delay to Baltimore, were received with indescribable enthusiasm. The notes of President Barbicane's voyage were ready to be given to the public. The New York _Herald_ bought the manuscript at a price not yet known, but which must have been very high. Indeed, during the publication of "A Journey to the Moon," the sale of this paper amounted to five millions of copies. Three days after the return of the travelers to the earth, the slightest detail of their expedition was known. There remained nothing more but to see the heroes of this superhuman enterprise.
The expedition of Barbicane and his friends round the moon had enabled them to correct the many admitted theories regarding the terrestrial satellite. These savants had observed _de visu_, and under particular circumstances. They knew what systems should be rejected, what retained with regard to the formation of that orb, its origin, its habitability. Its past, present, and future had even given up their last secrets. Who could advance objections against conscientious observers, who at less than twenty-four miles distance had marked that curious mountain of Tycho, the strangest system of lunar orography? How answer those savants whose sight had penetrated the abyss of Pluto's circle? How contradict those bold ones whom the chances of their enterprise had borne over that invisible face of the disc, which no human eye until then had ever seen? It was now their turn to impose some limit on that selenographic science, which had reconstructed the lunar world as Cuvier did the skeleton of a fossil, and say, "The moon _was_ this, a habitable world, inhabited before the earth. The moon _is_ that, a world uninhabitable, and now uninhabited."
To celebrate the return of its most illustrious member and his two companions, the Gun Club decided upon giving a banquet, but a banquet worthy of the conquerors, worthy of the American people, and under such conditions that all the inhabitants of the Union could directly take part in it.
All the head lines of railroads in the States were joined by flying rails; and on all the platforms, lined with the same flags, and decorated with the same ornaments, were tables laid and all served alike. At certain hours, successively calculated, marked by electric clocks which beat the seconds at the same time, the population were invited to take their places at the banquet tables. For four days, from the 5th to the 9th of January, the trains were stopped as they are on Sundays on the railways of the United States, and every road was open. One engine only at full speed, drawing a triumphal carriage, had the right of traveling for those four days on the railroads of the United States.
The engine was manned by a driver and a stoker, and bore, by special favor, the Hon. J. T. Maston, secretary of the Gun Club. The carriage was reserved for President Barbicane, Colonel Nicholl, and Michel Ardan. At the whistle of the driver, amid the hurrahs, and all the admiring vociferations of the American language, the train left the platform of Baltimore. It traveled at a speed of one hundred and sixty miles in the hour. But what was this speed compared with that which had carried the three heroes from the mouth of the Columbiad?
Thus they sped from one town to the other, finding whole populations at table on their road, saluting them with the same acclamations, lavishing the same bravos! They traveled in this way through the east of the Union, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire; the north and west by New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin; returning to the south by Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana; they went to the southeast by Alabama and Florida, going up by Georgia and the Carolinas, visiting the center by Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and Indiana, and, after quitting the Washington station, re-entered Baltimore, where for four days one would have thought that the United States of America were seated at one immense banquet, saluting them simultaneously with the same hurrahs! The apotheosis was worthy of these three heroes whom fable would have placed in the rank of demigods.
And now will this attempt, unprecedented in the annals of travels, lead to any practical result? Will direct communication with the moon ever be established? Will they ever lay the foundation of a traveling service through the solar world? Will they go from one planet to another, from Jupiter to Mercury, and after awhile from one star to another, from the Polar to Sirius? Will this means of locomotion allow us to visit those suns which swarm in the firmament?
To such questions no answer can be given. But knowing the bold ingenuity of the Anglo-Saxon race, no one would be astonished if the Americans seek to make some use of President Barbicane's attempt.
Thus, some time after the return of the travelers, the public received with marked favor the announcement of a company, limited, with a capital of a hundred million of dollars, divided into a hundred thousand shares of a thousand dollars each, under the name of the "National Company of Interstellary Communication." President, Barbicane; vice-president, Captain Nicholl; secretary, J. T. Maston; director of movements, Michel Ardan.
And as it is part of the American temperament to foresee everything in business, even failure, the Honorable Harry Trolloppe, judge commissioner, and Francis Drayton, magistrate, were nominated beforehand!
[End.]
******* Notes: Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "A Trip Around It"
>I originally intended to "correct" some of the numbers in the book. >For example, page 207 has "thirteenth" where "thirtieth" would be >more appropriate. Some of the densities and volumes and masses don't >match up. The business with the wrong exhaust velocity of the gun >is also a bit confusing. The dates and times aren't quite consistent >throughout, although they are close enough that Verne must have been >working from a time-line. For example, I think he has the time for >the fall back to earth exactly matching the time for the trip out. >There are also inconsistent spellings, for example "aluminum" and >"aluminium". Some of these annoyed me, in the sense of disturbing >my reading; since the reader is reading for pleasure, the annoyance >should be removed.
All cases of the British? spelling of aluminium have been changed to the American spelling aluminum.
>I decided that the correction project was going to be a lot of trouble, >and might be a perversion of the original work. I concentrated instead >on producing an accurate rendition of the text. However, if a French >speaker can find a French edition, it might be nice to see if the >translators introduced errors. The measurements seem to have been >converted from metric without regard for significant figures. Occasional >conversions are simply omitted, with "feet" inserted for "meters" without >fixing the numbers. These might be safely recomputed without doing >violence to the spirit of the original work. Whether one should >standardize the spelling of "aluminium" I don't know. "Aluminium" >has a certain charm. I don't know what American or English usage was >at the time. We might consider converting all the temperatures to >Fahrenheit. I suggest removing the page numbers, undoing all the >hyphenation, and repackaging the lines at a length of (up to) 72 >characters, with only occasional word breaks.
Page #s and a full reformating has been done. Line widow/orphans have been painstakingly removed. Hypenated words at the end of lines have been eliminated to the best of my judgement.
>I think a table of units should be offered for the reader.
>myriameter = 10 km
>fathom = 6 feet; league ~ 3 miles, but don't know French usage in 1865.
>page 125 has perigee 86,410 leagues (French), or 238,833 miles
>We may criticize Verne for his errors, but the remarkable thing is
>how much he got right! I think this was the first engineering proposal
>for space travel, using physics instead of magic. Verne deserves much
>of the credit for inspiring the early rocket pioneers, and ultimately
>today's space program. As "literary" history, I note that Heinlein's
>"The Man Who Sold the Moon" borrows from it.
>
I have changed the one case of perihelium to the correct perihelion.
>
Dates were not fixed.
>
This only occurs twice in the book, so both are left in.
>
`yle' ending was accepted by undisputed "majority rule"
>
The former accepted.
>
Numbers, units, dates, times and math errors have NOT been changed.
>Typographic conventions in the book:
>The book uses ligatures for ff fi fl ffi ffl; I have simply spelled these
>out.
>Chapter N is in italics.
>The chapter titles are in small caps.
>The first word of each chapter has an oversize capital,
>and the rest of the word is in small caps. If the first
>word is two letters or less, the second word is also in
>small caps.
>AM and PM are always in small caps, as A.M. or P.M.
All these have been changed to PG standards.
>My typographic conventions:
>There are a few lines longer than 80 character, usually because I have
>inserted a {sic phrase} in the line. I am using % as a line-break
>character
>in these cases; the % and the following new-line should be deleted.
>{correction} I have indicated some candidates for correction in braces.
All these were appreciated! and either corrected or ignored.
>_italics_ are marked with underbars
These are left in for the next proofer to turn into CAPS for PG.
>#SMALL CAPS# are enclosed in hash-marks
>$ae $'e dollar-sign preceeds ligatures and accented characters.
> The accent follows the $ and precedes the letter. I've tried to get
> ' and ` (as accents) right.
> I have used : as an accent marker for umlaut.
All are removed.
>^2 means superscript 2. circumflex also occurs as an accent marker.
>I've used ` and ' to enclose (recursive) quotes. Ascii has no provision
>for distinguishable open and close doublequotes.
>The book uses ligatures for ff fi fl ffi ffl; I have simply spelled these
>out.
>-- moderate dash and---- long dash I have added surrounding spaces.
>I also switched to double space between sentences.
>@ degree sign
>L for British Pound.
All these conventions (except the circumflex) have been accepted.
>
Removed (only one case) and probably a printers error?
>
Left in.
[End of Notes.]