“After various trials and many successive improvements, in which our desires increased with our success, we determined to penetrate the aerial void as far as we could, providing for that purpose an apparatus, with which you will become better acquainted hereafter.  In the course of our experiments, we discovered that this same metal, which was repelled from the earth, was in the same degree attracted towards the moon; for in one of our excursions, still aiming to ascend higher than we had ever done before, we were actually carried to that satellite; and if we had not there fallen into a lake, and our machine had not been water-tight, we must have been dashed to pieces or drowned.  You will find in this book,” he added, presenting me with a small volume, bound in green parchment, and fastened with silver clasps, “a minute detail of the apparatus to be provided, and the directions to be pursued in making this wonderful voyage.  I have written it since I satisfied my mind that my fears of British rapacity were unfounded, and that I should do more good than harm by publishing the secret.  But still I am not sure,” he added, with one of his faint but significant smiles, “that I am not actuated by a wish to immortalize my name; for where is the mortal who would be indifferent to this object, if he thought he could attain it?  Read the book at your leisure, and study it.”

I listened to this recital with astonishment; and doubted at first, whether the Brahmin’s late severe attack had not had the effect of unsettling his brain:  but on looking in his face, the calm self-possession and intelligence which it exhibited, dispelled the momentary impression.  I was all impatience to know the adventures he met with in the moon, asking him fifty questions in a breath, but was most anxious to learn if it had inhabitants, and what sort of beings they were.

“Yes,” said he, “the moon has inhabitants, pretty much the same as the earth, of which they believe their globe to have been formerly a part.  But suspend your questions, and let me give you a recital of the most remarkable things I saw there.”

I checked my impatience, and listened with all my ears to the wonders he related.  He went on to inform me that the inhabitants of the moon resembled those of the earth, in form, stature, features, and manners, and were evidently of the same species, as they did not differ more than did the Hottentot from the Parisian.  That they had similar passions, propensities, and pursuits, but differed greatly in manners and habits.  They had more activity, but less strength:  they were feebler in mind as well as body.  But the most curious part of his information was, that a large number of them were born without any intellectual vigour, and wandered about as so many automatons, under the care of the government, until they were illuminated with the mental ray from some earthly brains, by means of the mysterious influence which the moon is known to exercise on our planet.  But in this case the inhabitant of the earth loses what the inhabitant of the moon gains—­the ordinary portion of understanding allotted to one mortal being thus divided between two; and, as might be expected, seeing that the two minds were originally the same, there is a most exact conformity between the man of the earth and his counterpart in the moon, in all their principles of action and modes of thinking.