A Voyage to the Moon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 248 pages of information about A Voyage to the Moon.

A Voyage to the Moon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 248 pages of information about A Voyage to the Moon.

While I slept, the good Brahmin had contrived to manage both stop-cocks himself.  The time of my waking would have been about 11 o’clock at night, if we had continued on the earth; but we were now in a region where there was no alternation of day and night, but one unvarying cloudless sun.  Its heat, however, was not in proportion to its brightness; for we found that after we had ascended a few miles from the earth, it was becoming much colder, and the Brahmin had recourse to a chemical process for evolving heat, which soon made us comfortable:  but after we were fairly in the great aerial void, the temperature of our machine showed no tendency to change.

The sensations caused by the novelty of my situation, at first checked those lively and varied trains of thought which the bird’s-eye view of so many countries passing in review before us, was calculated to excite:  yet, after I had become more familiar with it, I contemplated the beautiful exhibition with inexpressible delight.  Besides, a glass of cordial, as well as the calm, confiding air of the Brahmin, contributed to restore me to my self-possession.  The reader will recollect, that although our motion, at first, partook of that of the earth’s on its axis, and although the positive effect was the same on our course, the relative effect was less and less as we ascended, and consequently, that after a certain height, every part of the terraqueous globe would present itself to our view in succession, as we rapidly receded from it.  At 9 o’clock, the whole of India was a little to the west of us, and we saw, as in a map, that fertile and populous region, which has been so strangely reduced to subjection, by a company of merchants belonging to a country on the opposite side of the globe—­a country not equal to one-fourth of it, in extent or population.  Its rivers were like small filaments of silver; the Red Sea resembled a narrow plate of the same metal.  The peninsula of India was of a darker, and Arabia of a light and more grayish green.

The sun’s rays striking obliquely on the Atlantic, emitted an effulgence that was dazzling to the eyes.  For two or three hours the appearance of the earth did not greatly vary, the wider extent of surface we could survey, compensating for our greater distance; and indeed at that time we could not see the whole horizon, without putting our eyes close to the glass.

When the Brahmin saw that I had overcome my first surprise, and had acquired somewhat of his own composure, he manifested a disposition to beguile the time with conversation.  “Look through the telescope,” said he, “a little from the sun, and observe the continent of Africa, which is presenting itself to our view.”  I took a hasty glance over it, and perceived that its northern edge was fringed with green; then a dull white belt marked the great Sahara, or Desert, and then it exhibited a deep green again, to its most southern extremity.  I tried in vain to discover the pyramids, for our telescope had not sufficient power to show them.

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A Voyage to the Moon from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.