“You think, then,” said I, “that the native of Kamtschatka has the advantage?”

“No,” he rejoined, “I do not mean to say that, for the evils of his situation are likewise very great; but they are more manifest, and therefore less necessary to be brought to your notice.”

It was now, by our time-pieces, about two o’clock in the afternoon—­that is, two hours had elapsed since we left terra firma; and, saving a few biscuits and a glass of cordial a-piece, we had not taken any sort of refreshment.  The Brahmin proposed that we now should dine; and, opening a small case, and drawing forth a cold fowl, a piece of dried goat’s flesh, a small pot of ghee, some biscuits, and a bottle of arrack flavoured with ginger and spices, with a larger one of water, we ate as heartily as we had ever done at the hermitage; the slight motion of our machine to one side or the other, whenever we moved, giving us nearly as much exercise as a vessel in a smooth sea.  The animal food had been provided for me, for the Brahmin satisfied his hunger with the ghee, sweetmeats, and biscuit, and ate sparingly even of them.  We each took two glasses of the cordial diluted with water, and carefully putting back the fragments, again turned our thoughts to the planet we had left.

The middle of the Pacific now lay immediately beneath us.  I had never before been struck with the irregular distribution of land and water on our globe, the expanse of ocean here being twice as large as in any other part; and, on remarking this striking difference to the Brahmin, he replied: 

“It is the opinion of some philosophers in the moon, that their globe is a fragment of ours; and, as they can see every part of the earth’s surface, they believe the Pacific was the place from which the moon was ejected.  They pretend that a short, but consistent tradition of the disruption, has regularly been transmitted from remote antiquity; and they draw confirmation of their hypothesis from many words of the Chinese, and other Orientals, with whom they claim affinity.”

“Ridiculous!” said I; “the moon is one-fourth the diameter of the earth; and if the two were united in one sphere, the highest mountains must have been submerged, and of course there would have been no human inhabitants; or, if any part of the land was then bare, on the waters retiring to fill up the chasm made by the separation of so large a body as the moon, the parts before habitable would be, instead of two, three, or at most four miles, as your Himalah mountains are said to be, some twenty or thirty miles above the level of the ocean.”

“That is not quite so certain,” said he:  “we know not of what the interior of the earth is composed, any more than we could distinguish the contents of an egg, by penetrating one hundredth part of its shell.  But we see, that if one drop of water be united with another, they form one large drop, as spherical as either of the two which composed it:  and on the separation of the moon from the earth, if they were composed of mingled solids and fluids, or if the solid parts rested on fluid, both the fragment and the remaining earth would assume the same globular appearance they now present.