moment. The revolution itself must, of course, have taken place in an
easy and gradual manner, and it is by no means clear that, had I even
been awake at the time of the occurrence, I should have been made
aware of it by any internal evidence of an inversion -- that is to
say, by any inconvenience or disarrangement, either about my person
or about my apparatus.
"It is almost needless to say that, upon coming to a due sense of my
situation, and emerging from the terror which had absorbed every
faculty of my soul, my attention was, in the first place, wholly
directed to the contemplation of the general physical appearance of
the moon. It lay beneath me like a chart -- and although I judged it
to be still at no inconsiderable distance, the indentures of its
surface were defined to my vision with a most striking and altogether
unaccountable distinctness. The entire absence of ocean or sea, and
indeed of any lake or river, or body of water whatsoever, struck me,
at first glance, as the most extraordinary feature in its geological
condition. Yet, strange to say, I beheld vast level regions of a
character decidedly alluvial, although by far the greater portion of
the hemisphere in sight was covered with innumerable volcanic
mountains, conical in shape, and having more the appearance of
artificial than of natural protuberance. The highest among them does
not exceed three and three-quarter miles in perpendicular elevation;
but a map of the volcanic districts of the Campi Phlegraei would
afford to your Excellencies a better idea of their general surface
than any unworthy description I might think proper to attempt. The
greater part of them were in a state of evident eruption, and gave me
fearfully to understand their fury and their power, by the repeated
thunders of the miscalled meteoric stones, which now rushed upward by
the balloon with a frequency more and more appalling.
"April 18th. To-day I found an enormous increase in the moon's
apparent bulk -- and the evidently accelerated velocity of my descent
began to fill me with alarm. It will be remembered, that, in the
earliest stage of my speculations upon the possibility of a passage
to the moon, the existence, in its vicinity, of an atmosphere, dense
in proportion to the bulk of the planet, had entered largely into my
calculations; this too in spite of many theories to the contrary,
and, it may be added, in spite of a general disbelief in the
existence of any lunar atmosphere at all. But, in addition to what I
have already urged in regard to Encke's comet and the zodiacal light,
I had been strengthened in my opinion by certain observations of Mr.
Schroeter, of Lilienthal. He observed the moon when two days and a
half old, in the evening soon after sunset, before the dark part was
visible, and continued to watch it until it became visible. The two
cusps appeared tapering in a very sharp faint prolongation, each
exhibiting its farthest extremity faintly illuminated by the solar
rays, before any part of the dark hemisphere was visible. Soon
afterward, the whole dark limb became illuminated. This prolongation
of the cusps beyond the semicircle, I thought, must have arisen from
the refraction of the sun's rays by the moon's atmosphere. I
computed, also, the height of the atmosphere (which could refract
light enough into its dark hemisphere to produce a twilight more
luminous than the light reflected from the earth when the moon is
about 32 degrees from the new) to be 1,356 Paris feet; in this view,
I supposed the greatest height capable of refracting the solar ray,
to be 5,376 feet. My ideas on this topic had also received
confirmation by a passage in the eighty-second volume of the
Philosophical Transactions, in which it is stated that at an
occultation of Jupiter's satellites, the third disappeared after
having been about 1" or 2" of time indistinct, and the fourth became
indiscernible near the limb.{*4}
"Cassini frequently observed Saturn, Jupiter, and the fixed stars,
when approaching the moon to occultation, to have their circular
figure changed into an oval one; and, in other occultations, he found
no alteration of figure at all. Hence it might be supposed, that at
some times and not at others, there is a dense matter encompassing
the moon wherein the rays of the stars are refracted.
"Upon the resistance or, more properly, upon the support of an
atmosphere, existing in the state of density imagined, I had, of
course, entirely depended for the safety of my ultimate descent.
Should I then, after all, prove to have been mistaken, I had in
consequence nothing better to expect, as a finale to my adventure,
than being dashed into atoms against the rugged surface of the
satellite. And, indeed, I had now every reason to be terrified. My
distance from the moon was comparatively trifling, while the labor
required by the condenser was diminished not at all, and I could
discover no indication whatever of a decreasing rarity in the air.
"April 19th. This morning, to my great joy, about nine o'clock, the
surface of the moon being frightfully near, and my apprehensions
excited to the utmost, the pump of my condenser at length gave
evident tokens of an alteration in the atmosphere. By ten, I had
reason to believe its density considerably increased. By eleven, very
little labor was necessary at the apparatus; and at twelve o'clock,
with some hesitation, I ventured to unscrew the tourniquet, when,
finding no inconvenience from having done so, I finally threw open
the gum-elastic chamber, and unrigged it from around the car. As
might have been expected, spasms and violent headache were the
immediate consequences of an experiment so precipitate and full of
danger. But these and other difficulties attending respiration, as
they were by no means so great as to put me in peril of my life, I
determined to endure as I best could, in consideration of my leaving
them behind me momently in my approach to the denser strata near the
moon. This approach, however, was still impetuous in the extreme; and
it soon became alarmingly certain that, although I had probably not
been deceived in the expectation of an atmosphere dense in proportion
to the mass of the satellite, still I had been wrong in supposing
this density, even at the surface, at all adequate to the support of
the great weight contained in the car of my balloon. Yet this should
have been the case, and in an equal degree as at the surface of the
earth, the actual gravity of bodies at either planet supposed in the
ratio of the atmospheric condensation. That it was not the case,
however, my precipitous downfall gave testimony enough; why it was
not so, can only be explained by a reference to those possible
geological disturbances to which I have formerly alluded. At all
events I was now close upon the planet, and coming down with the most
terrible impetuosity. I lost not a moment, accordingly, in throwing
overboard first my ballast, then my water-kegs, then my condensing
> apparatus and gum-elastic chamber, and finally every article within
the car. But it was all to no purpose. I still fell with horrible
rapidity, and was now not more than half a mile from the surface. As
a last resource, therefore, having got rid of my coat, hat, and
boots, I cut loose from the balloon the car itself, which was of no
inconsiderable weight, and thus, clinging with both hands to the
net-work, I had barely time to observe that the whole country, as far
as the eye could reach, was thickly interspersed with diminutive
habitations, ere I tumbled headlong into the very heart of a
fantastical-looking city, and into the middle of a vast crowd of ugly
little people, who none of them uttered a single syllable, or gave
themselves the least trouble to render me assistance, but stood, like
a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and
my balloon askant, with their arms set a-kimbo. I turned from them in
contempt, and, gazing upward at the earth so lately left, and left
perhaps for ever, beheld it like a huge, dull, copper shield, about
two degrees in diameter, fixed immovably in the heavens overhead, and
tipped on one of its edges with a crescent border of the most
brilliant gold. No traces of land or water could be discovered, and
the whole was clouded with variable spots, and belted with tropical
and equatorial zones.
"Thus, may it please your Excellencies, after a series of great
anxieties, unheard of dangers, and unparalleled escapes, I had, at
length, on the nineteenth day of my departure from Rotterdam, arrived
in safety at the conclusion of a voyage undoubtedly the most
extraordinary, and the most momentous, ever accomplished, undertaken,
or conceived by any denizen of earth. But my adventures yet remain to
be related. And indeed your Excellencies may well imagine that, after
a residence of five years upon a planet not only deeply interesting
in its own peculiar character, but rendered doubly so by its intimate
connection, in capacity of satellite, with the world inhabited by
man, I may have intelligence for the private ear of the States'
College of Astronomers of far more importance than the details,
however wonderful, of the mere voyage which so happily concluded.
This is, in fact, the case. I have much -- very much which it would
give me the greatest pleasure to communicate. I have much to say of
the climate of the planet; of its wonderful alternations of heat and
cold, of unmitigated and burning sunshine for one fortnight, and more
than polar frigidity for the next; of a constant transfer of
moisture, by distillation like that in vacuo, from the point beneath
the sun to the point the farthest from it; of a variable zone of
running water, of the people themselves; of their manners, customs,
and political institutions; of their peculiar physical construction;
of their ugliness; of their want of ears, those useless appendages in
an atmosphere so peculiarly modified; of their consequent ignorance
of the use and properties of speech; of their substitute for speech
in a singular method of inter-communication; of the incomprehensible
connection between each particular individual in the moon with some
particular individual on the earth -- a connection analogous with,
and depending upon, that of the orbs of the planet and the
satellites, and by means of which the lives and destinies of the
inhabitants of the one are interwoven with the lives and destinies of
the inhabitants of the other; and above all, if it so please your
Excellencies -- above all, of those dark and hideous mysteries which
lie in the outer regions of the moon -- regions which, owing to the
almost miraculous accordance of the satellite's rotation on its own
axis with its sidereal revolution about the earth, have never yet
been turned, and, by God's mercy, never shall be turned, to the
scrutiny of the telescopes of man. All this, and more- much more --
would I most willingly detail. But, to be brief, I must have my
reward. I am pining for a return to my family and to my home, and as
the price of any farther communication on my part -- in consideration
of the light which I have it in my power to throw upon many very
important branches of physical and metaphysical science -- I must
solicit, through the influence of your honorable body, a pardon for
the crime of which I have been guilty in the death of the creditors
upon my departure from Rotterdam. This, then, is the object of the
present paper. Its bearer, an inhabitant of the moon, whom I have
prevailed upon, and properly instructed, to be my messenger to the
earth, will await your Excellencies' pleasure, and return to me with
the pardon in question, if it can, in any manner, be obtained.
"I have the honor to be, etc., your Excellencies' very humble
servant,
HANS PFAALL."
Upon finishing the perusal of this very extraordinary document,
Professor Rub-a-dub, it is said, dropped his pipe upon the ground in
the extremity of his surprise, and Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk
having taken off his spectacles, wiped them, and deposited them in
his pocket, so far forgot both himself and his dignity, as to turn
round three times upon his heel in the quintessence of astonishment
and admiration. There was no doubt about the matter -- the pardon
should be obtained. So at least swore, with a round oath, Professor
Rub-a-dub, and so finally thought the illustrious Von Underduk, as he
took the arm of his brother in science, and without saying a word,
began to make the best of his way home to deliberate upon the
measures to be adopted. Having reached the door, however, of the
burgomaster's dwelling, the professor ventured to suggest that as the
messenger had thought proper to disappear -- no doubt frightened to
death by the savage appearance of the burghers of Rotterdam -- the
pardon would be of little use, as no one but a man of the moon would
undertake a voyage to so vast a distance. To the truth of this
observation the burgomaster assented, and the matter was therefore at
an end. Not so, however, rumors and speculations. The letter, having
been published, gave rise to a variety of gossip and opinion. Some of
the over-wise even made themselves ridiculous by decrying the whole
business; as nothing better than a hoax. But hoax, with these sort of
people, is, I believe, a general term for all matters above their
comprehension. For my part, I cannot conceive upon what data they
have founded such an accusation. Let us see what they say:
Imprimus. That certain wags in Rotterdam have certain especial
antipathies to certain burgomasters and astronomers.
Don't understand at all.
Secondly. That an odd little dwarf and bottle conjurer, both of whose
ears, for some misdemeanor, have been cut off close to his head, has
been missing for several days from the neighboring city of Bruges.
Well -- what of that?
Thirdly. That the newspapers which were stuck all over the little
balloon were newspapers of Holland, and there
fore could not have been
made in the moon. They were dirty papers -- very dirty -- and Gluck,
the printer, would take his Bible oath to their having been printed
in Rotterdam.
He was mistaken -- undoubtedly -- mistaken.
Fourthly, That Hans Pfaall himself, the druken villain, and the three
very idle gentlemen styled his creditors, were all seen, no longer
than two or three days ago, in a tippling house in the suburbs,
having just returned, with money in their pockets, from a trip beyond
the sea.
Don't believe it -- don't believe a word of it.
Lastly. That it is an opinion very generally received, or which ought
to be generally received, that the College of Astronomers in the city
of Rotterdam, as well as other colleges in all other parts of the
world, -- not to mention colleges and astronomers in general, -- are,
to say the least of the matter, not a whit better, nor greater, nor
wiser than they ought to be.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
Notes to Hans Pfaal
{*1} NOTE--Strictly speaking, there is but little similarity between
the above sketchy trifle and the celebrated "Moon-Story" of Mr.
Locke; but as both have the character of _hoaxes _(although the one
is in a tone of banter, the other of downright earnest), and as both
hoaxes are on the same subject, the moon--moreover, as both attempt
to give plausibility by scientific detail--the author of "Hans
Pfaall" thinks it necessary to say, in _self-defence, _that his own
_jeu d'esprit _was published in the "Southern Literary Messenger"
about three weeks before the commencement of Mr. L's in the "New York
Sun." Fancying a likeness which, perhaps, does not exist, some of the
New York papers copied "Hans Pfaall," and collated it with the
"Moon-Hoax," by way of detecting the writer of the one in the writer
of the other.
As many more persons were actually gulled by the "Moon-Hoax" than
would be willing to acknowledge the fact, it may here afford some
little amusement to show why no one should have been deceived-to
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 10