A Voyage to the Moon

by George Tucker

  CHAPTER XV.

  _Atterley goes to the great monthly fair--Its various exhibitions;difficulties--Preparations to leave the Moon--Curiosities procured byAtterley--Regress to the Earth._

  The philosopher, not waiting to enjoy the triumph of victory, abruptlytook his leave, and we, refreshed and delighted with our walk, returnedhome. Our landlord informed us that we had arrived in good time toattend the great fair, or market, which regularly takes place a littlebefore the sun sinks below the horizon. Having taken a short repast,while the Brahmin called on one of his acquaintance, I sallied forthinto the street, and soon found myself in the bustling throng, who werehastening to this great resort of the busy, the idle, the knavish, andthe gay; some in pursuit of gain, and some of pleasure; whilst othersagain, without any settled purpose, were carried along by the vaguedesire of meeting with somewhat to relieve them from the painof idleness.

  The fair was held in a large square piece of ground in one of thesuburbs, set apart for that purpose; and on each of its four sides along low building, or rather roof, supported on massy white columns,extended about six hundred yards in length, and was thirty yards wide.Immediately within this arcade were arranged the finer kinds ofmerchandise, fabrics of cotton or silk, and articles of jewelry,cutlery, porcelain, and glass. On the outside were provisions of everykind, vegetable and animal, flesh, fish, and fowl, as well as thecoarser manufactures. At no great distance from this hollow square,(which was used exclusively for buying and selling,) might be seen aninfinite variety of persons, collected in groupes, all engaged in someoccupation or amusement, according to their several tastes and humours.Here a party of young men were jumping, or wrestling, or shooting at amark with cross-bows. There, girls and boys were dancing to the sound ofa pipe, or still smaller children were playing at marbles, or amusingthemselves with the toys they had just purchased. Not far from these, aquack from one scaffold was descanting on the virtues of his medicines,whilst a preacher from another was holding forth to the graver part ofthe crowd, the joys and terrors of another life; and yet farther on, amotley groupe were listening to a blind beggar, who was singing to themusic of a sort of rude guitar. Here and there curtains, hanging from aslight frame of wood-work, veiled a small square from the eyes of all,except those who paid a nail for admittance. Some of these curtainedboxes contained jugglers--some tumblers--some libidinous pictures--andothers again, strange birds, beasts, and other animals. I observed thatnone of the exhibitions were as much frequented as these booths; and Iwas told that the corporation of the city derived from them aconsiderable revenue. Amidst such an infinite variety of objects, myattention was so distracted that it could not settle down upon any one,and I strolled about without object or design.

  When I had become more familiar with this mixed multitude of sights andsounds, I endeavoured to take a closer survey of some of the objectscomposing the medley. The first thing which attracted my particularnotice, was a profusion of oaths and imprecations, which proceeded fromone of the curtained booths. I paid the admittance money to awell-dressed man, of smooth, easy manners, and entered. I found thereseveral parties paired off, and engaged at different games; but, likethe rest of the bystanders, I felt myself most strongly attractedtowards the two who were betting highest. One of these was an elderlyman, of a tall stature, in a plain dress; the other was a short man, invery costly apparel, and some years younger. For a long time the scalesof victory seemed balanced between them; but at length the tall man, whohad great self-possession, and who played with consummate skill, won thegame: soon after which he rose up, and making a graceful, respectful bowto the rest of the company, he retired. Not being able to catch his eye,so intent was he on his game, I felt some curiosity to know whether hewas a Glonglim; but could not ascertain the fact, as some of whom theBrahmin inquired, said that he was, while others maintained that he wasnot. His adversary, however, evidently belonged to that class, and, whenflushed with hope, reminded me of the feather-hunter. At first heendeavoured, by forced smiles, to conceal his rage and disappointment.He then bit his lips with vexation, and challenged one of the bystandersto play for a smaller stake. Fortune seemed about to smile on him onthis occasion; but one of the company, who appeared to be very muchrespected by the rest, detected the little man in some false play, andpublicly exposing him, broke up the game. I understood afterwards, thatbefore the fair was over, the gamester avenged himself for this injuryin the other's blood: that he then returned to the fair, secretlyentered another gambling booth, where he betted so rashly, that he soonlost not only his patrimonial estate, which was large, but his acquiredwealth, which was much larger. Having lost all his property, and evenhis clothes, he then staked and lost his liberty, and even his teeth,which were very good; and he will thus be compelled to live on soups forthe rest of his life.

  I saw several other matches played, in which great sums were betted,great skill was exhibited, and occasionally much unfairness practised.There was one man in the crowd, whose extraordinary good fortune I couldnot but admire. He went about from table to table, sometimes bettinghigh and sometimes low, but was generally successful, until he had wonas much as he could fairly carry; after which he went out, and amusedhimself at a puppet-show, and the stall of a cake-woman, with whom hehad formerly quarrelled, but who now, when she learnt his success, wasobsequiously civil to him. I did not see that he manifested superiorskill, but still he was successful; and in his last great stake with ayoung, but not inexpert player, he won the game, though the chances werethree to two against him. "Surely," thought I, "fortune rules thedestinies of man in the moon as well as on the earth."

  On looking now at my watch, I found that I had been longer a witness ofthese trials of skill and fortune, than I had been aware; and on leavingthe booth, perceived that the sun had sunk behind the western mountains,and that the earth began to beam with her nocturnal splendour. Those whohad come from a distance, were already hurrying back with their carts;and here and there light cars, of various forms and colours, and drawnby dogs, were conveying those away whose object had been amusement. Somewere snatching a hasty meal; and a few, by their quiet air, seemed as ifthey meant to continue on the spot as long as the regulations permit,after sunset, which is about twenty of our hours. I found the Brahmin athome when I returned, and I felt as much pleased to see him, as if wehad not seen each other for many months.

  As the shades of night approached, my anxiety to return to my nativeplanet increased, and I urged my friend to lose no time in preparing forour departure. We were soon afterwards informed that a man high inoffice, and renowned for his political sagacity, proposed to detain us,on the ground that when such voyages as ours were shown to bepracticable, the inhabitants of the earth, who were so much morenumerous than those of the moon, might invade the latter with a largearmy, for the purposes of rapine and conquest. We farther learnt thatthis opinion, which was at first cautiously circulated in the highercircles, had become more generally known, and was producing a strongsensation among the people.

  The Brahmin immediately presented himself before the council of state,to remove the impression. He pointed out to them the insurmountableobstacles to such an invasion, physical and moral. He urged to them thatthe nations of the earth felt so much jealousy and ill-will towards oneanother, that they never cordially co-operated in any enterprise fortheir common interest or glory; and that if any one nation were to sendan army into the moon, such a scheme of ambition would afford at once atemptation and pretext for its neighbours to invade it. That his countryhad not the ability, and mine had not the inclination, to attack theliberties of any other: so far from that, he informed them, on myauthority, that we were in the habit of sending teachers abroad, toinstruct other nations in the duties of religion, morals, and humanity.He entered into some calculations, to show that the project was alsoimpracticable on account of its expense; and, lastly, insisted that ifall other difficulties were removed, we should find it impossible toconvince the people of the earth that we had really been to the moon. Ihave sin
ce found that the Brahmin was more right in his last argument,than I then believed possible.

  I am not able to say what effect these representations of the Brahminwould have produced, if they had not been taken up and enforced by thepolitical rival of him who had first opposed our departure; but by hispowerful aid they finally triumphed, and we obtained a formal permissionto leave the moon whenever, we thought proper.

  As we meant to return in the same machine in which we came, we were notlong in preparing for our voyage. We proposed to set out about themiddle of the night; and we passed the chief part of the interval inmaking visits of ceremony, and in calling on those who had shown uscivility. I endeavoured also, to collect such articles as I thoughtwould be most curious and rare in my own country, and most likely toproduce conviction with those who might be disposed to question the factof my voyage. I was obliged, however, to limit myself to such things aswere neither bulky nor weighty, the Brahmin thinking that after we hadtaken in our instruments and the necessary provisions, we could notsafely take more than twenty or thirty pounds in addition.

  Some of my lunar curiosities, which I thought would be most new andinteresting to my countrymen, have proved to be very familiar to our menof science. This has been most remarkably the case with my mineralspecimens. Of the leaves and flowers of above seventy plants, which Ibrought, more than forty are found on the earth, and several of thesegrow in my native State. With the insects I have been more successful;but some of these, as well as of the plants, I am assured, are found onthe coasts of the Pacific, or in the islands of that ocean; which fact,by the way, gives a farther support to the Brahmin's hypothesis.

  Besides the productions of nature that I have mentioned, I procured somespecimens of their cloth, a few light toys, a lady's turban decoratedwith cantharides, a pair of slippers with heavy metallic soles, whichare used there for walking in a strong wind, and by the dancing girls toprevent their jumping too high. As this metal, which gravitates to themoon, is repelled from the earth, these slippers assist the wearer herein springing from the ground as much as they impeded it in the moon, andtherefore I have lent them to Madame ----, of the New-York Theatre, whois thus enabled to astonish and delight the spectators with herwonderful lightness and agility.

  But there is nothing that I have brought which I prize so highly as afew of their manuscripts. The Lunarians write as we do, from left toright; but when their words consist of more than one syllable, all thesubsequent syllables are put over the first, so that what we call _longwords_, they call _high_ ones: which mode of writing makes them morestriking to the eye. This peculiarity has, perhaps, had some effect ingiving their writers a magniloquence of style, something like that whichso laudably characterises our Fourth of July Orations and FuneralPanegyrics: that composition being thought the finest in which the wordsstand highest. Another advantage of this mode of writing is, that theycan crowd more in a small page, so that a long discourse, if it is alsovery eloquent, may be compressed in a single page. I have left some ofthe manuscripts with the publisher of this work, for the gratificationof the public curiosity.

  Having taken either respectful or affectionate leave of all, and gotevery thing in readiness, on the 20th day of August, 1825, aboutmidnight we again entered our copper balloon, if I may so speak, androse from the moon with the same velocity as we had formerly ascendedfrom the earth. Though I experienced somewhat of my former sensations,when I again found myself off the solid ground, yet I soon regained myself-possession; and, animated with the hope of seeing my children andcountry, with the past success of our voyage, and (I will not disguiseit,) with the distinction which I expected it would procure me from mycountrymen, I was in excellent spirits. The Brahmin exhibited the samemild equanimity as ever.

  As the course of our ascent was now less inclined from the vertical linethan before, in proportion as the motion of the moon on its axis, isslower than that of the earth, we for some hours could see the former,only by the light reflected from our planet; and although the objects onthe moon's surface were less distinct, they appeared yet more beautifulin my eyes than they had done in the glare of day. The difference,however, may be in part attributed to my being now in a better frame ofmind for enjoying the scene. As our distance increased, the face of themoon became of a lighter and more uniform tint, until at length itlooked like one vast lake of melted silver, with here and there smallpieces of greyish dross floating on it. After contemplating this lovelyand magnificent spectacle for about an hour, I turned to the Brahmin,and reminded him of his former promise to give me the history of hisearly life. He replied, "as you have seen all that you can see of themoon, and the objects of the earth are yet too indistinct to excite muchinterest, I am not likely to have a more suitable occasion;" and after ashort pause, he began in the way that the reader may see in thenext chapter.