The Moon Voyage

THE MOON VOYAGE

'FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON' & 'ROUND THE MOON'

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JULES VERNE

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The Moon Voyage
'From the Earth to the Moon' & 'Round the Moon'
First published in 1865
ISBN 978-1-775418-97-9
© 2010 The Floating Press

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.

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Contents

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FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
Chapter I - The Gun Club
Chapter II - President Barbicane's Communication
Chapter III - Effect of President Barbicane's Communication
Chapter IV - Answer from the Cambridge Observatory
Chapter V - The Romance of the Moon
Chapter VI - What it is Impossible to Ignore and What is No Longer Allowed to Be Believed in the United States
Chapter VII - The Hymn of the Cannon-Ball
Chapter VIII - History of the Cannon
Chapter IX - The Question of Powders
Chapter X - One Enemy Against Twenty-Five Millions of Friends
Chapter XI - Florida and Texas
Chapter XII - "Urbi et Orbi"
Chapter XIII - Stony Hill
Chapter XIV - Pickaxe and Trowel
Chapter XV - The Ceremony of the Casting
Chapter XVI - The Columbiad
Chapter XVII - A Telegram
Chapter XVIII - The Passenger of the Atlanta
Chapter XIX - A Meeting
Chapter XX - Thrust and Parry
Chapter XXI - How a Frenchman Settles an Affair
Chapter XXII - The New Citizen of the United States
Chapter XXIII - The Projectile Compartment
Chapter XXIV - The Telescope of the Rocky Mountains
Chapter XXV - Final Details
Chapter XXVI - Fire!
Chapter XXVII - Cloudy Weather
Chapter XXVIII - A New Star
ROUND THE MOON
Preliminary Chapter
Chapter I - From 10.20 P.M. to 10.47 P.M.
Chapter II - The First Half-Hour
Chapter III - Taking Possession
Chapter IV - A Little Algebra
Chapter V - The Temperature of Space
Chapter VI - Questions and Answers
Chapter VII - A Moment of Intoxication
Chapter VIII - At Seventy-Eight Thousand One Hundred and Fourteen Leagues
Chapter IX - The Consequences of Deviation
Chapter X - The Observers of the Moon
Chapter XI - Imagination and Reality
Chapter XII - Orographical Details
Chapter XIII - Lunar Landscapes
Chapter XIV - A Night of Three Hundred and Fifty-Four Hours and a Half
Chapter XV - Hyperbola or Parabola
Chapter XVI - The Southern Hemisphere
Chapter XVII - Tycho
Chapter XVIII - Grave Questions
Chapter XIX - A Struggle with the Impossible
Chapter XX - The Soundings of the Susquehanna
Chapter XXI - Jt Maston Called In
Chapter XXII - Picked Up
Chapter XXIII - The End

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

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Chapter I - The Gun Club

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During the Federal war in the United States a new and very influential club was established in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. It is well known with what energy the military instinct was developed amongst that nation of shipowners, shopkeepers, and mechanics. Mere tradesmen jumped their counters to become extempore captains, colonels, and generals without having passed the Military School at West Point; they soon rivalled their colleagues of the old continent, and, like them, gained victories by dint of lavishing bullets, millions, and men.

But where Americans singularly surpassed Europeans was in the science of ballistics, or of throwing massive weapons by the use of an engine; not that their arms attained a higher degree of perfection, but they were of unusual dimensions, and consequently of hitherto unknown ranges. The English, French, and Prussians have nothing to learn about flank, running, enfilading, or point-blank firing; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of American artillery.

This fact ought to astonish no one. The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are born engineers, just as Italians are musicians and Germans metaphysicians. Thence nothing more natural than to see them bring their audacious ingenuity to bear on the science of ballistics. Hence those gigantic cannon, much less useful than sewing-machines, but quite as astonishing, and much more admired. The marvels of this style by Parrott, Dahlgren, and Rodman are well known. There was nothing left the Armstrongs, Pallisers, and Treuille de Beaulieux but to bow before their transatlantic rivals.

Therefore during the terrible struggle between Northerners and Southerners, artillerymen were in great request; the Union newspapers published their inventions with enthusiasm, and there was no little tradesman nor naïf "booby" who did not bother his head day and night with calculations about impossible trajectory engines.

Now when an American has an idea he seeks another American to share it. If they are three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they elect a clerk, and a company is established. Five convoke a general meeting, and the club is formed. It thus happened at Baltimore. The first man who invented a new cannon took into partnership the first man who cast it and the first man that bored it. Such was the nucleus of the Gun Club. One month after its formation it numbered eighteen hundred and thirty-three effective members, and thirty thousand five hundred and seventy-five corresponding members.

One condition was imposed as a sine quâ non upon every one who wished to become a member—that of having invented, or at least perfected, a cannon; or, in default of a cannon, a firearm of some sort. But, to tell the truth, mere inventors of fifteen-barrelled rifles, revolvers, or sword-pistols did not enjoy much consideration. Artillerymen were always preferred to them in every circumstance.

"The estimation in which they are held," said one day a learned orator of the Gun Club, "is in proportion to the size of their cannon, and in direct ratio to the square of distance attained by their projectiles!"

A little more and it would have been Newton's law of gravitation applied to moral order.

Once the Gun Club founded, it can be easily imagined its effect upon the inventive genius of the Americans. War-engines took colossal proportions, and projectiles launched beyond permitted distances cut inoffensive pedestrians to pieces. All these inventions left the timid instruments of European artillery far behind them. This may be estimated by the following figures:—

Formerly, "in the good old times," a thirty-six pounder, at a distance of three hundred feet, would cut up thirty-six horses, attacked in flank, and sixty-eight men. The art was then in its infancy. Projectiles have since made their way. The Rodman gun that sent a projectile weighing half a ton a distance of seven miles could easily have cut up a hundred and fifty horses and three hundred men. There was some talk at the Gun Club of making a solemn experiment with it. But if the horses consented to play their part, the men unfortunately were wanting.

However that may be, the effect of these cannon was very deadly, and at each discharge the combatants fell like ears before a scythe. After such projectiles what signified the famous ball which, at Coutras, in 1587, disabled twenty-five men; and the one which, at Zorndorff, in 1758, killed forty fantassins; and in 1742, Kesseldorf's Austrian cannon, of which every shot levelled seventy enemies with the ground? What was the astonishing firing at Jena or Austerlitz, which decided the fate of the battle? During the Federal war much more wonderful things had been seen. At the battle of Gettysburg, a conical projectile thrown by a rifle-barrel cut up a hundred and seventy-three Confederates, and at the passage of the Potomac a Rodman ball sent two hundred and fifteen Southerners into an evidently better world. A formidable mortar must also be mentioned, invented by J.T. Maston, a distinguished member and perpetual secretary of the Gun Club, the result of which was far more deadly, seeing that, at its trial shot, it killed three hundred and thirty-seven persons—by bursting, it is true.

What can be added to these figures, so eloquent in themselves? Nothing. So the following calculation obtained by the statistician Pitcairn will be admitted without contestation: by dividing the number of victims fallen under the projectiles by that of the members of the Gun Club, he found that each one of them had killed, on his own account, an average of two thousand three hundred and seventy-five men and a fraction.

By considering such a result it will be seen that the single preoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity philanthropically, and the perfecting of firearms considered as instruments of civilisation. It was a company of Exterminating Angels, at bottom the best fellows in the world.

It must be added that these Yankees, brave as they have ever proved themselves, did not confine themselves to formulae, but sacrificed themselves to their theories.