PRESIDENT BARBICANE'S COMMUNICATION.
On the 5th of October, at 8 p.m., a dense crowd pressed into the saloons
of the Gun Club, 21, Union-square. All the members of the club residing
at Baltimore had gone on the invitation of their president. The express
brought corresponding members by hundreds, and if the meeting-hall had
not been so large, the crowd of _savants_ could not have found room in
it; they overflowed into the neighbouring rooms, down the passages, and
even into the courtyards; there they ran against the populace who were
pressing against the doors, each trying to get into the front rank, all
eager to learn the important communication of President Barbicane, all
pressing, squeezing, crushing with that liberty of action peculiar to
the masses brought up in the idea of self-government.
That evening any stranger who might have chanced to be in Baltimore
could not have obtained a place at any price in the large hall; it was
exclusively reserved to residing or corresponding members; no one else
was admitted; and the city magnates, common councillors, and select men
were compelled to mingle with their inferiors in order to catch stray
news from the interior.
The immense hall presented a curious spectacle; it was marvellously
adapted to the purpose for which it was built. Lofty pillars formed of
cannon, superposed upon huge mortars as a base, supported the fine
ironwork of the arches--real cast-iron lacework.
Trophies of blunderbusses, matchlocks, arquebuses, carbines, all sorts
of ancient or modern firearms, were picturesquely enlaced against the
walls. The gas, in full flame, came out of a thousand revolvers grouped
in the form of lustres, whilst candlesticks of pistols, and candelabra
made of guns done up in sheaves, completed this display of light. Models
of cannons, specimens of bronze, targets spotted with shot-marks,
plaques broken by the shock of the Gun Club, balls, assortments of
rammers and sponges, chaplets of shells, necklaces of projectiles,
garlands of howitzers--in a word, all the tools of the artilleryman
surprised the eyes by their wonderful arrangement, and induced a belief
that their real purpose was more ornamental than deadly.
In the place of honour was seen, covered by a splendid glass case, a
piece of breech, broken and twisted under the effort of the powder--a
precious fragment of J.T. Maston's cannon.
At the extremity of the hall the president, assisted by four
secretaries, occupied a wide platform. His chair, placed on a carved
gun-carriage, was modelled upon the powerful proportions of a 32-inch
mortar; it was pointed at an angle of 90 degs., and hung upon trunnions
so that the president could use it as a rocking-chair, very agreeable in
great heat. Upon the desk, a huge iron plate, supported upon six
carronades, stood a very tasteful inkstand, made of a beautifully-chased
Spanish piece, and a report-bell, which, when required, went off like a
revolver. During the vehement discussions this new sort of bell scarcely
sufficed to cover the voices of this legion of excited artillerymen.
In front of the desk, benches, arranged in zigzags, like the
circumvallations of intrenchment, formed a succession of bastions and
curtains where the members of the Gun Club took their seats; and that
evening, it may be said, there were plenty on the ramparts. The
president was sufficiently known for all to be assured that he would not
have called together his colleagues without a very great motive.
Impey Barbicane was a man of forty, calm, cold, austere, of a singularly
serious and concentrated mind, as exact as a chronometer, of an
imperturbable temperament and immovable character; not very chivalrous,
yet adventurous, and always bringing practical ideas to bear on the
wildest enterprises; an essential New-Englander, a Northern colonist,
the descendant of those Roundheads so fatal to the Stuarts, and the
implacable enemy of the Southern gentlemen, the ancient cavaliers of the
mother country--in a word, a Yankee cast in a single mould.
Barbicane had made a great fortune as a timber-merchant; named director
of artillery during the war, he showed himself fertile in inventions;
enterprising in his ideas, he contributed powerfully to the progress of
ballistics, gave an immense impetus to experimental researches.
He was a person of average height, having, by a rare exception in the
Gun Club, all his limbs intact. His strongly-marked features seemed to
be drawn by square and rule, and if it be true that in order to guess
the instincts of a man one must look at his profile, Barbicane seen
thus offered the most certain indications of energy, audacity, and
_sang-froid_.
At that moment he remained motionless in his chair, mute, absorbed, with
an inward look sheltered under his tall hat, a cylinder of black silk,
which seems screwed down upon the skull of American men.
His colleagues talked noisily around him without disturbing him; they
questioned one another, launched into the field of suppositions,
examined their president, and tried, but in vain, to make out the _x_ of
his imperturbable physiognomy.
Just as eight o'clock struck from the fulminating clock of the large
hall, Barbicane, as if moved by a spring, jumped up; a general silence
ensued, and the orator, in a slightly emphatic tone, spoke as follows:--
"Brave colleagues,--It is some time since an unfruitful peace plunged
the members of the Gun Club into deplorable inactivity. After a period
of some years, so full of incidents, we have been obliged to abandon our
works and stop short on the road of progress. I do not fear to proclaim
aloud that any war which would put arms in our hands again would be
welcome--"
"Yes, war!" cried impetuous J.T. Maston.
"Hear, hear!" was heard on every side.
"But war," said Barbicane, "war is impossible under actual
circumstances, and, whatever my honourable interrupter may hope, long
years will elapse before our cannons thunder on a field of battle. We
must, therefore, make up our minds to it, and seek in another order of
ideas food for the activity by which we are devoured."
The assembly felt that its president was coming to the delicate point;
it redoubled its attention.
"A few months ago, my brave colleagues," continued Barbicane, "I asked
myself if, whilst still remaining in our speciality, we could not
undertake some grand experiment worthy of the nineteenth century, and if
the progress of ballistics would not allow us to execute it with
success. I have therefore sought, worked, calculated, and the conviction
has resulted from my studies that we must succeed in an enterprise that
would seem impracticable in any other country. This project, elaborated
at length, will form the subject of my communication; it is worthy of
you, worthy of the Gun Club's past history, and cannot fail to make a
noise in the world!"
"Much noise?" cried a passionate artilleryman.
"Much noise in the true sense of the word," answered Barbicane.
"Don't interrupt!" repeated several voices.
"I therefore beg of you, my brave colleagues," resumed the president,
"to grant me all your attention."
A shudder ran through the assembly. Barbicane, having with a rapid
gesture firmly fixed his hat on his head, continued his speech in a calm
tone:--
"There is not one of you, brave colleagues, who has not seen the moon,
or, at least, heard of It. Do not be astonished if I wish to speak to
you about the Queen of Night. It is, perhaps, our lot to be the
Columbuses of this unknown world. Understand me, and second me as much
as you can, I will lead you to its conquest, and its name shall be
joined to those of the thirty-six States that form the grand country of
the Union!"
"Hurrah for the moon!" cried the Gun Club with one voice.
"The moon has been much studied," resumed Barbicane; "its mass, density,
weight, volume, constitution, movements, distance, the part it plays in
the solar world, are all perfectly determined; selenographic maps have
been drawn with a perfection that equals, if it does not surpass, those
of terrestrial maps; photography has given to our satellite proofs of
incomparable beauty--in a word, all that the sciences of mathematics,
astronomy, geology, and optics can teach is known about the moon; but
until now no direct communication with it has ever been established."
A violent movement of interest and surprise welcomed this sentence of
the orator.
"Allow me," he resumed, "to recall to you in few words how certain
ardent minds, embarked upon imaginary journeys, pretended to have
penetrated the secrets of our satellite. In the seventeenth century a
certain David Fabricius boasted of having seen the inhabitants of the
moon with his own eyes. In 1649 a Frenchman, Jean Baudoin, published his
_Journey to the Moon by Dominique Gonzales, Spanish Adventurer_. At the
same epoch Cyrano de Bergerac published the celebrated expedition that
had so much success in France. Later on, another Frenchman (that nation
took a great deal of notice of the moon), named Fontenelle, wrote his
_Plurality of Worlds_, a masterpiece of his time; but science in its
progress crushes even masterpieces! About 1835, a pamphlet, translated
from the _New York American_, related that Sir John Herschel, sent to
the Cape of Good Hope, there to make astronomical observations, had, by
means of a telescope, perfected by interior lighting, brought the moon
to within a distance of eighty yards. Then he distinctly perceived
caverns in which lived hippopotami, green mountains with golden borders,
sheep with ivory horns, white deer, and inhabitants with membraneous
wings like those of bats. This treatise, the work of an American named
Locke, had a very great success. But it was soon found out that it was a
scientific mystification, and Frenchmen were the first to laugh at it."
"Laugh at an American!" cried J.T. Maston; "but that's a _casus belli_!"
"Be comforted, my worthy friend; before Frenchmen laughed they were
completely taken in by our countryman. To terminate this rapid history,
I may add that a certain Hans Pfaal, of Rotterdam, went up in a balloon
filled with a gas made from azote, thirty-seven times lighter than
hydrogen, and reached the moon after a journey of nineteen days. This
journey, like the preceding attempts, was purely imaginary, but it was
the work of a popular American writer of a strange and contemplative
genius. I have named Edgar Poe!"
"Hurrah for Edgar Poe!" cried the assembly, electrified by the words of
the president.
"I have now come to an end of these attempts which I may call purely
literary, and quite insufficient to establish any serious communications
with the Queen of Night. However, I ought to add that some practical
minds tried to put themselves into serious communication with her. Some
years ago a German mathematician proposed to send a commission of
_savants_ to the steppes of Siberia. There, on the vast plains, immense
geometrical figures were to be traced by means of luminous reflectors;
amongst others, the square of the hypothenuse, vulgarly called the
'Ass's Bridge.' 'Any intelligent being,' said the mathematician, 'ought
to understand the scientific destination of that figure. The Selenites
(inhabitants of the moon), if they exist, will answer by a similar
figure, and, communication once established, it will be easy to create
an alphabet that will allow us to hold converse with the inhabitants of
the moon.' Thus spoke the German mathematician, but his project was not
put into execution, and until now no direct communication has existed
between the earth and her satellite. But it was reserved to the
practical genius of Americans to put itself into communication with the
sidereal world. The means of doing so are simple, easy, certain,
unfailing, and will make the subject of my proposition."
A hubbub and tempest of exclamations welcomed these words. There was not
one of the audience who was not dominated and carried away by the words
of the orator.
"Hear, hear! Silence!" was heard on all sides.
When the agitation was calmed down Barbicane resumed, in a graver tone,
his interrupted speech.
"You know," said he, "what progress the science of ballistics has made
during the last few years, and to what degree of perfection firearms
would have been brought if the war had gone on. You are not ignorant in
general that the power of resistance of cannons and the expansive force
of powder are unlimited. Well, starting from that principle, I asked
myself if, by means of sufficient apparatus, established under
determined conditions of resistance, it would not be possible to send a
cannon-ball to the moon!"
At these words an "Oh!" of stupefaction escaped from a thousand panting
breasts; then occurred a moment of silence, like the profound calm that
precedes thunder. In fact, the thunder came, but a thunder of applause,
cries, and clamour which made the meeting-hall shake again. The
president tried to speak; he could not. It was only at the end of ten
minutes that he succeeded in making himself heard.
"Let me finish," he resumed coldly. "I have looked at the question in
all its aspects, and from my indisputable calculations it results that
any projectile, hurled at an initial speed of twelve thousand yards a
second, and directed at the moon, must necessarily reach her. I have,
therefore, the honour of proposing to you, my worthy colleagues, the
attempting of this little experiment."