Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/29

Rh Those scientific romances were simply wild exaggerations, based upon the thinnest foundation of scientific facts. In order, however, to describe a journey among the stars, it was necessary to invent some mode of locomotion in these distant regions. In former times Lucian had been content with a ship which ascended to the rising moon upon a waterspout; but it was now necessary to improve upon this very primitive mode, as people began to know something more of the forces of nature. One of the first of these travellers in imagination to the moon in modern times was Godwin (1638), and his plan was more ingenious than that of Lucian. He trained a great number of the wild swans of St. Helena to fly constantly upward toward a white object, and, having succeeded in thus training them, one fine night he threw himself off the Peak of Teneriffe, poised upon a piece of board, which was borne upward to the white moon by a great team of the gigantic swans. At the end of twelve days he arrived, according to his story, at his destination. A little later another writer of this peculiar kind of fiction, Wilkins, an Englishman, professed to have made the same ascent, borne up by an eagle. Alexandre Dumas, who recently wrote a short romance upon the same subject, only made a translation of an English work by that author. Wilkins' work is entitled, "The Discovery of a New World." One chapter of the book bears the title, "That 'tis possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world; and, if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them." It is thus that the right reverend philosopher reasons:—

"If it be here inquired what means there may be conjectured for our ascending beyond the sphere of the earth's mathematical vigour, I answer.—1. 'Tis not