d wonderfully increased in volume as to seem
but a comparatively short distance beneath me! I was thunderstruck! No
words can give any adequate idea of the extreme, the absolute horror and
astonishment, with which I was seized, possessed and altogether
overwhelmed. My knees tottered beneath me--my teeth chattered--my hair
started up on end. The balloon then had actually burst! These were the
first ideas which hurried through my mind. The balloon had burst! I was
falling--falling with the most impetuous, the most wonderful velocity!
To judge from the immense distance already so quickly passed over, it
could not be more than ten minutes at the farthest before I should meet
the surface of the earth and be hurled into annihilation!

But at length reflection came to my relief. I paused, I considered, and
I began to doubt. The matter was impossible. I could not, in any reason,
have so rapidly come down. Besides, although I was evidently approaching
the surface below me, it was with a speed by no means commensurate with
the velocity I had at first conceived. This consideration served to calm
my mind, and I finally succeeded in looking at the matter in its proper
point of view. In fact, amazement must have fairly deprived me of my
senses when I could not see the vast difference in appearance between
the surface below me and the surface of my mother earth. The latter was
indeed over my head and completely hidden by the balloon, while the
moon--the moon itself in all its glory--lay beneath me and at my feet!

I had indeed arrived at the point where the attraction of the moon had
proved stronger than the attraction of the earth, and so the moon now
appeared to be below me and I was descending upon it. It lay beneath me
like a chart, and I studied it with the deepest attention. The entire
absence of ocean or sea, and indeed of any lake or river, or body of
water whatsoever, struck me at the first glance as the most
extraordinary feature in its appearance.

APRIL 18TH. To-day I found an enormous increase in the moon's apparent
bulk--and the evidently increased velocity of my descent began to fill
me with alarm. I had relied on finding some atmosphere at the moon and
on the resistance of this atmosphere to [v]gravitation as affording me a
chance to land in safety. Should I prove to have been mistaken about the
atmosphere, I had nothing better to expect than to be dashed into atoms
against the rugged surface of the earth's [v]satelli