te. And indeed I
had now every reason to be terrified. My distance from the moon was
comparatively trivial, while the labor required by the condenser was
diminished not at all, and I could discover no indication whatever of a
decreasing rarity of the air.

APRIL 19TH. This morning, to my great joy, about nine o'clock, the
surface of the moon being frightfully near and my fears excited to the
utmost, the pump of my condenser at length gave evident tokens of an
alteration in the atmosphere. By ten, I had reason to believe its
density considerably increased. By eleven, very little labor was
necessary at the apparatus; and at twelve o'clock, with some hesitation,
I ventured to open the car a little and suffered no inconvenience. I
finally threw aside the gum-elastic chamber and unrigged it from around
the car. As might have been expected, spasms and violent headache were
the immediate consequences of an experiment so rash. But this was
forgotten in consideration of other things. My approach was still rapid
in the extreme; and it soon became certain that although I had probably
not been deceived in the expectation of finding a fairly dense
atmosphere, still I had been wrong in supposing that atmosphere dense
enough to support the great weight contained in the car of the balloon.
I was now close upon the planet and coming down with the most terrible
rapidity. I lost not a moment, accordingly, in throwing overboard first
my ballast, then my water-kegs, then my condensing apparatus and
gum-elastic chamber, and finally every article within the car.

But it was all to no purpose. I still fell with horrible speed, and was
now not more than half a mile from the surface. As a last resource,
therefore, having got rid of my coat, hat, and boots, I cut loose from
the balloon the car itself, which was of no inconsiderable weight, and
thus clinging with both hands to the net-work, I had barely time to
observe that the whole country, as far as the eye could reach, was
thickly sown with small habitations, ere I tumbled headlong into the
very heart of a fantastic city and into the middle of a vast crowd of
ugly little people. I turned from them, and gazing upward at the earth
so lately left, and left perhaps forever, beheld it like a huge, dull
copper shield, fixed immovably in the heavens overhead and tipped on one
of its edges with a crescent border of the most brilliant gold.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

=HELPS TO STUDY=

Describe the