imes, were necessary to determine them. The distance of the Projectile
from the Lunar surface, however, might be set down roughly at roughly
2833 miles.

The dispatch concluded with the following hypotheses, positively
pronounced to be the only two possible: Either, 1, The Lunar attraction
would finally prevail, in which case the travellers would reach their
destination; or 2, The Projectile, kept whirling forever in an immutable
orbit, would go on revolving around the Moon till time should be no
more.

In either alternative, what should be the lot of the daring adventurers?
They had, it is true, abundant provisions to last them for some time,
but even supposing that they did reach the Moon and thereby completely
establish the practicability of their daring enterprise, how were they
ever to get back? _Could_ they ever get back? or ever even be heard
from? Questions of this nature, freely discussed by the ablest pens of
the day, kept the public mind in a very restless and excited condition.

We must be pardoned here for making a little remark which, however,
astronomers and other scientific men of sanguine temperament would do
well to ponder over. An observer cannot be too cautious in announcing to
the public his discovery when it is of a nature purely speculative.
Nobody is obliged to discover a planet, or a comet, or even a satellite,
but, before announcing to the world that you have made such a discovery,
first make sure that such is really the fact. Because, you know, should
it afterwards come out that you have done nothing of the kind, you make
yourself a butt for the stupid jokes of the lowest newspaper scribblers.
Belfast had never thought of this. Impelled by his irrepressible rage
for discovery--the _furor inveniendi_ ascribed to all astronomers by
Aurelius Priscus--he had therefore been guilty of an indiscretion highly
un-scientific when his famous telegram, launched to the world at large
from the summit of the Rocky Mountains, pronounced so dogmatically on
the only possible issues of the great enterprise.

The truth was that his telegram contained _two_ very important errors:
1. Error of _observation_, as facts afterwards proved; the Projectile
_was_ not seen on the 13th and _could_ not have been on that day, so
that the little black spot which Belfast professed to have seen was most
certainly not the Projectile; 2. Error of _theory_ regarding the final
fate of the Projectile, since to make it become the Mo