anoes; and the disparity between the former and the aerial
vehicles of the philosophers from the moon might not be greater than that
between the bark canoes of the savages and the mighty ships of their
discoverers. I might here pursue an endless chain of similar speculations;
but as they would be unimportant to my subject, I abandon them to my
reader, particularly if he be a philosopher, as matters well worthy of his
attentive consideration.

To return, then, to my supposition--let us suppose that the aerial
visitants I have mentioned, possessed of vastly superior knowledge to
ourselves--that is to say, possessed of superior knowledge in the art of
extermination--riding on hippogriffs--defended with impenetrable
armor--armed with concentrated sunbeams, and provided with vast engines,
to hurl enormous moonstones; in short, let us suppose them, if our vanity
will permit the supposition, as superior to us in knowledge, and
consequently in power, as the Europeans were to the Indians when they
first discovered them. All this is very possible, it is only our
self-sufficiency that makes us think otherwise; and I warrant the poor
savages, before they had any knowledge of the white men, armed in all the
terrors of glittering steel and tremendous gunpowder, were as perfectly
convinced that they themselves were the wisest, the most virtuous,
powerful, and perfect of created beings, as are at this present moment the
lordly inhabitants of old England, the volatile populace of France, or
even the self-satisfied citizens of this most enlightened republic.

Let us suppose, moreover, that the aerial voyagers, finding this planet to
be nothing but a howling wilderness, inhabited by us poor savages and wild
beasts, shall take formal possession of it, in the name of his most
gracious and philosophic excellency, the Man in the Moon. Finding however
that their numbers are incompetent to hold it in complete subjection, on
account of the ferocious barbarity of its inhabitants, they shall take our
worthy President, the King of England, the Emperor of Hayti, the mighty
Bonaparte, and the great King of Bantam, and, returning to their native
planet, shall carry them to court, as were the Indian chiefs led about as
spectacles in the courts of Europe.

Then making such obeisance as the etiquette of the court requires, they
shall address the puissant Man in the Moon in, as near as I can
conjecture, the following terms:----

"Most serene and mighty