THE END
We may remember the intense sympathy which had accompanied the travelers
on their departure. If at the beginning of the enterprise they had excited such
emotion both in the old and new world, with what enthusiasm would they be
received on their return! The millions of spectators which had beset the
peninsula of Florida, would they not rush to meet these sublime adventurers?
Those legions of strangers, hurrying from all parts of the globe toward the
American shores, would they leave the Union without having seen Barbicane,
Nicholl, and Michel Ardan? No! and the ardent passion of the public was bound
to respond worthily to the greatness of the enterprise. Human creatures who had
left the terrestrial sphere, and returned after this strange voyage into
celestial space, could not fail to be received as the prophet Elias would be if
he came back to earth. To see them first, and then to hear them, such was the
universal longing.
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, Nicholl, and the delegates of the Gun Club,
returning without delay to Baltimore, were received with indescribable
enthusiasm. The notes of President Barbicane’s voyage were ready to be
given to the public. The New York Herald bought the manuscript at a price not
yet known, but which must have been very high. Indeed, during the publication
of “A Journey to the Moon,” the sale of this paper amounted to five
millions of copies. Three days after the return of the travelers to the earth,
the slightest detail of their expedition was known. There remained nothing more
but to see the heroes of this superhuman enterprise.
The expedition of Barbicane and his friends round the moon had enabled
them to correct the many admitted theories regarding the terrestrial satellite.
These savants had observed de visu, and under particular circumstances. They
knew what systems should be rejected, what retained with regard to the
formation of that orb, its origin, its habitability. Its past, present, and
future had even given up their last secrets. Who could advance objections against
conscientious observers, who at less than twenty-four miles distance had marked
that curious mountain of Tycho, the strangest system of lunar orography? How
answer those savants whose sight had penetrated the abyss of Pluto’s
circle? How contradict those bold ones whom the chances of their enterprise had
borne over that invisible face of the disc, which no human eye until then had
ever seen? It was now their turn to impose some limit on that selenographic
science, which had reconstructed the lunar world as Cuvier did the skeleton of
a fossil, and say, “The moon was this, a habitable world, inhabited
before the earth. The moon is that, a world uninhabitable, and now
uninhabited.”
To celebrate the return of its most illustrious member and his two
companions, the Gun Club decided upon giving a banquet, but a banquet worthy of
the conquerors, worthy of the American people, and under such conditions that
all the inhabitants of the Union could directly take part in it.
All the head lines of railroads in the States were joined by flying
rails; and on all the platforms, lined with the same flags, and decorated with
the same ornaments, were tables laid and all served alike. At certain hours,
successively calculated, marked by electric clocks which beat the seconds at
the same time, the population were invited to take their places at the banquet
tables. For four days, from the 5th to the 9th of January, the trains were
stopped as they are on Sundays on the railways of the United States, and every
road was open. One engine only at full speed, drawing a triumphal carriage, had
the right of traveling for those four days on the railroads of the United
States.
The engine was manned by a driver and a stoker, and bore, by special
favor, the Hon. J. T. Maston, secretary of the Gun Club. The carriage was
reserved for President Barbicane, Colonel Nicholl, and Michel Ardan. At the
whistle of the driver, amid the hurrahs, and all the admiring vociferations of
the American language, the train left the platform of Baltimore. It traveled at
a speed of one hundred and sixty miles in the hour. But what was this speed
compared with that which had carried the three heroes from the mouth of the
Columbiad?
Thus they sped from one town to the other, finding whole populations at
table on their road, saluting them with the same acclamations, lavishing the
same bravos! They traveled in this way through the east of the Union,
Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire;
the north and west by New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin; returning to the
south by Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana; they went to the
southeast by Alabama and Florida, going up by Georgia and the Carolinas,
visiting the center by Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and Indiana, and, after
quitting the Washington station, re-entered Baltimore, where for four days one
would have thought that the United States of America were seated at one immense
banquet, saluting them simultaneously with the same hurrahs! The apotheosis was
worthy of these three heroes whom fable would have placed in the rank of
demigods.
And now will this attempt, unprecedented in the annals of travels, lead
to any practical result? Will direct communication with the moon ever be
established? Will they ever lay the foundation of a traveling service through
the solar world? Will they go from one planet to another, from Jupiter to
Mercury, and after awhile from one star to another, from the Polar to Sirius?
Will this means of locomotion allow us to visit those suns which swarm in the
firmament?
To such questions no answer can be given. But knowing the bold ingenuity
of the Anglo-Saxon race, no one would be astonished if the Americans seek to
make some use of President Barbicane’s attempt.
Thus, some time after the return of the travelers, the public received
with marked favor the announcement of a company, limited, with a capital of a
hundred million of dollars, divided into a hundred thousand shares of a
thousand dollars each, under the name of the “National Company of Interstellary
Communication.” President, Barbicane; vice-president, Captain Nicholl;
secretary, J. T. Maston; director of movements, Michel Ardan.
And as it is part of the American temperament to foresee everything in
business, even failure, the Honorable Harry Trolloppe, judge commissioner, and
Francis Drayton, magistrate, were nominated beforehand!
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