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wonderfully augmented in volume, as to subtend no less than thirty-nine
degrees in apparent angular diameter! 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 tumultuous ideas that hurried through my mind: "The balloon
had positively burst!--I was falling--falling with the most impetuous,
the most unparalleled velocity! To judge by 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 so horribly
conceived. This consideration served to calm the perturbation of my
mind, and I finally succeeded in regarding the phenomenon 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.
"
The stupor and surprise produced in my mind by this extraordinary
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