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change in the posture of affairs was perhaps, after all, that part of
the adventure least susceptible of explanation. For the bouleversement
in itself was not only natural and inevitable, but had been long
actually anticipated as a circumstance to be expected whenever I should
arrive at that exact point of my voyage where the attraction of the
planet should be superseded by the attraction of the satellite--or, more
precisely, where the gravitation of the balloon toward the earth should
be less powerful than its gravitation toward the moon. To be sure I
arose from a sound slumber, with all my senses in confusion, to the
contemplation of a very startling phenomenon, and one which, although
expected, was not expected at the moment. The revolution itself must, of
course, have taken place in an easy and gradual manner, and it is by no
means clear that, had I even been awake at the time of the occurrence,
I should have been made aware of it by any internal evidence of an
inversion--that is to say, by any inconvenience or disarrangement,
either about my person or about my apparatus.
"It is almost needless to say that, upon coming to a due sense of my
situation, and emerging from the terror which had absorbed every faculty
of my soul, my attention was, in the first place, wholly directed to
the contemplation of the general physical appearance of the moon. It
lay beneath me like a chart--and although I judged it to be still at no
inconsiderable distance, the indentures of its surface were defined
to my vision with a most striking and altogether unaccountable
distinctness. The entire absence of ocean or sea, and indeed of any lake
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