As might
have been expected, spasms and violent headache were the immediate
consequences of an experiment so precipitate and full of danger. But
these and other difficulties attending respiration, as they were by no
means so great as to put me in peril of my life, I determined to
endure as I best could, in consideration of my leaving them behind
me momently in my approach to the denser strata near the moon. This
approach, however, was still impetuous in the extreme; and it soon
became alarmingly certain that, although I had probably not been
deceived in the expectation of an atmosphere dense in proportion to
the mass of the satellite, still I had been wrong in supposing this
density, even at the surface, at all adequate to the support of the
great weight contained in the car of my balloon. Yet this should
have been the case, and in an equal degree as at the surface of the
earth, the actual gravity of bodies at either planet supposed in the
ratio of the atmospheric condensation. That it was not the case,
however, my precipitous downfall gave testimony enough; why it was not
so, can only be explained by a reference to those possible
geological disturbances to which I have formerly alluded.
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