Volume XIV, Issue XXI
From the Earth to the Moon
By Jules Verne
CHAPTER XVI, THE COLUMBIAD
Had the casting succeeded? They were reduced to mere conjecture. There was indeed every reason to expect success, since the mould has absorbed the entire mass of the molten metal; still some considerable time must elapse before they could arrive at any certainty upon the matter.
The patience of the members of the Gun Club was sorely tried during this period of time. But they could do nothing. J. T. Maston escaped roasting by a miracle. Fifteen days after the casting an immense column of smoke was still rising in the open sky and the ground burned the soles of the feet within a radius of two hundred feet round the summit of Stones Hill. It was impossible to approach nearer. All they could do was to wait with what patience they might.
Here we are at the 10th of August," exclaimed J. T. Maston one morning, "only four months to the 1st of December! We shall never be ready in time!" Barbicane said nothing, but his silence covered serious irritation.
However, daily observations revealed a certain change going on in the state of the ground. About the 15th of August the vapors ejected had sensibly diminished in intensity and thickness. Some days afterward the earth exhaled only a slight puff of smoke, the last breath of the monster enclosed within its circle of stone. Little by little the belt of heat contracted, until on the 22nd of August, Barbicane, his colleagues, and the engineer were enabled to set foot on the iron sheet which lay level upon the summit of Stones Hill. "At last!" exclaimed the president of the Gun Club, with an immense sigh of relief.
The work was resumed the same day. They proceeded at once to extract the interior mould, for the purpose of clearing out the boring of the piece. Pickaxes and boring irons were set to work without intermission. The clayey and sandy soils had acquired extreme hardness under the action of the heat; but, by the aid of the machines, the rubbish on being dug out was rapidly carted away on railway wagons; and such was the ardor of the work, so persuasive the arguments of Barbicane's dollars, that by the 3rd of September all traces of the mould had entirely disappeared.
Immediately the operation of boring was commenced; and by the aid of powerful machines, a few weeks later, the inner surface of the immense tube had been rendered perfectly cylindrical, and the bore of the piece had acquired a thorough polish.
At length, on the 22d of September, less than a twelvemonth after Barbicane's original proposition, the enormous weapon, accurately bored, and exactly vertically pointed, was ready for work. There was only the moon now to wait for; and they were pretty sure that she would not fail in the rendezvous.
The ecstasy of J. T. Maston knew no bounds, and he narrowly escaped a frightful fall while staring down the tube. But for the strong hand of Colonel Blomsberry, the worthy secretary, like a modern Erostratus, would have found his death in the depths of the Columbiad.
The cannon was then finished; there was no possible doubt as to its perfect completion. So, on the 6th of October, Captain Nicholl opened an account between himself and President Barbicane, in which he debited himself to the latter in the sum of two thousand dollars.
One may believe that the captain's wrath was increased to its highest point, and must have made him seriously ill. However, he had still three bets of three, four, and five thousand dollars, respectively; and if he gained two out of these, his position would not be very bad. But the money question did not enter into his calculations; it was the success of his rival in casting a cannon against which iron plates sixty feet thick would have been ineffectual, that dealt him a terrible blow.
After the 23rd of September the enclosure of Stones hill was thrown open to the public; and it will be easily imagined what was the concourse of visitors to this spot! There was an incessant flow of people to and from Tampa Town and the place, which resembled a procession, or rather, in fact, a pilgrimage.
It was already clear to be seen that, on the day of the experiment itself, the aggregate of spectators would be counted by millions; for they were already arriving from all parts of the earth upon this narrow strip of promontory. Europe was emigrating to America.
Up to that time, however, it must be confessed, the curiosity of the numerous comers was but scantily gratified. Most had counted upon witnessing the spectacle of the casting, and they were treated to nothing but smoke. This was sorry food for hungry eyes; but Barbicane would admit no one to that operation. Then ensued grumbling, discontent, murmurs; they blamed the president, taxed him with dictatorial conduct. His proceedings were declared "un-American." There was very nearly a riot round Stones Hill; but Barbicane remained inflexible. When, however, the Columbiad was entirely finished, this state of closed doors could no longer be maintained; besides it would have been bad taste, and even imprudence, to affront the public feeling. Barbicane, therefore, opened the enclosure to all comers; but, true to his practical disposition, he determined to coin money out of the public curiosity.
It was something, indeed, to be enabled to contemplate this immense Columbiad; but to descend into its depths, this seemed to the Americans the ne plus ultra of earthly felicity. Consequently, there was not one curious spectator who was not willing to give himself the treat of visiting the interior of this great metallic abyss. Baskets suspended from steam-cranes permitted them to satisfy their curiosity. There was a perfect mania.
Women, children, old men, all made it a point of duty to penetrate the mysteries of the colossal gun. The fare for the descent was fixed at five dollars per head; and despite this high charge, during the two months which preceded the experiment, the influx of visitors enabled the Gun Club to pocket nearly five hundred thousand dollars!
It is needless to say that the first visitors of the Columbiad were the members of the Gun Club. This privilege was justly reserved for that illustrious body. The ceremony took place on the 25th of September. A basket of honor took down the president, J. T. Maston, Major Elphinstone, General Morgan, Colonel Blomsberry, and other members of the club, to the number of ten in all. How hot it was at the bottom of that long tube of metal! They were half suffocated. But what delight! What ecstasy! A table had been laid with six covers on the massive stone which formed the bottom of the Columbiad, and lighted by a jet of electric light resembling that of day itself. Numerous exquisite dishes, which seemed to descend from heaven, were placed successively before the guests, and the richest wines of France flowed in profusion during this splendid repast, served nine hundred feet beneath the surface of the earth!
The festival was animated, not to say somewhat noisy. Toasts flew backward and forward. They drank to the earth and to her satellite, to the Gun Club, the Union, the Moon, Diana, Phoebe, Selene, the "peaceful courier of the night!" All the hurrahs, carried upward upon the sonorous waves of the immense acoustic tube, arrived with the sound of thunder at its mouth; and the multitude ranged round Stones Hill heartily united their shouts with those of the ten revelers hidden from view at the bottom of the gigantic Columbiad.
J. T. Maston was no longer master of himself. Whether he shouted or gesticulated, ate or drank most, would be a difficult matter to determine. At all events, he would not have given his place up for an empire, "not even if the cannon-- loaded, primed, and fired at that very moment--were to blow him in pieces into the planetary world."
CHAPTER XVII, A TELEGRAPHIC DISPATCH
The great works undertaken by the Gun Club had now virtually come to an end; and two months still remained before the day for the discharge of the shot to the moon. To the general impatience these two months appeared as long as years! Hitherto the smallest details of the operation had been daily chronicled by the journals, which the public devoured with eager eyes.
Just at this moment a circumstance, the most unexpected, the most extraordinary and incredible, occurred to rouse afresh their panting spirits, and to throw every mind into a state of the most violent excitement.
One day, the 30th of September, at 3:47 P.M., a telegram, transmitted by cable from Valentia (Ireland) to Newfoundland and the American Mainland, arrived at the address of President Barbicane.
The president tore open the envelope, read the dispatch, and, despite his remarkable powers of self-control, his lips turned pale and his eyes grew dim, on reading the twenty words of this telegram.
Here is the text of the dispatch, which figures now in the archives of the Gun Club:
FRANCE, PARIS, 30 September, 4 A.M. Barbicane, Tampa Town, Florida, United States.
Substitute for your spherical shell a cylindro-conical projectile. I shall go inside. Shall arrive by steamer Atlanta. MICHEL ARDAN.
(to be continued)
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
An Honest Look at the Life of a Great Man
Brunel's Great Ship
The Building of the Great Eastern
The 1893 Chicago World's Fair
Paintings of the Proposed Fair
Designers envisioned a great classical city that would inspire American civic architecture for years to come. George Westinghouse provided the magic of electrical illumination. Walt Disney's father worked as a construction worker on the fair buildings.
Westinghouse Workers' Housing
While many industrialists of the late Nineteenth Century gave little thought to the quality of workers' housing, George Westinghouse built houses like these that his workers could purchase for a small monthly installment. He even insured the houses so that if a family experienced the unfortunate loss of their breadwinner they would not lose their house.
Tearing Down High-Places
by Lela Markham
[click to read more]
In the Bible, many a man and a few women stumbled over idols in their pursuit to follow God and there were times in Israel’s history when God sent prophets to the nation to warn them to tear down the high places of Canaanite worship. I believe that these days the churches are faced with similar circumstances and that God can use Christian novelists as messengers to alert His Bride to the need to reform.
Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.” ~ Eudora Welty in On Writing. (read more)
A Lighthouse on a Mountain
On Mount Greylock, a Monument Rises in the Mist
In the clouds hanging on Greylock, Massachusetts' highest mountain, stands a lighthouse...
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." -- Psalm 119:105
Walking up the trail to the top of Greylock in November of 2000, I stepped into a cloud. The top of the mountain, unseen, was covered with a frosting of heavy ice. Inching upward, I came to this monument at the summit. A war memorial, but also an allusion to local author Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick. When the monument was first lit you could see it for seventy miles on a clear night.
Sinai
After the miraculous deliverance from Egypt, the establishment of the Passover celebration and the inspiration of Bezaleel and Aholiab to build the Tabernacle, Moses went up into a cloud on Mount Sinai. There G-d gave the law that would be a light to thousands of generations to Moses, but the people couldn't see what was happening on the mountain. They Turned Away [click to read] and made themselves a god of metal. Unable to visualize what they didn't see, they subjected themselves to foolishness.Golgotha
On a hill called Golgotha, the man who said: "I am the light of the world." -- John 9:5 slipped into death. And the people stood beholding. "And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself." -- Luke 23:35 Surely they felt that this was not the Messiah they had hoped for. Dying between two criminals, His body placed in the dark tomb, He was gone from them. His followers hid themselves away, fearing they would be killed as well.Zion
What happened on that mountain, though unseen, changed history. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." -- Hebrews 11:1. We now know the rest of the story, so it is easy to forget the need to retell the stories of promise. Revelation 21 [click to read] takes us to yet another mountaintop: "And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from G-d." -- Revelation 21:10 It is this unseen hope that must sustain us in the world we live in today.
...a war memorial and an allusion to author Herman Melville.
Mohomony
The Bridge of G-d
Unique Natural Formation Saved Early Monacans
One can almost imagine the battle...
...raging above this deep chasm.
Amazing Story of Deliverance in Monacan Heritage
Running desperately through the forest, the small band of Monacan men, women and children were vastly outnumbered by their pursuers. Powhatan warriers were overtaking them. Suddenly they came to the edge of a vast chasm! They could see no way to cross it.
They closed their eyes and prayed. Then they looked up and saw the formation we know today as Natural Bridge, one of Virginia's most unique wonders, spanning the chasm. Hurrying their women and children across the stone span, they followed. Then they turned to make their stand. The much larger army was constricted by the narrow bridge and could only attack the Monacans in a much smaller number. The bridge became a great equalizer between the two forces and the Monacans were victorious that day.
Passed from generation to generation, the story of Monacan survival has made Natural Bridge a sacred place to the Monacans. They named it Mohomony, meaning 'Bridge of G-d."
Today a recreated Monacan village stands at the base of the bridge. Because the story predates written accounts, it is easy to dismiss it as legend, yet as we considered it my wife said: "I believe it recounts an actual event." The strategic element inherent in the story (the narrow bridge equalizing the battle) is too much like something another Rockbridge County resident, Thomas Jackson, would want to remember.
Like Homer's accounts of the Trojan War and the Odyssey home, some unknown Monacan warrier seems to have recounted this amazing story, remembering the time when geography aided them in battle. I walked across the bridge on route 11, imagining an epic battle like something out of Tolkien (like Gandalf facing the Balrog)! Young Monacans standing shoulder to shoulder to protect children and wives from an overwhelming enemy, who prevailed that day, passed the story to their children.
It just seemed to me like one of many grand moments in history where the unseen hand of G-d was seen as deliverer.
Today visitors walk beneath the bridge...
...but her greatest story may have played out above!
The Monacans of Mohomony
Celebrating Heritage of Central Virginia's First People
A lady of Monacan ancestry presents the history of her people at Natural Bridge.
Monacan Lady (above) and warrier (below) as painted by Kristina Elaine Greer on the Crozet Trestle Mural.
A Monacan ati, or house, covered with bark...
...on a framework of branches.
Here is an ati thatched with cattails. This variation would be used in lowland areas with plentiful water.
Meeting Merlin
A Visit to Enchanted Castle Studios
[click to read]
Sculptor Mark Cline of Natural Bridge had a great fan in his friend Jamie Jordan of Waynesboro. He had an unusual request for the sculptor. He knew he was dying and asked his friend to create a lasting impression of his face and to “use it appropriately.” When Mr. Jordan died just short of his sixtieth birthday, Cline made a casting of his friend’s face two days later at the funeral home and used it to create ‘Merlin.’(read more)
A Floral Legacy Continues
[click to read]
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime." – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (read more)
University of Virginia Chapel
A Gothic Chapel amidst Jefferson's Classical Village
This is my painting of University Chapel. When Jefferson created his academic village it did not have a place of worship. In the late Nineteenth Century members of the Charlottesville community raised the money to build this gothic revival chapel designed by Charles Emmet Cassell of Baltimore. The cornerstone was set in 1885, and the completed chapel was dedicated in 1889. The chapel marks a sharp departure from Jefferson's classical forms.
Thirty-eight years ago this past thursday, I stood in this fine Gothic building as I married the love of my life. Thus this historic building is also a part of the story of our own family. It is a story that includes a hike in a rainstorm on Stone Mountain in Georgia and has continued for well over three decades!
One of the greatest challenges to our Faith is our forgetfulness. Scripture reminds us how the people were instructed to remember the great things G-d had done for them. G-d separated the Jordan, as He had the Red Sea, for the people to walk across and gave them the following command:
And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, And command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night.
Then Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children of Israel, out of every tribe a man: And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord your G-d into the midst of Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel: That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?
Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever. And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the Lord spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there.
And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there unto this day." -- Joshua 4:1-9
