The Moon-Voyage

CHAPTER XII.

“UR­BI ET OR­BI.”

The as­tro­nom­ical, me­chan­ical, and to­po­graph­ical dif­fi­cul­ties once re­moved, there re­mained the ques­tion of mon­ey. An enor­mous sum was nec­es­sary for the ex­ecu­tion of the project. No pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, no sin­gle state even, could have dis­posed of the nec­es­sary mil­lions.

Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane had re­solved--al­though the en­ter­prise was Amer­ican--to make it a busi­ness of uni­ver­sal in­ter­est, and to ask ev­ery na­tion for its fi­nan­cial co-​op­er­ation. It was the bound­ed right and du­ty of all the earth to in­ter­fere in the busi­ness of the satel­lite. The sub­scrip­tion opened at Bal­ti­more, for this end ex­tend­ed thence to all the world--_ur­bi et or­bi_.

This sub­scrip­tion was des­tined to suc­ceed be­yond all hope; yet the mon­ey was to be giv­en, not lent. The op­er­ation was pure­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed, in the lit­er­al mean­ing of the word, and of­fered no chance of gain.

But the ef­fect of Bar­bi­cane's com­mu­ni­ca­tion had not stopped at the fron­tiers of the Unit­ed States; it had crossed the At­lantic and Pa­cif­ic, had in­vad­ed both Asia and Eu­rope, both Africa and Ocea­nia. The ob­ser­va­to­ries of the Union were im­me­di­ate­ly put in­to com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the ob­ser­va­to­ries of for­eign coun­tries; some--those of Paris, St. Pe­ters­burg, the Cape, Berlin, Al­tona, Stock­holm, War­saw, Ham­burg, Bu­da, Bologna, Mal­ta, Lis­bon, Benares, Madras, and Pekin--sent their com­pli­ments to the Gun Club; the oth­ers pru­dent­ly await­ed the re­sult.

As to the Green­wich Ob­ser­va­to­ry, sec­ond­ed by the twen­ty-​two as­tro­nom­ical es­tab­lish­ments of Great Britain, it made short work of it; it bold­ly de­nied the pos­si­bil­ity of suc­cess, and took up Cap­tain Nicholl's the­ories. Whilst the dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic so­ci­eties promised to send deputies to Tam­pa Town, the Green­wich staff met and con­temp­tu­ous­ly dis­missed the Bar­bi­cane propo­si­tion. This was pure En­glish jeal­ousy and noth­ing else.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, the ef­fect up­on the world of sci­ence was ex­cel­lent, and from thence it passed to the mass­es, who, in gen­er­al, were great­ly in­ter­est­ed in the ques­tion, a fact of great im­por­tance, see­ing those mass­es were to be called up­on to sub­scribe a con­sid­er­able cap­ital.

On the 8th of Oc­to­ber Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane is­sued a man­ifesto, full of en­thu­si­asm, in which he made ap­peal to “all per­sons on the face of the earth will­ing to help.” This doc­ument, trans­lat­ed in­to ev­ery lan­guage, had great suc­cess.

Sub­scrip­tions were opened in the prin­ci­pal towns of the Union with a cen­tral of­fice at the Bal­ti­more Bank, 9, Bal­ti­more street; then sub­scrip­tions were opened in the dif­fer­ent coun­tries of the two con­ti­nents:--At Vi­en­na, by S.M. de Roth­schild; St. Pe­ters­burg, Stieglitz and Co.; Paris, Crédit Mo­bili­er; Stock­holm, Tot­tie and Ar­fured­son; Lon­don, N.M. de Roth­schild and Son; Turin, Ar­douin and Co.; Berlin, Mendelssohn; Gene­va, Lom­bard, Odi­er, and Co.; Con­stantino­ple, Ot­toman Bank; Brus­sels, J. Lam­bert; Madrid, Daniel Weisweller; Am­ster­dam, Nether­lands Cred­it Co.; Rome, Tor­lonia and Co.; Lis­bon, Lecesne; Copen­hagen, Pri­vate Bank; Buenos Ayres, Mana Bank; Rio Janeiro, Mana Bank; Monte Video, Mana Bank; Val­paraiso, Thomas La Cham­bre and Co.; Li­ma, Thomas La Cham­bre and Co.; Mex­ico, Mar­tin Daran and Co.

Three days af­ter Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane's man­ifesto 400,000 dol­lars were re­ceived in the dif­fer­ent towns of the Union. With such a sum in hand the Gun Club could be­gin at once.

But a few days lat­er tele­grams in­formed Amer­ica that for­eign sub­scrip­tions were pour­ing in rapid­ly. Cer­tain coun­tries were dis­tin­guished by their gen­eros­ity; oth­ers let go their mon­ey less eas­ily. It was a mat­ter of tem­per­ament.

How­ev­er, fig­ures are more elo­quent than words, and the fol­low­ing is an of­fi­cial state­ment of the sums paid to the cred­it of the Gun Club when the sub­scrip­tion was closed:--

The con­tin­gent of Rus­sia was the enor­mous sum of 368,733 rou­bles. This need as­ton­ish no one who re­mem­bers the sci­en­tif­ic taste of the Rus­sians and the im­pe­tus which they have giv­en to as­tro­nom­ical stud­ies, thanks to their nu­mer­ous ob­ser­va­to­ries, the prin­ci­pal of which cost 2,000,000 rou­bles.

France be­gan by laugh­ing at the pre­ten­sions of the Amer­icans. The moon served as an ex­cuse for a thou­sand stale puns and a score of vaudevilles in which bad taste con­test­ed the palm with ig­no­rance. But, as the French for­mer­ly paid af­ter singing, they now paid af­ter laugh­ing, and sub­scribed a sum of 1,258,930 francs. At that price they bought the right to joke a lit­tle.

Aus­tria, in the midst of her fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, was suf­fi­cient­ly gen­er­ous. Her part in the pub­lic sub­scrip­tion amount­ed to 216,000 florins, which were wel­come.

Swe­den and Nor­way con­tribut­ed 52,000 rix-​dol­lars. The fig­ure was small con­sid­er­ing the coun­try; but it would cer­tain­ly have been high­er if a sub­scrip­tion had been opened at Chris­tia­nia as well as at Stock­holm. For some rea­son or oth­er the Nor­we­gians do not like to send their mon­ey to Nor­way.

Prus­sia, by send­ing 250,000 thalers, tes­ti­fied her ap­pro­ba­tion of the en­ter­prise. Her dif­fer­ent ob­ser­va­to­ries con­tribut­ed an im­por­tant sum, and were amongst the most ar­dent in en­cour­ag­ing Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane.

Turkey be­haved gen­er­ous­ly, but she was per­son­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in the busi­ness; the moon, in fact, rules the course of her years and her Ra­madan fast. She could do no less than give 1,372,640 pi­as­tres, and she gave them with an ar­dour that be­trayed, how­ev­er, a cer­tain pres­sure from the Gov­ern­ment of the Porte.

Bel­gium dis­tin­guished her­self amongst all the sec­ond or­der of States by a gift of 513,000 francs, about one pen­ny and a frac­tion for each in­hab­itant.

Hol­land and her colonies con­tribut­ed 110,000 florins, on­ly de­mand­ing a dis­count of five per cent., as she paid ready mon­ey.

Den­mark, rather con­fined for room, gave, notwith­stand­ing, 9,000 ducats, prov­ing her love for sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­iments.

The Ger­man­ic Con­fed­er­ation sub­scribed 34,285 florins; more could not be asked from her; be­sides, she would not have giv­en more.

Al­though in em­bar­rassed cir­cum­stances, Italy found 2,000,000 francs in her chil­dren's pock­ets, but by turn­ing them well in­side out. If she had then pos­sessed Vene­tia she would have giv­en more, but she did not yet pos­sess Vene­tia.

The Pon­tif­ical States thought they could not send less than 7,040 Ro­man crowns, and Por­tu­gal pushed her de­vo­tion to the ex­tent of 3,000 cruzades.

Mex­ico gent the wid­ow's mite, 86 pi­as­tres; but em­pires in course of for­ma­tion are al­ways in rather em­bar­rassed cir­cum­stances.

Switzer­land sent the mod­est sum of 257 francs to the Amer­ican scheme. It must be frankly stat­ed that Switzer­land on­ly looked up­on the prac­ti­cal side of the op­er­ation; the ac­tion of send­ing a bul­let to the moon did not seem of a na­ture suf­fi­cient for the es­tab­lish­ing of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Queen of Night, so Switzer­land thought it im­pru­dent to en­gage cap­ital in an en­ter­prise de­pend­ing up­on such un­cer­tain events. Af­ter all, Switzer­land was, per­haps, right.

As to Spain, she found it im­pos­si­ble to get to­geth­er more than 110 re­als. She gave as an ex­cuse that she had her rail­ways to fin­ish. The truth is that sci­ence is not looked up­on very favourably in that coun­try; it is still a lit­tle be­hind­hand. And then cer­tain Spaniards, and not the most ig­no­rant ei­ther, had no clear con­cep­tion of the size of the pro­jec­tile com­pared with that of the moon; they feared it might dis­turb the satel­lite from her or­bit, and make her fall on to the sur­face of the ter­res­tri­al globe. In that case it was bet­ter to have noth­ing to do with it, which they car­ried out, with that small ex­cep­tion.

Eng­land alone re­mained. The con­temp­tu­ous an­tipa­thy with which she re­ceived Bar­bi­cane's propo­si­tion is known. The En­glish have but a sin­gle mind in their 25,000,000 of bod­ies which Great Britain con­tains. They gave it to be un­der­stood that the en­ter­prise of the Gun Club was con­trary “to the prin­ci­ple of non-​in­ter­ven­tion,” and they did not sub­scribe a sin­gle far­thing.

At this news the Gun Club con­tent­ed it­self with shrug­ging its shoul­ders, and re­turned to its great work. When South Amer­ica--that is to say, Pe­ru, Chili, Brazil, the provinces of La Pla­ta and Columbia--had poured in­to their hands their quo­ta of 300,000 dol­lars, it found it­self pos­sessed of a con­sid­er­able cap­ital of which the fol­low­ing is a state­ment:--

Unit­ed States sub­scrip­tion, 4,000,000 dol­lars; for­eign sub­scrip­tions, 1,446,675 dol­lars; to­tal, 5,446,675 dol­lars.

This was the large sum poured by the pub­lic in­to the cof­fers of the Gun Club.

No one need be sur­prised at its im­por­tance. The work of cast­ing, bor­ing, ma­son­ry, trans­port of work­men, and their in­stal­la­tion in an al­most un­in­hab­it­ed coun­try, the con­struc­tion of fur­naces and work­shops, the man­ufac­tur­ing tools, pow­der, pro­jec­tile and in­ci­den­tal ex­pens­es would, ac­cord­ing to the es­ti­mates, ab­sorb near­ly the whole. Some of the can­non-​shots fired dur­ing the war cost 1,000 dol­lars each; that of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, unique in the an­nals of ar­tillery, might well cost 5,000 times more.

On the 20th of Oc­to­ber a con­tract was made with the Gold­spring Man­ufac­to­ry, New York, which dur­ing the war had fur­nished Par­rott with his best cast-​iron guns.

It was stip­ulat­ed be­tween the con­tract­ing par­ties that the Gold­spring Man­ufac­to­ry should pledge it­self to send to Tam­pa Town, in South Flori­da, the nec­es­sary ma­te­ri­als for the cast­ing of the Columbi­ad.

This op­er­ation was to be ter­mi­nat­ed, at the lat­est, on the 15th of the next Oc­to­ber, and the can­non de­liv­ered in good con­di­tion, un­der penal­ty of 100 dol­lars a day for­feit un­til the moon should again present her­self un­der the same con­di­tions--that is to say, dur­ing eigh­teen years and eleven days.

The en­gage­ment of the work­men, their pay, and the nec­es­sary trans­ports all to be made by the Gold­spring Com­pa­ny.

This con­tract, made in du­pli­cate, was signed by I. Bar­bi­cane, pres­ident of the Gun Club, and J. Mur­phi­son, Man­ag­er of the Gold­spring Man­ufac­to­ry, who thus signed on the part of the con­tract­ing par­ties.