or the chief taken the trouble to satisfy
himself of the fact, he might have found that his limited experience had
deceived him.

It is unquestionably true, that if travellers sometimes impose on the
credulity of mankind, they are often also not believed when they speak
the truth. Credulity and scepticism are indeed but different names for
the same hasty judgment on insufficient evidence: and, as the old woman
readily assented that there might be "mountains of sugar and rivers
of rum," because she had seen them both, but that there were "fish
which could fly," she never would believe; so thousands give credit
to Redheiffer's patented discovery of perpetual motion, because they
had beheld his machine, and question the existence of the sea-serpent,
because they have not seen it.

I would respectfully remind that class of my readers, who, like the
king, the Indian, or the old woman, refuse to credit any thing which
contradicts the narrow limits of their own observation, that there are
"more secrets in nature than are dreamt of in their philosophy;" and
that upon their own principles, before they have a right to condemn me,
they should go or send to the mountains of Ava, for some of the metal
with which I made my venturous experiment, and make one for themselves.

As to those who do not call in question my veracity, but only doubt my
sanity, I fearlessly appeal from their unkind judgment to the sober and
unprejudiced part of mankind, whether, what I have stated in the following
pages, is not consonant with truth and nature, and whether they do not
there see, faithfully reflected from the Moon, the errors of the learned
on Earth, and "the follies of the wise?"

JOSEPH ATTERLEY.

_Long-Island, September_, 1827.

VOYAGE TO THE MOON.

CHAPTER I.

_Atterley's birth and education--He makes a voyage--Founders off the
Burman coast--Adventures in that Empire--Meets with a learned Brahmin
from Benares._

Being about to give a narrative of my singular adventures to the world,
which, I foresee, will be greatly divided about their authenticity,
I will premise something of my early history, that those to whom I am
not personally known, may be better able to ascertain what credit is
due to the facts which rest only on my own assertion.

I was born in the village of Huntingdon, on Long-Island, on the 11th day
of May, 1786. Joseph Atterley, my father, formerly of East Jersey, as it
was once called, had settled in thi