of some very hard and resonant metal, entirely unlike
any thing that I had ever seen before. It was of a bright vermilion
color, highly polished in certain places, and somewhat rough and
honey-combed in others. From the vibration that came when I struck it
with my knife, I inferred that it must be hollow. I only needed to try
one further experiment, in order to be satisfied that my suspicions and
hopes as to the nature of this cylinder, and the cause of the peculiar
sound that I had heard, and which now reverberated loudly on every
side, were correct. Observing that, at a point not far off, the cylinder
came almost in contact with the wall that surrounded it, I approached
the spot, and stuck two red wafers, one on the cylinder, and the other
directly opposite to it on the wall, with a distance of not more than an
inch between them. I would here observe, in explanation of my happening
to have these wafers about me, that they still continued to be used in
China, and I generally carried half a dozen or more about me in a stiff
envelope. Now came the crisis of my destiny! If the relative position of
the wafers remained for an hour unchanged, there was no hope for poor
John Whopper. With my watch--which, by the way, I had protected against
the disturbance of the magnetic currents by a compensation balance--in
my hand, I gazed earnestly and anxiously upon the two wafers. Fifteen
minutes passed. In this time, the earth had revolved one ninety-sixth
part of its daily course, and the inhabitants on the surface had
travelled two hundred and fifty miles. If my hopes are well founded, it
is hardly time yet for me to perceive any change in the two red spots
upon which my gaze is fixed. A half hour slowly passes. I do believe
that the wafers are not directly opposite to each other! let me wait a
little while longer, that I may be certain. There is no mistake about
it,--the right edge of one wafer just touches the left edge of the
other. Eureka! Hurrah! I am right. I am right. This big cylinder is
_the axis of the earth_, fixed and immovable; and these huge walls are
revolving round it. There's a discovery to make a man immortal! What
fools the old geographers were that used to say,--"the axis is an
_imaginary line_, running through," etc., etc. The name of Whopper will
now be heralded to all coming generations with the names of Bacon and
Newton and La Place and Humboldt, and all the rest of them! Fame, with
her great silver trumpet--