CHAPTER III

RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE’S MOON HOAX

_A Magnificent Fake Which Deceived Two Continents, Brought to “The Sun” the Largest Circulation in the World and, in Poe’s Opinion, Established Penny Papers._

The man whom Day met at the murder trial in White Plains was Richard Adams Locke, a reporter who was destined to kick up more dust than perhaps any other man of his profession. As he comes on the stage, we must let his predecessor, George W. Wisner, pass into the wings.

Wisner was a good man, as a reporter, as a writer of editorial articles, and as part owner of the paper. His campaign for Abolition irritated Mr. Day at first, but the young man’s motives were so pure and his articles so logical that Day recognized the justice of the cause, even as he realized the foolish methods employed by some of the Abolitionists. Wisner set the face of the _Sun_ against slavery, and Day kept it so, but there were minor matters of policy upon which the partners never agreed, never could agree.

When Wisner’s health became poor, in the summer of 1835, he expressed a desire to get away from New York. Mr. Day paid him five thousand dollars for his interest in the paper--a large sum in those days, considering the fact that Wisner had won his share with no capital except his pen. Wisner went West and settled at Pontiac, Michigan. There his health improved, his fortune increased, and he was at one time a member of the Michigan Legislature.

When Day found that Locke was the best reporter attending the trial of Matthias the Prophet, he hired him to write a series of articles on the religious fakir. These, the first “feature stories” that ever appeared in the _Sun_, were printed on the front page.

A few weeks later, while the Matthias articles were still being sold on the streets in pamphlet form, Locke went to Day and told him that his boss, Colonel Webb of the _Courier and Enquirer_, had discharged him for working for the _Sun_ “on the side.” Wisner was about to leave the paper, and Day was glad to hire Locke, for he needed an editorial writer. Twelve dollars a week was the alluring wage, and Locke accepted it.

Locke was then thirty-five--ten years senior to his employer. Let his contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe, describe him:

He is about five feet seven inches in height, symmetrically formed; there is an air of distinction about his whole person--the _air noble_ of genius. His face is strongly pitted by the smallpox, and, perhaps from the same cause, there is a marked obliquity in the eyes; a certain calm, clear _luminousness_, however, about these latter amply compensates for the defect, and the forehead is truly beautiful in its intellectuality. I am acquainted with no person possessing so fine a forehead as Mr. Locke.

Locke was nine years older than Poe, who at this time had most of his fame ahead of him. Poe was quick to recognize the quality of Locke’s writings; indeed, the poet saw, perhaps more clearly than others of that period, that America was full of good writers--a fact of which the general public was neglectful. This was Poe’s tribute to Locke’s literary gift:

His prose style is noticeable for its concision, luminosity, completeness--each quality in its proper place. He has that _method_ so generally characteristic of genius proper. Everything he writes is a model in its peculiar way, serving just the purposes intended and nothing to spare.

The _Sun’s_ new writer was a collateral descendant of John Locke, the English philosopher of the seventeenth century. He was born in 1800, but his birthplace was not New York, as his contemporary biographers wrote. It was East Brent, Somersetshire, England. His early American friends concealed this fact when writing of Locke, for they feared that his English birth (all the wounds of war had not healed) would keep him out of some of the literary clubs. He was educated by his mother and by private tutors until he was nineteen, when he entered Cambridge. While still a student he contributed to the _Bee_, the _Imperial Magazine_, and other English publications. When he left Cambridge he had the hardihood to start the London _Republican_, the title of which describes its purpose. This was a failure, for London declined to warm to the theories of American democracy, no matter how scholarly their expression.

Abandoning the _Republican_, young Locke devoted himself to literature and science. He ran a periodical called the _Cornucopia_ for about six months, but it was not a financial success, and in 1832, with his wife and infant daughter, he went to New York. Colonel Webb put him at work on his paper.

Locke could write almost anything. In Cambridge and in Fleet Street he had picked up a wonderful store of general information. He could turn out prose or poetry, politics or pathos, anecdotes or astronomy.

While he lived in London, Locke was a regular reader of the Edinburgh _New Philosophical Journal_, and he brought some copies of it to America. One of these, an issue of 1826, contained an article by Dr. Thomas Dick, of Dundee, a pious man, but inclined to speculate on the possibilities of the universe. In this article Dr. Dick suggested the feasibility of communicating with the moon by means of great stone symbols on the face of the earth. The people of the moon--if there were any--would fathom the diagrams and reply in a similar way. Dr. Dick explained afterward that he wrote this piece with the idea of satirizing a certain coterie of eccentric German astronomers.

Now it happened that Sir John Frederick William Herschel, the greatest astronomer of his time, and the son of the celebrated astronomer Sir William Herschel, went to South Africa in January, 1834, and established an observatory at Feldhausen, near Cape Town, with the intention of completing his survey of the sidereal heavens by examining the southern skies as he had swept the northern, thus to make the first telescopic survey of the whole surface of the visible heavens.

Locke knew about Sir John and his mission. The Matthias case had blown over, the big fire in Fulton Street was almost forgotten, and things were a bit dull on the island of Manhattan. The newspapers were in a state of armed truce. As Locke and his fellow journalists gathered at the American Hotel bar for their after-dinner brandy, it is probable that there was nothing, not even the great sloth recently arrived at the American Museum, to excite a good argument.

Locke needed money, for his salary of twelve dollars a week could ill support the fine gentleman that he was; so he laid a plan before Mr. Day. It was a plot as well as a plan, and the first angle of the plot appeared on the second page of the _Sun_ on August 21, 1835:

CELESTIAL DISCOVERIES--The Edinburgh _Courant_ says--“We have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city that Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle.”

Nothing further appeared until Tuesday, August 25, when three columns of the _Sun’s_ first page took the newspaper and scientific worlds by the ears. Those were not the days of big type. The _Sun’s_ heading read:

GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.

LATELY MADE BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, LL.D., F.R.S., &c.

At the Cape of Good Hope.

[_From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science._]

It may as well be said here that although there had been an Edinburgh _Journal of Science_, it ceased to exist several years before 1835. The periodical to which Dr. Dick, of Dundee, contributed his moon theories was, in a way, the successor to the _Journal of Science_, but it was called the _New Philosophical Journal_. The likeness of names was not great, but enough to cause some confusion. It is also noteworthy that the sly Locke credited to a supplement, rather than to the _Journal of Science_ itself, the revelations which he that day began to pour before the eyes of _Sun_ readers. Thus he started:

In this unusual addition to our _Journal_ we have the happiness of making known to the British public, and thence to the whole civilized world, recent discoveries in astronomy which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race proud distinction through all future time. It has been poetically said that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation. He may now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental supremacy.

After solemnly dwelling on the awe which mortal man must feel upon peering into the secrets of the sky, the article declared that Sir John “paused several hours before he commenced his observations, that he might prepare his own mind for discoveries which he knew would fill the minds of myriads of his fellow men with astonishment.” It continued:

And well might he pause! From the hour the first human pair opened their eyes to the glories of the blue firmament above them, there has been no accession to human knowledge at all comparable in sublime interest to that which he has been the honored agent in supplying. Well might he pause! He was about to become the sole depository of wondrous secrets which had been hid from the eyes of all men that had lived since the birth of time.

At the end of a half-column of glorification, the writer got down to brass tacks:

To render our enthusiasm intelligible, we will state at once that by means of a telescope, of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle, the younger Herschel, at his observatory in the southern hemisphere, has already made the most extraordinary discoveries in every planet of our solar system; has discovered planets in other solar systems; has obtained a distinct view of objects in the moon, fully equal to that which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of one hundred yards; has affirmatively settled the question whether this satellite be inhabited, and by what orders of beings; has firmly established a new theory of cometary phenomena; and has solved or corrected nearly every leading problem of mathematical astronomy.

And where was the _Journal of Science_ getting this mine of astronomical revelation for its supplement? The mystery is explained at once:

We are indebted to the devoted friendship of Dr. Andrew Grant, the pupil of the elder, and for several years past the inseparable coadjutor of the younger Herschel. The amanuensis of the latter at the Cape of Good Hope, and the indefatigable superintendent of his telescope during the whole period of its construction and operations, Dr. Grant has been able to supply us with intelligence equal in general interest at least to that which Dr. Herschel himself has transmitted to the Royal Society. For permission to indulge his friendship in communicating this invaluable information to us, Dr. Grant and ourselves are indebted to the magnanimity of Dr. Herschel, who, far above all mercenary considerations, has thus signally honored and rewarded his fellow laborer in the field of science.

Regarding the illustrations which, according to the implications of the text, accompanied the supplement, the writer was specific. Most of them, he stated, were copies of “drawings taken in the observatory by Herbert Home, Esq., who accompanied the last powerful series of reflectors from London to the Cape. The engraving of the belts of Jupiter is a reduced copy of an imperial folio drawing by Dr. Herschel himself. The segment of the inner ring of Saturn is from a large drawing by Dr. Grant.”

A history of Sir William Herschel’s work and a description of his telescopes took up a column of the _Sun_, and on top of this came the details--as the _Journal_ printed them--of Sir John’s plans to outdo his father by revolutionary methods and a greater telescope. Sir John, it appeared, was in conference with Sir David Brewster:

After a few minutes’ silent thought, Sir John diffidently inquired whether it would not be possible to effect a _transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of vision!_ Sir David, somewhat startled at the originality of the idea, paused a while, and then hesitatingly referred to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of incidence. Sir John, grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in which the refrangibility was corrected by the second speculum and the angle of incidence restored by the third.

“And,” continued he, “why cannot the illuminated microscope, say the hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct and, if necessary, even to magnify, the focal object?”

Sir David sprang from his chair in an ecstasy of conviction, and, leaping half-way to the ceiling, exclaimed:

“Thou art the man!”

Details of the casting of a great lens came next. It was twenty-four feet in diameter, and weighed nearly fifteen thousand pounds after it was polished; its estimated magnifying-power was forty-two thousand times. As he saw it safely started on its way to Africa, Sir John “expressed confidence in his ultimate ability to study even the entomology of the moon, in case she contained insects upon her surface.”

Thus ended the first instalment of the story. Where had the _Sun_ got the _Journal of Science_ supplement? An editorial article answered that “it was very politely furnished us by a medical gentleman immediately from Scotland, in consequence of a paragraph which appeared on Friday last from the Edinburgh _Courant_.” The article added:

The portion which we publish to-day is introductory to celestial discoveries of higher and more universal interest than any, in any science yet known to the human race. Now indeed it may be said that we live in an age of discovery.

It cannot be said that the whole town buzzed with excitement that day. Perhaps this first instalment was a bit over the heads of most readers; it was so technical, so foreign. But in Nassau and Ann Streets, wherever two newspapermen were gathered together, there was buzzing enough. What was coming next? Why hadn’t they thought to subscribe to the Edinburgh _Journal of Science_, with its wonderful supplement?

Nearly four columns of the revelations appeared on the following day--August 26, 1835. This time the reading public came trooping into camp, for the _Sun’s_ reprint of the _Journal of Science_ supplement got beyond the stage of preliminaries and predictions, and began to tell of what was to be seen on the moon. Scientists and newspapermen appreciated the detailed description of the mammoth telescope and the work of placing it, but the public, like a child, wanted the moon--and got it. Let us plunge in at about the point where the public plunged:

The specimen of lunar vegetation, however, which they had already seen, had decided a question of too exciting an interest to induce them to retard its exit. It had demonstrated that the moon has an atmosphere constituted similarly to our own, and capable of sustaining organized and, therefore, most probably, animal life.

“The trees,” says Dr. Grant, “for a period of ten minutes were of one unvaried kind, and unlike any I have seen except the largest class of yews in the English churchyards, which they in some respects resemble. These were followed by a level green plain which, as measured by the painted circle on our canvas of forty-nine feet, must have been more than half a mile in breadth.”

The article had explained that, by means of a great reflector, the lunar views were thrown upon a big canvas screen behind the telescope.

Then appeared as fine a forest of firs, unequivocal firs, as I have ever seen cherished in the bosom of my native mountains. Wearied with the long continuance of these, we greatly reduced the magnifying power of the microscope without eclipsing either of the reflectors, and immediately perceived that we had been insensibly descending, as it were, a mountainous district of highly diversified and romantic character, and that we were on the verge of a lake, or inland sea; but of what relative locality or extent, we were yet too greatly magnified to determine.

On introducing the feeblest achromatic lens we possessed, we found that the water, whose boundary we had just discovered, answered in general outline to the Mare Nubicum of Riccoli. Fairer shores never angel coasted on a tour of pleasure. A beach of brilliant white sand, girt with wild, castellated rocks, apparently of green marble, varied at chasms, occurring every two or three hundred feet, with grotesque blocks of chalk or gypsum, and feathered and festooned at the summits with the clustering foliage of unknown trees, moved along the bright wall of our apartment until we were speechless with admiration.

A column farther on, in a wonderful valley of this wonderful moon, life at last burst upon the seers:

In the shade of the woods on the southeastern side we beheld continuous herds of brown quadrupeds, having all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the _bos_ genus in our natural history. Its tail was like that of our _bos grunniens_; but in its semicircular horns, the hump on its shoulders, the depth of its dewlap, and the length of its shaggy hair, it closely resembled the species to which I have compared it.

It had, however, one widely distinctive feature, which we afterward found common to nearly every lunar quadruped we have discovered; namely, a remarkable fleshy appendage over the eyes, crossing the whole breadth of the forehead and united to the ears. We could most distinctly perceive this hairy veil, which was shaped like the upper front outline of the cap known to the ladies as Mary Queen of Scots cap, lifted and lowered by means of the ears. It immediately occurred to the acute mind of Dr. Herschel that this was a providential contrivance to protect the eyes of the animal from the great extremes of light and darkness to which all the inhabitants of our side of the moon are periodically subjected.

The next animal perceived would be classed on earth as a monster. It was of a bluish lead color, about the size of a goat, with a head and beard like him, and a _single horn_, slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular. The female was destitute of the horn and beard, but had a much longer tail. It was gregarious, and chiefly abounded on the acclivitous glades of the woods. In elegance of symmetry it rivaled the antelope, and like him it seemed an agile, sprightly creature, running with great speed and springing from the green turf with all the unaccountable antics of the young lamb or kitten.

This beautiful creature afforded us the most exquisite amusement. The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted canvas was as faithful and luminous as that of animals within a few yards of a camera obscura when seen pictured upon its tympan. Frequently, when attempting to put our fingers upon its beard, it would suddenly bound away into oblivion, as if conscious of our earthly impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we could not prevent nibbling the herbage, say or do what we would to them.

So, at last, the people of earth knew something concrete about the live things of the moon. Goats with beards were there, and every New Yorker knew goats, for they fed upon the rocky hills of Harlem. And the moon had birds, too:

On examining the center of this delightful valley we found a large, branching river, abounding with lovely islands and water-birds of numerous kinds. A species of gray pelican was the most numerous, but black and white cranes, with unreasonably long legs and bill, were also quite common. We watched their piscivorous experiments a long time in hopes of catching sight of a lunar fish; but, although we were not gratified in this respect, we could easily guess the purpose with which they plunged their long necks so deeply beneath the water. Near the upper extremity of one of these islands we obtained a glimpse of a strange amphibious creature of a spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly beach, and was lost sight of in the strong current which set off from this angle of the island.

At this point clouds intervened, and the Herschel party had to call it a day. But it had been a big day, and nobody who read the _Sun_ wondered that the astronomers tossed off “congratulatory bumpers of the best ‘East India particular,’ and named this place of wonders the Valley of the Unicorn.” So ended the _Sun_ story of August 26, but an editorial paragraph assured the patrons of the paper that on the morrow there would be a treat even richer.

What did the other papers say? In the language of a later and less elegant period, most of them ate it up--some eagerly, some grudgingly, some a bit dubiously, but they ate it, either in crumbs or in hunks. The _Daily Advertiser_ declared:

No article has appeared for years that will command so general a perusal and publication. Sir John has added a stock of knowledge to the present age that will immortalize his name and place it high on the page of science.

The _Mercantile Advertiser_, knowing that its lofty readers were unlikely to see the moon revelations in the lowly _Sun_, hastened to begin reprinting the articles in full, with the remark that the document appeared to have intrinsic evidence of authenticity.

The _Times_, a daily then only a year old, and destined to live only eighteen months more--later, of course, the title was used by a successful daily--said that everything in the _Sun_ story was probable and plausible, and had an “air of intense verisimilitude.”

The New York _Sunday News_ advised the incredulous to be patient:

Our doubts and incredulity may be a wrong to the learned astronomer, and the circumstances of this wonderful discovery may be correct.

The _Courier and Enquirer_ said nothing at all. Like the _Journal of Commerce_, it hated the _Sun_ for a lucky upstart. Both of these sixpenny respectables stood silent, with their axes behind their backs. Their own readers, the Livingstons and the Stuyvesants, got not a line about the moon from the blanket sheets, but they sent down into the kitchen and borrowed the _Sun_ from the domestics, on the shallow pretext of wishing to discover whether their employees were reading a moral newspaper--as indeed they were.

The _Herald_, then about four months old, said not a word about the moon story. In fact, that was a period in which it said nothing at all about any subject, for the fire of that summer had unfortunately wiped out its plant. On the very days when the moon stories appeared, Mr. Bennett stood cracking his knuckles in front of his new establishment, the basement of 202 Broadway, trying to hurry the men who were installing a double-cylinder press. Being a wise person, he advertised his progress in the _Sun_. It may have vexed him to see the circulation of the _Sun_--which he had imitated in character and price--bound higher and higher as he stood helpless.

The third instalment of the literary treasure so obligingly imported by the “medical gentleman immediately from Scotland” introduced to _Sun_ readers new and important regions of the moon--the Vagabond Mountains, the Lake of Death, craters of extinct volcanoes twenty-eight hundred feet high, and twelve luxuriant forests divided by open plains “in which waved an ocean of verdure, and which were probably prairies like those of North America.” The details were satisfying:

Dr. Herschel has classified not less than thirty-eight species of forest trees and nearly twice this number of plants, found in this tract alone, which are widely different to those found in more equatorial latitudes. Of animals he classified nine species of mammalia and five of oviparia. Among the former is a small kind of reindeer, the elk, the moose, the horned bear, and the biped beaver.

The last resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect than its destitution of a tail and its invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in its arms, like a human being, and walks with an easy, gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages, and from the appearance of smoke in nearly all of them there is no doubt of its being acquainted with the use of fire.

The largest lake described was two hundred and sixty-six miles long and one hundred and ninety-three wide, shaped like the Bay of Bengal, and studded with volcanic islands. One island in a large bay was pinnacled with quartz crystals as brilliant as fire. Near by roamed zebras three feet high. Golden and blue pheasants strutted about. The beach was covered with shell-fish. Dr. Grant did not say whether the fire-making beavers ever held a clambake there.

The _Sun_ of Friday, August 28, 1835, was a notable issue. Not yet two years old, Mr. Day’s newspaper had the satisfaction of announcing that it had achieved the largest circulation of any daily in the world. It had, it said, 15,440 regular subscribers in New York and 700 in Brooklyn, and it sold 2,000 in the streets and 1,220 out of town--a grand total of 19,360 copies, as against the 17,000 circulation of the London _Times_. The double-cylinder Napier press in the building at Nassau and Spruce Streets--the corner where the _Tribune_ is to-day, and to which the _Sun_ had moved on August 3--had to run ten hours a day to satisfy the public demand. People waited with more or less patience until three o’clock in the afternoon to read about the moon.

That very issue contained the most sensational instalment of all the moon series, for through that mystic chain which included Dr. Grant, the supplement of the Edinburgh _Journal of Science_, the “medical gentleman immediately from Scotland,” and the _Sun_, public curiosity as to the presence of human creatures on the orb of night was satisfied at last. The astronomers were looking upon the cliffs and crags of a new part of the moon:

But whilst gazing upon them in a perspective of about half a mile we were thrilled with astonishment to perceive four successive flocks of large winged creatures, wholly unlike any kind of birds, descend with a slow, even motion from the cliffs on the western side and alight upon the plain. They were first noticed by Dr. Herschel, who exclaimed:

“Now gentlemen, my theories against your proofs, which you have often found a pretty even bet, we have here something worth looking at. I was confident that if ever we found beings in human shape it would be in this longitude, and that they would be provided by their Creator with some extraordinary powers of locomotion. First, exchange for my Number D.”

This lens, being soon introduced, gave us a fine half-mile distance; and we counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine, and fifteen in each, walking erect toward a small wood near the base of the eastern precipices. Certainly they were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared, and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified.

Having observed them at this distance for some minutes, we introduced lens H._z_., which brought them to the apparent proximity of eighty yards--the highest clear magnitude we possessed until the latter end of March, when we effected an improvement in the gas burners.

About half of the first party had passed beyond our canvas; but of all the others we had a perfectly distinct and deliberate view. They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of the shoulders to the calves of the legs.

The face, which was of a yellowish flesh-color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large orang-utan, being more open and intelligent in its expression, and having a much greater expanse of forehead. The mouth, however, was very prominent, though somewhat relieved by a thick beard upon the lower jaw, and by lips far more human than those of any species of the _Simia_ genus.

In general symmetry of body and limbs they were infinitely superior to the orang-utan; so much so that, but for their long wings, Lieutenant Drummond said they would look as well on a parade-ground as some of the old cockney militia. The hair on the head was a darker color than that of the body, closely curled, but apparently not woolly, and arranged in two curious semi-circles over the temples of the forehead. Their feet could only be seen as they were alternately lifted in walking; but from what we could see of them in so transient a view, they appeared thin and very protuberant at the heel.

Whilst passing across the canvas, and whenever we afterward saw them, these creatures were evidently engaged in conversation; their gesticulation, more particularly the varied action of the hands and arms, appeared impassioned and emphatic. We hence inferred that they were rational beings, and, although not perhaps of so high an order as others which we discovered the next month on the shores of the Bay of Rainbows, that they were capable of producing works of art and contrivance.

The next view we obtained of them was still more favorable. It was on the borders of a little lake, or expanded stream, which we then for the first time perceived running down the valley to the large lake, and having on its eastern margin a small wood. Some of these creatures had crossed this water and were lying like spread eagles on the skirts of the wood.

We could then perceive that their wings possessed great expansion, and were similar in structure to those of the bat, being a semi-transparent membrane expanded in curvilineal divisions by means of straight radii, united at the back by the dorsal integuments. But what astonished us very much was the circumstance of this membrane being continued from the shoulders to the legs, united all the way down, though gradually decreasing in width. The wings seemed completely under the command of volition, for those of the creatures whom we saw bathing in the water spread them instantly to their full width, waved them as ducks do theirs to shake off the water, and then as instantly closed them again in a compact form.

Our further observation of the habits of these creatures, who were of both sexes, led to results so very remarkable that I prefer they should be first laid before the public in Dr. Herschel’s own work, where I have reason to know that they are fully and faithfully stated, however incredulously they may be received....

The three families then almost simultaneously spread their wings, and were lost in the dark confines of the canvas before we had time to breathe from our paralyzing astonishment. We scientifically denominated them the _vespertilio-homo_, or man-bat; and they are doubtless innocent and happy creatures, notwithstanding some of their amusements would but ill comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum.

So ended the account, in Dr. Grant’s words, of that fateful day. The editor of the supplement, perhaps a cousin of the “medical gentleman immediately arrived from Scotland,” added that although he had of course faithfully obeyed Dr. Grant’s injunction to omit “these highly curious passages,” he did not “clearly perceive the force of the reasons assigned for it,” and he added:

From these, however, and other prohibited passages, which will be published by Dr. Herschel with the certificates of the civil and military authorities of the colony, and of several Episcopal, Wesleyan, and other ministers who, in the month of March last, were permitted under the stipulation of temporary secrecy to visit the observatory and become eye-witnesses of the wonders which they were requested to attest, we are confident his forthcoming volumes will be at once the most sublime in science and the most intense in general interest that ever issued from the press.

New York now stopped its discussion of human slavery, the high cost of living--apples cost as much as four cents apiece in Wall Street--and other familiar topics, and devoted its talking hours to the man-bats of the moon. The _Sun_ was stormed by people who wanted back numbers of the stories, and flooded with demands by mail. As the text of the _Journal of Science_ article indicated that the original narrative had been illustrated, there was a cry for pictures.

Mr. Day was busy with the paper and its overworked press, but he gave Mr. Locke a free hand, and that scholar took to Norris & Baker, lithographers, in the Union Building, Wall Street, the drawings which had been intrusted to his care by the “medical gentleman immediately from Scotland.” Mr. Baker, described by the _Sun_ as quite the most talented lithographic artist of the city, worked day and night on his delightful task, that the illustrations might be ready when the _Sun’s_ press should have turned out, in the hours when it was not printing _Suns_, a pamphlet containing the astronomical discoveries.

“Dr. Herschel’s great work,” said the _Sun_, “is preparing for publication at ten guineas sterling, or fifty dollars; and we shall give all the popular substance of it for twelve or thirteen cents.” The pamphlets were to be sold two for a quarter; the lithographs at twenty-five cents for the set.

Most newspapers that mentioned the discovery of human creatures on the moon were credulous. The _Evening Post_, edited by William Cullen Bryant and Fitz-Greene Halleck--“the chanting cherubs of the _Post_,” as Colonel Webb was wont to call them--only skirted the edge of doubt:

That there should be winged people in the moon does not strike us as more wonderful than the existence of such a race of beings on earth; and that there does or did exist such a race rests on the evidence of that most veracious of voyagers, _Peter Wilkins_, whose celebrated work not only gives an account of the general appearance and habits of a most interesting tribe of flying Indians, but also of those more delicate and engaging traits which the author was enabled to discover by reason of the conjugal relations he entered into with one of the females of the winged tribe.

_Peter Wilkins_ was the hero of Robert Paltock’s imaginative book, “The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man,” published in London in 1750. Paltock’s winged people, said Southey, were “the most beautiful creatures of imagination that were ever devised.”

The instalment of the discoveries printed on August 29 revealed to the reader the great Temple of the Moon, built of polished sapphire, with a roof of some yellow metal, supported by columns seventy feet high and six feet in diameter:

It was open on all sides, and seemed to contain neither seats, altars, nor offerings, but it was a light and airy structure, nearly a hundred feet high from its white, glistening floor to the glowing roof, and it stood upon a round, green eminence on the eastern side of the valley. We afterward, however, discovered two others which were in every respect facsimiles of this one; but in neither did we perceive any visitants except flocks of wild doves, which alighted on its lustrous pinnacles.

Had the devotees of these temples gone the way of all living, or were the latter merely historical monuments? What did the ingenious builders mean by the globe surrounded with flames? Did they, by this, record any past calamity of _their_ world, or predict any future one of _ours_? I by no means despair of ultimately solving not only these, but a thousand other questions which present themselves respecting the object in this planet; for not the millionth part of her surface has yet been explored, and we have been more desirous of collecting the greatest possible number of new facts than of indulging in speculative theories, however seductive to the imagination.

The conclusion of this astounding narrative, which totalled eleven thousand words, was printed on August 31. In the valley of the temple a new set of man-bats was found:

We had no opportunity of seeing them actually engaged in any work of industry or art; and, so far as we could judge, they spent their happy hours in collecting various fruits in the woods, in eating, flying, bathing, and loitering about upon the summits of precipices.

One night, when the astronomers finished work, they neglectfully left the telescope facing the eastern horizon. The risen sun burned a hole fifteen feet in circumference through the reflecting chamber, and ruined part of the observatory. When the damage was repaired, the moon was invisible, and so Dr. Herschel turned his attention to Saturn. Most of the discoveries here were technical, as the _Sun_ assured its readers, and the narrative came to an end. An editorial note added:

This concludes the supplement with the exception of forty pages of illustrative and mathematical notes, which would greatly enhance the size and price of this work without commensurably adding to its general interest. In order that our readers may judge for themselves whether we have withheld from them any matter of general comprehension and interest, we insert one of the notes from those pages of the supplement which we thought it useless to reprint; and it may be considered a fair sample of the remainder. For ourselves, we know nothing of mathematics beyond counting dollars and cents, but to geometricians the following new method of measuring the height of the lunar mountains, adopted by Sir John Herschel, may be quite interesting.

Perhaps the pretended method of measuring lunar mountains was not interesting to laymen, but it may have been the cause of an intellectual tumult at Yale. At all events, a deputation from that college hurried to the steamboat and came to New York to see the wonderful supplement. The collegians saw Mr. Day, and voiced their desire.

“Surely,” he replied, “you do not doubt that we have the supplement in our possession? I suppose the magazine is somewhere up-stairs, but I consider it almost an insult that you should ask to see it.”

On their way out the Yale men heard, perhaps from the “devil,” that one Locke was interested in the matter of the moon, that he had handled the supplement, and that he was to be seen at the foot of the stairs, smoking his cigar and gazing across City Hall Park. They advanced upon him, and he, less brusque than Mr. Day, told the scientific pilgrims that the supplement was in the hands of a printer in William Street--giving the name and address.

As the Yale men disappeared in the direction of the printery, Locke started for the same goal, and more rapidly. When the Yalensians arrived, the printer, primed by Locke, told them that the precious pamphlet had just been sent to another shop, where certain proof-reading was to be done. And so they went from post to pillar until the hour came for their return to New Haven. It would not do to linger in New York, for Professors Denison Olmsted and Elias Loomis were that very day getting their first peep at Halley’s comet, about to make the regular appearance with which it favours the earth every seventy-six years.

But Yale was not the only part of intellectual New England to be deeply interested in the moon and its bat-men. The _Gazette_ of Hampshire, Massachusetts, insisted that Edward Everett, who was then running for Governor, had these astronomical discoveries in mind when he declared that “we know not how soon the mind, in its researches into the labyrinth of nature, would grasp some clue which would lead to a new universe and change the aspect of the world.”

Harriet Martineau, who was touring America at the time, wrote in her “Sketches of Western Travel” that the ladies of Springfield, Massachusetts, subscribed to a fund to send missionaries to the benighted luminary. When the _Sun_ articles reached Paris, they were at once translated into illustrated pamphlets, and the caricaturists of the Paris newspapers drew pictures of the man-bats going through the streets singing “_Au Clair de la Lune_.” London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow made haste to issue editions of the work.

Meanwhile, of course, Sir John Herschel was busy with his telescope at the Cape, all unaware of his expanded fame in the north. Caleb Weeks, of Jamaica, Long Island, the Adam Forepaugh of his day, was setting out for South Africa to get a supply of giraffes for his menagerie, and he had the honour of laying in the great astronomer’s hand a clean copy of the pamphlet. To say that Sir John was amazed at the _Sun’s_ enterprise would be putting it mildly. When he had read the story through, he went to Caleb Weeks and said that he was overcome; that he never could hope to live up to the fame that had been heaped upon him.

In New York, meanwhile, Richard Adams Locke had spilled the beans. There was a reporter named Finn, once employed by the _Sun_, but later a scribe for the _Journal of Commerce_. He and Locke were friends. One afternoon Gerard Hallock, who was David Hale’s partner in the proprietorship of the _Journal of Commerce_, called Finn to his office and told him to get extra copies of the _Sun_ containing the moon story, as the _Journal_ had decided, in justice to its readers, that it must reprint it.

Perhaps at the _Sun_ office, perhaps in the tap-room of the Washington Hotel, Finn met Locke, and they went socially about to public places. Finn told Locke of the work on which he was engaged, and said that, as the moon story was already being put into type at the _Journal_ office, it was likely that it would be printed on the morrow.

“Don’t print it right away,” said Locke. “I wrote it myself.”

The next day the _Journal_, instead of being silently grateful for the warning, denounced the alleged discoveries as a hoax. Mr. Bennett, who by this time had the _Herald_ once more in running order, not only cried “Hoax!” but named Locke as the author.

Probably Locke was glad that the suspense was over. He is said to have told a friend that he had not intended the story as a hoax, but as satire.

“It is quite evident,” he said, as he saw the whole country take the marvellous narrative seriously, “that it is an abortive satire; and I am the best self-hoaxed man in the whole community.”

But while the _Sun’s_ rivals denounced the hoax, the _Sun_ was not quick to admit that it had gulled not only its own readers but almost all the scientific world. Barring the casual conversation between Locke and Finn, there was no evidence plain enough to convince the layman that it was a hoax. The _Sun_ fenced lightly and skilfully with all controverters. On September 16, more than two weeks after the conclusion of the story, it printed a long editorial article on the subject of the authenticity of the discoveries, mentioning the wide-spread interest that had been displayed in them:

Most of those who incredulously regard the whole narrative as a hoax are generously enthusiastic in panegyrizing not only what they are pleased to denominate its ingenuity and talent, but also its useful effect in diverting the public mind, for a while, from that bitter apple of discord, the abolition of slavery, which still unhappily threatens to turn the milk of human kindness into rancorous gall. That the astronomical discoveries have had this effect is obvious from our exchange papers. Who knows, therefore, whether these discoveries in the moon, with the visions of the blissful harmony of her inhabitants which they have revealed, may not have had the effect of reproving the discords of a country which might be happy as a paradise, which has valleys not less lovely than those of the Ruby Colosseum, of the Unicorn, or of the Triads; and which has not inferior facilities for social intercourse to those possessed by the _vespertiliones-homines_, or any other _homines_ whatever?

Some persons of little faith but great good nature, who consider the “moon story,” as it is vulgarly called, an adroit fiction of our own, are quite of the opinion that this was the amiable moral which the writer had in view. Other readers, however, construe the whole as an elaborate satire upon the monstrous fabrications of the political press of the country and the various genera and species of its party editors. In the blue goat with the single horn, mentioned as it is in connection with the royal arms of England, many persons fancy they perceive the characteristics of a notorious foreigner who is the supervising editor of one of our largest morning papers.

We confess that this idea of intended satire somewhat shook our own faith in the genuineness of the extracts from the Edinburgh _Journal of Science_ with which a gentleman connected with our office furnished us as “from a medical gentleman immediately from Scotland.”

Certain correspondents have been urging us to come out and confess the whole to be a hoax; but this we can by no means do until we have the testimony of the English or Scotch papers to corroborate such a declaration. In the mean time let every reader of the account examine it and enjoy his own opinion. Many intelligent and scientific persons will believe it true, and will continue to do so to their lives’ end; whilst the skepticism of others would not be removed though they were in Dr. Herschel’s observatory itself.

The New York showmen of that day were keen for novelty, and the moon story helped them to it. Mr. Hannington, who ran the diorama in the City Saloon--which was not a barroom, but an amusement house--on Broadway opposite St. Paul’s Church, put on “The Lunar Discoveries; a Brilliant Illustration of the Scientific Observation of the Surface of the Moon, to Which Will Be Added the Reported Lunar Observations of Sir John Herschel.” Hannington had been showing “The Deluge” and “The Burning of Moscow,” but the wonders of the moon proved to be far more attractive to his patrons. The _Sun_ approved of this moral spectacle:

Hannington forever and still years afterward, say we! His panorama of the lunar discoveries, in connexion with the beautiful dioramas, are far superior to any other exhibition in this country.

Not less popular than Hannington’s panorama was an extravaganza put on by Thomas Hamblin at the Bowery Theatre, and called “Moonshine, or Lunar Discoveries.” A _Sun_ man went to review it, and had to stand up; but he was patient enough to stay, and he wrote this about the show:

It is quite evident that Hamblin does not believe a word of the whole story, or he would never have taken the liberties with it which he has. The wings of the man-bats and lady-bats, who are of an orange color and look like angels in the jaundice, are well contrived for effect; and the dialogue is highly witty and pungent. Major Jack Downing’s blowing up a whole flock of winged lunarians with a combustible bundle of Abolition tracts, after vainly endeavoring to catch a long aim at them with his rifle, is capital; as are also his puns and jokes upon the splendid scenery of the Ruby Colosseum. Take it altogether, it is the most amusing thing that has been on these boards for a long time.

Thus the moon eclipsed the regular stars of the New York stage. Even Mrs. Duff, the most pathetic _Isabella_ that ever appeared in “The Fatal Marriage,” saw her audiences thin out at the Franklin Theatre. Sol Smith’s drolleries in “The Lying Valet,” at the Park Theatre, could not rouse the laughter that the burlesque man-bats caused at the Bowery.

All this time there was a disappointed man in Baltimore; disappointed because the moon stories had caused him to abandon one of the most ambitious stories he had attempted. This was Edgar Allan Poe, and the story he dropped was “Hans Pfaall.”

In the spring of 1835 the Harpers issued an edition of Sir John Herschel’s “Treatise on Astronomy,” and Poe, who read it, was deeply interested in the chapter on the possibility of future lunar investigations:

The theme excited my fancy, and I longed to give free rein to it in depicting my day-dreams about the scenery of the moon; in short, I longed to write a story embodying these dreams. The obvious difficulty, of course, was that of accounting for the narrator’s acquaintance with the satellite; and the equally obvious mode of surmounting the difficulty was the supposition of an extraordinary telescope.

Poe spoke of this ambition to John Pendleton Kennedy, of Baltimore, already the author of “Swallow Barn,” and later to have the honour of writing, as the result of a jest by Thackeray, the fourth chapter of the second volume of “The Virginians.” Kennedy assured Poe that the mechanics of telescope construction were so fixed that it would be impossible to impart verisimilitude to a tale based on a superefficient telescope. So Poe resorted to other means of bringing the moon close to the reader’s eye:

I fell back upon a style half plausible, half bantering, and resolved to give what interest I could to an actual passage from the earth to the moon, describing the lunar scenery as if surveyed and personally examined by the narrator.

Poe wrote the first part of “Hans Pfaall,” and published it in the _Southern Literary Messenger_, of which he was then editor, at Richmond, Virginia. Three weeks afterward the first instalment of Locke’s moon story appeared in the _Sun_. At the moment Poe believed that his idea had been kidnapped:

No sooner had I seen the paper than I understood the jest, which not for a moment could I doubt had been suggested by my own _jeu d’esprit_. Some of the New York journals--the _Transcript_, among others--saw the matter in the same light, and published the moon story side by side with “Hans Pfaall,” thinking that the author of the one had been detected in the author of the other.

Although the details are, with some exceptions, very dissimilar, still I maintain that the general features of the two compositions are nearly identical. Both are hoaxes--although one is in a tone of mere banter, the other of down-right earnest; both hoaxes are on one subject, astronomy; both on the same point of that subject, the moon; both professed to have derived exclusive information from a foreign country; and both attempt to give plausibility by minuteness of scientific detail. Add to all this, that nothing of a similar nature had even been attempted before these two hoaxes, the one of which followed immediately upon the heels of the other.

Having stated the case, however, in this form, I am bound to do Mr. Locke the justice to say that he denies having seen my article prior to the publication of his own; I am bound to add, also, that I believe him.

Nor can any unbiassed person who reads, for purpose of comparison, the “Astronomical Discoveries” and “Hans Pfaall” suspect that Locke based his hoax on the story of the Rotterdam debtor who blew his creditors to bits and sailed to the moon in a balloon. Chalk and cheese are much more alike than these two products of genius.

Poe may have intended to fall back upon “a style half plausible, half bantering,” as he described it, but there is not the slightest plausibility about “Hans Pfaall.” It is as near to humour as the great, dark mind could get. “Mere banter,” as he later described it, is better. The very episode of the dripping pitcher of water, used to wake _Hans_ at an altitude where even alcohol would freeze, is enough proof, if proof at all were necessary, to strip the tale of its last shred of verisimilitude. No child of twelve would believe in _Hans_, while Locke’s fictitious “Dr. Grant” deceived nine-tenths--the estimate is Poe’s--of those who read the narrative of the great doings at the Cape of Good Hope.

Locke had spoiled a promising tale for Poe--who tore up the second instalment of “Hans Pfaall” when he “found that he could add very little to the minute and authentic account of Sir John Herschel”--but the poet took pleasure, in later years, in picking the _Sun’s_ moon story to bits.

“That the public were misled, even for an instant,” Poe declared in his critical essay on Locke’s writings, “merely proves the gross ignorance which, ten or twelve years ago, was so prevalent on astronomical topics.”

According to Locke’s own description of the telescope, said Poe, it could not have brought the moon nearer than five miles; yet Sir John--Locke’s Sir John--saw flowers and described the eyes of birds. Locke had an ocean on the moon, although it had been established beyond question that the visible side of the moon is dry. The most ridiculous thing about the moon story, said Poe, was that the narrator described the entire bodies of the man-bats, whereas, if they were seen at all by an observer on the earth, they would manifestly appear as if walking heels up and head down, after the fashion of flies on a ceiling.

And yet the hoax, Poe admits, “was, upon the whole, the greatest hit in the way of sensation--of merely popular sensation--ever made by any similar fiction either in America or Europe.” Whether Locke intended it as satire or not--a debatable point--it was a hoax of the first water. It deceived more persons, and for a longer time, than any other fake ever written: and, as the _Sun_ pointed out, it hurt nobody--except, perhaps, the feelings of Dr. Dick, of Dundee--and it took the public mind away from less agreeable matters. Some of the wounded scientists roared, but the public, particularly the New York public, took the exposure of Locke’s literary villainy just as Sir John Herschel accepted it--with a grin.

As for the inspiration of the moon story, the record is nebulous. If Poe was really grieved at his first thought that Locke had taken from him the main imaginative idea--that the moon was inhabited--then Poe was oversensitive or uninformed, for that idea was at least two centuries old.

Francis Godwin, an English bishop and author, who was born in 1562, and who died just two centuries before the _Sun_ was first printed, wrote “The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger.” This was published in London in 1638, five years after the author’s death.

In the same year there appeared a book called “The Discovery of a World in the Moone,” which contained arguments to prove the moon habitable. It was written by John Wilkins--no relative of the fictitious _Peter_ of Paltock’s story, but a young English clergyman who later became Bishop of Chester, and who was the first secretary of the Royal Society. Two years later Wilkins added to his “Discovery of a World” a “Discourse Concerning the Possibility of a Passage Thither.”

Cyrano de Bergerac, he of the long nose and the passion for poetry and duelling, later to be immortalized by Rostand, read these products of two Englishmen’s fancy, and about 1650 he turned out his joyful “Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune.” But Bergerac had also been influenced by Dante and by Lucian, the latter being the supposed inspiration of the fanciful narratives of Rabelais and Swift. Perhaps these writers influenced Godwin and Wilkins also; so the trail, zigzagged and ramifying, goes back to the second century. It is hard to indict a man for being inspired, and in the case of the moon story there is no evidence of plagiarism. If “Hans Pfaall” were to be compared with Locke’s story for hoaxing qualities, it would only suffer by the comparison. It would appear as the youthful product of a tyro, as against the cunning work of an artist of almost devilish ingenuity.

Is there any doubt that the moon hoax was the sole work of Richard Adams Locke? So far as concerns the record of the _Sun_, the comments of Locke’s American contemporaries, and the belief of Benjamin H. Day, expressed in 1883 in a talk with Edward P. Mitchell, the answer must be in the negative. Yet it must be set down, as a literary curiosity at least, that it has been believed in France and by at least one English antiquary of repute that the moon hoax was the work of a Frenchman--Jean Nicolas Nicollet, the astronomer.

Nicollet was born at Cluses, in Savoy, in 1786. First a cowherd, he did not learn to read until he was twelve. Once at school his progress was rapid, and at nineteen he become preceptor of mathematics at Chambry. He went to Paris, where in 1817 he was appointed secretary-librarian of the Observatory, and he studied astronomy with Laplace, who refers to Nicollet’s assistance in his works. In 1823 he was appointed to the government bureau of longitudes, and at the same time was professor of mathematics in the College of Louis le Grand.

He became a master of English, and through this knowledge and his own mathematical genius he was able to assemble, for the use of the French life-insurance companies, all that was known, and much that he himself discovered, of actuarial methods; this being incorporated in his letter to M. Outrequin on “Assurances Having for Their Basis the Probable Duration of Human Life.” He also wrote “Memoirs upon the Measure of an Arc of Parallel Midway Between the Pole and the Equator” (1826), and “Course of Mathematics for the Use of Mariners” (1830).

In 1831 Nicollet failed in speculation, losing not only his own fortune but that of others. He came to the United States, arriving early in 1832, the very year that Locke came to America. It is probable that he was in New York, but there is no evidence as to the length of his stay. It is known, however, that he was impoverished, and that he was assisted by Bishop Chanche, of Natchez, to go on with his chosen work--an exploration of the Mississippi and its tributaries. He made astronomical and barometrical observations, determined the geographical position and elevation of many important points, and studied Indian lore.

The United States government was so well pleased with Nicollet’s work that it sent him to the Far West for further investigations, with Lieutenant John C. Frémont as assistant. His “Geology of the Upper Mississippi Region and of the Cretaceous Formation of the Upper Missouri” was one of the results of his journeys. After this he tried, through letters, to regain his lost standing in France by seeking election to the Paris Academy of Sciences, but he was black-balled, and, broken-hearted, he died in Washington in 1843.

The Englishman who believed that Nicollet was the author of the moon hoax was Augustus De Morgan, father of the late William De Morgan, the novelist, and himself a distinguished mathematician and litterateur. He was professor of mathematics at University College, London, at the time when the moon pamphlet first appeared in England. His “Budget of Paradoxes,” an interesting collection of literary curiosities and puzzles, which he had written, but not carefully assembled, was published in 1872, the year after his death.

Two fragments, printed separately in this volume, refer to the moon hoax. The first is this:

“Some Account of the Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope.”--Second Edition, London, 12mo, 1836.

This is a curious hoax, evidently written by a person versed in astronomy and clever at introducing probable circumstances and undesigned coincidences. It first appeared in a newspaper. It makes Sir J. Herschel discover men, animals, _et cetera_, in the moon, of which much detail is given. There seems to have been a French edition, the original, and English editions in America, whence the work came into Britain; but whether the French was published in America or at Paris I do not know. There is no doubt that it was produced in the United States by M. Nicollet, an astronomer, once of Paris, and a fugitive of some kind.

About him I have heard two stories. First, that he fled to America with funds not his own, and that this book was a mere device to raise the wind. Secondly, that he was a protégé of Laplace, and of the Polignac party, and also an outspoken man. That after the Revolution he was so obnoxious to the republican party that he judged it prudent to quit France; which he did in debt, leaving money for his creditors, but not enough, with M. Bouvard. In America he connected himself with an assurance office. The moon story was written, and sent to France, chiefly with the intention of entrapping M. Arago, Nicollet’s especial foe, into the belief of it. And those who narrate this version of the story wind up by saying that M. Arago _was_ entrapped, and circulated the wonders through Paris until a letter from Nicollet to M. Bouvard explained the hoax.

I have no personal knowledge of either story; but as the poor man had to endure the first, it is but right that the second should be told with it.

The second fragment reads as follows:

“The Moon Hoax; or, the Discovery That the Moon Has a Vast Population of Human Beings.” By Richard Adams Locke.--New York, 1859.

This is a reprint of the hoax already mentioned. I suppose “R. A. Locke” is the name assumed by M. Nicollet. The publisher informs us that when the hoax first appeared day by day in a morning newspaper, the circulation increased fivefold, and the paper obtained a permanent footing. Besides this, an edition of sixty thousand was sold off in less than one month.

This discovery was also published under the name of A. R. Grant. Sohnke’s “Bibliotheca Mathematica” confounds this Grant with Professor R. Grant of Glasgow, the author of the “History of Physical Astronomy,” who is accordingly made to guarantee the discoveries in the moon. I hope Adams Locke will not merge in J. C. Adams, the codiscoverer of Neptune. Sohnke gives the titles of three French translations of “The Moon Hoax” at Paris, of one at Bordeaux, and of Italian translations at Parma, Palermo, and Milan.

A correspondent, who is evidently fully master of details, which he has given at length, informs me that “The Moon Hoax” first appeared in the New York _Sun_, of which R. A. Locke was editor. It so much resembled a story then recently published by Edgar A. Poe, in a Southern paper, “Adventures of Hans Pfaall,” that some New York journals published the two side by side. Mr. Locke, when he left the New York _Sun_, started another paper, and discovered the manuscript of Mungo Park; but this did not deceive. The _Sun_, however, continued its career, and had a great success in an account of a balloon voyage from England to America, in seventy-five hours, by Mr. Monck Mason, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and others.

I have no doubt that M. Nicollet was the author of “The Moon Hoax,” written in a way which marks the practised observatory astronomer beyond all doubt, and by evidence seen in the most minute details. Nicollet had an eye to Europe. I suppose that he took Poe’s story and made it a basis for his own. Mr. Locke, it would seem, when he attempted a fabrication for himself, did not succeed.

In his remark that “there seems to have been a French edition, the original,” Augustus De Morgan was undoubtedly misled, for every authority consultable agrees that the French pamphlets were merely translations of the story originally printed in the _Sun_; and De Morgan had learned this when he wrote his second note on the subject.

The M. Arago whom De Morgan believes Nicollet sought to entrap was Dominique François Arago, the celebrated astronomer. In 1830, as a reward for his many accomplishments, he was made perpetual secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences, and in the following year--the year of Nicollet’s fall from grace--he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. As to the intimation that Arago was really misled by the moon story, it is unlikely. W. N. Griggs, a contemporary of Locke, insists in a memoir of that journalist that the narrative was read by Arago to the members of the Academy, and was received with mingled denunciation and laughter. But hoaxing Arago in a matter of astronomy would have been a difficult feat. Surely the discrepancies pointed out by Poe would have been noticed immediately.

It is, however, easy to understand De Morgan’s belief that Nicollet was the author of the moon story. Much of the narrative, particularly parts which have here been omitted, is made up of technicalities which could have come only from the pen of a man versed in the intricacies of astronomical science. They were not put into the story to interest _Sun_ readers, for they are far over the layman’s head, but for the purpose of adding verisimilitude to a yarn which, stripped of the technical trimmings, would have been pretty bald.

It was plain to De Morgan that Nicollet was one of the few men alive in 1835 who could have woven the scientific fabric in which the hoax was disguised. It was also apparent to him that Nicollet, jealous of the popularity of Arago, might have had a motive for launching a satire, if not a hoax. And then there was Nicollet’s presence in America at the time of the moon story’s publication, Nicollet’s knowledge of English, and Nicollet’s poverty. The coincidences are interesting, if nothing more.

* * * * *

Let us see what the French said about Nicollet and the story that came to the _Sun_ from “a medical gentleman immediately from Scotland.” In a sketch of Nicollet printed in the “Biographie Universelle” (Michaud, Paris, 1884), the following appears:

There has been attributed to him an article which appeared in the daily papers of France, and which, in the form of a letter dated from the United States, spoke of an improvement in the telescope invented by the learned astronomer Herschel, who was then at the Cape of Good Hope. It has been generally and with much probability attributed to Nicollet.

With the aid of this admirable improvement Herschel was supposed to have succeeded in discovering on the surface of the moon live beings, buildings of various kinds, and a multitude of other interesting things. The description of these objects and the ingenious method employed by the English astronomer to attain his purpose was so detailed, and covered with a veneer of science so skilfully applied, that the general public was startled by the announcement of the discovery, of which North America hastened to send us the news.

It has even been said that several astronomers and physicists of our country were taken in for a moment. That seems hardly probable to us. It was easy to perceive that it was a hoax written by a learned and mischievous person.

The “Nouvelle Biographie Générale” (Paris, 1862), says of Nicollet:

He is believed to be the author of the anonymous pamphlet which appeared in 1836 on the discoveries in the moon made by Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope.

Cruel, consistent Locke, never to have written down the details of the conception and birth of the best invention that ever spoofed the world! He leaves history to wonder whether it be possible that, with one word added, the French biographer was right, and that it was “a hoax written by a learned and _a_ mischievous person.” Certain it is that Nicollet never wrote all of the moon story; certain, too, that Locke wrote much, if not all of it. The calculations of the angles of reflection might have been Nicollet’s, but the blue unicorn is the unicorn of Locke.

No man can say when the germ of the story first took shape. It might have been designed at any time after Herschel laid the plans for his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and that was at least two years before it appeared in the _Sun_. Was Nicollet in New York then, and did he and Locke lay their heads together across a table at the American Hotel and plan the great deceit?

There was one head full of figures and the stars; another crammed with the imagination that brought forth the fire-making biped beavers and the fascinating, if indecorous, human bats. If they never met, more is the pity. Whether they met, none can say. Go to ask the ghosts of the American Hotel, and you find it gone, and in its place the Woolworth Building, earth’s spear levelled at the laughing moon.

Whatever happened, the credit must rest with Richard Adams Locke. Even if the technical embellishments of the moon story were borrowed, still his was the genius that builded the great temple, made flowers to bloom in the lunar valleys, and grew the filmy wings on the _vespertilio-homo_. His was the art that caused the bricklayer of Cherry Street to sit late beside his candle, spelling out the rare story with joyous labour. It must have been a reward to Locke, even to the last of his seventy years, to know that he had made people read newspapers who never had read them before; for that is what he really accomplished by this huge, complex lie.

“From the epoch of the hoax,” wrote Poe, “the Sun shone with unmitigated splendor. Its success firmly established the ‘penny system’ throughout the country, and (through the _Sun_) consequently we are indebted to the genius of Mr. Locke for one of the most important steps ever yet taken in the pathway of human progress.”