It is now high time that I should explain to your Excellencies the object of my perilous voyage. Your Excellencies will bear in mind, that distressed circumstances in Rotterdam, had at length driven me to the resolution of committing suicide. It was not, however, that to life itself I had any positive disgust--but that I was harassed beyond endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation. In this state of mind--wishing to live, yet wearied with life--the treatise at the stall of the bookseller opened a resource to my imagination. I then finally made up my mind. I determined to depart, yet live--to leave the world, yet continue to exist--in short, to drop enigmas, I resolved, let what would ensue, to force a passage, if I could--to the moon. Now, lest I should be supposed more of a madman than I actually am, I will detail, as well as I am able, the considerations which led me to believe that an achievement of this nature, although without doubt difficult, and incontestably full of danger, was not absolutely, to a bold spirit, beyond the confines of the possible.
The moon's actual distance from the earth was the first thing to be attended to. Now the mean or average interval between the _centres_ of the two planets is 59.9643 of the earth's equatorial radii, or only about 237000 miles. I say the mean or average interval. But it must be borne in mind, that the form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse of eccentricity, amounting to no less than 0.05484 of the major semi-axis of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being situated in its focus, if I could, in any manner, contrive to meet the moon, as it were, in its perigee, the above-mentioned distance would be materially diminished. But to say nothing, at present, of this possibility, it was very certain, that at all events, from the 237000 miles I should have to deduct the radius of the earth, say 4000, and the radius of the moon, say 1080, in all 5080, leaving an actual interval to be traversed, under average circumstances, of 231920 miles. Now this, I reflected, was no very extraordinary distance. Travelling on land has been repeatedly accomplished at the rate of thirty miles per hour, and indeed a much greater speed may be anticipated. But even at this velocity, it would take me no more than 322 days to reach the surface of the moon. There were, however, many particulars inducing me to believe that my average rate of travelling might possibly very much exceed that of thirty miles per hour, and, as these considerations did not fail to make a deep impression upon my mind, I will mention them more fully hereafter.