The Texican deputies were thunderstruck at this decision.
It put them into a terrible rage, and they sent nominal
provocations to different members of the Gun Club.
There was only one course for the magistrates of Baltimore
to take, and they took it. They had the steam
of a special train got up, packed the Texicans into
it, whether they would or no, and sent them away from
the town at a speed of thirty miles an hour.
But they were not carried off too quickly to hurl
a last and threatening sarcasm at their adversaries.
Making allusion to the width of Florida, a simple
peninsula between two seas, they pretended it would
not resist the shock, and would be blown up the first
time the cannon was fired.
“Very well! let it be blown up!” answered
the Floridans with a laconism worthy of ancient times.
“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.
