Such were the advantages promised by Barbicane’s changing the axis¹ of rotation²—a change, however, which would only slightly affect the movement of our spheroid round the Sun. The Earth would continue to describe its orbit through space, and the conditions of the solar year would remain the same.  
When the consequences of the change of axis were brought to the knowledge of the world, they caused extraordinary excitement. At first this problem of the higher mechanics received an enthusiastic welcome. The idea of having seasons of constant equality, and, according to the latitude³, “to suit consumers,” was very attractive. The crowd revelled⁴ in the thought that they could enjoy the perpetual spring which the bard⁵ of Telemachus accorded to the Island of Calypso, and that they could have the spring either fresh or mild. Where the new axis was to be seemed to be the secret of Barbicane, Nicholl, and J. T. Maston, which they were in no hurry to present to the public. Would they reveal it in advance, or would it be known after the experiment? It would be as well to say so, perhaps, as opinion began to show signs of anxiety in the matter.
 
One observation occurred naturally to the mind, and was at once commented on in the newspapers. By what mechanical means was the change to be produced, which evidently required the employment of an enormous force?
 
The Forum⁶, an important New York review, very justly remarked:—
 
“If the Earth did not turn on its axis, it is probable that a relatively⁷ feeble shock would suffice to give a movement of rotation round an axis arbitrarily chosen; but the Earth is like an enormous gyroscope moving at high velocity⁸, and it is a natural law that such an apparatus⁹ has a tendency to turn round the same axis, as Foucault demonstrated in his well-known experiments. It will therefore be very difficult, if not impossible, to shift it.”
 
But after asking what would be the effort required by the engineers of the North Polar Practical Association, it was at least as interesting to know if the effort was to be suddenly or insensibly applied¹⁰. And if it was to be a sudden effort, would not the proceedings¹¹ of Messrs. Barbicane & Co. produce some rather alarming catastrophes¹² on the face of the earth?
 
Here was something to occupy the brains of the wise and foolish. A shock is a shock, and it is never agreeable to receive the blow or the counter-blow. There was a likelihood that the promoters of the enterprise had been so busy with the advantages the world was to possess that they had overlooked the destruction the operation would entail¹³. And with considerable cleverness the Major and his allies made the most of this, and began to agitate¹⁴ public opinion against the president of the Gun Club.
 
Although France had taken no part in the syndicating, and officially treated the matter with disdain¹⁵, yet there was in that country an individual who conceived the idea of setting out for Baltimore, to follow, for his own private satisfaction, the different phases of the enterprise.
 
He was a mining engineer of about five and thirty years of age. He had been the first on the list when admitted to the Polytechnic¹⁶ School, and he had been the first on the list when he left it, so that he must have been a mathematician¹⁷ of the first order, and probably superior to J. T. Maston, who, though he was a long way above the average, was only a calculator after all—that is to say, what Leverrier was compared to Newton or Laplace.
 
This engineer was a man of brains, and—though he was none the worse for that—somewhat of a humourist, and an original. In conversation with his intimates, even when he talked science, his language was more that of the slang of the streets than of the academical formulæ he employed when he wrote. He was a wonderful worker, being accustomed to sit for ten hours at a stretch before his table, writing pages on pages of algebra¹⁸ with as much ease as he would have written a letter.
 
This singular man was called Pierdeux (Alcide), and in his way of condensing it—as is the custom of his comrades—he generally signed himself ierd, or even I, without even dotting the i. He wa............