"Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "A Trip Around It"" - читать интересную книгу автора

IX. The Consequences of A Deviation
X. The Observers of the Moon
XI. Fancy and Reality
XII. Orographic Details
XIII. Lunar Landscapes
XIV. The Night of Three Hundred and Fifty-Four Hours and A Half
XV. Hyperbola or Parabola
XVI. The Southern Hemisphere
XVII. Tycho
XVIII. Grave Questions
XIX. A Struggle Against the Impossible
XX. The Soundings of the Susquehanna
XXI. J. T. Maston Recalled
XXII. Recovered From the Sea
XXIII. The End



FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON




CHAPTER I


THE GUN CLUB


During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was
established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland.
It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters
became developed among that nation of ship-owners, shopkeepers,
and mechanics. Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become
extemporized captains, colonels, and generals, without having
ever passed the School of Instruction at West Point;
nevertheless; they quickly rivaled their compeers of the old
continent, and, like them, carried off victories by dint of
lavish expenditure in ammunition, money, and men.

But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the
Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not, indeed, that
their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than
theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and
consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of
grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blank
firing, the English, French, and Prussians have nothing to
learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere
pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the
American artillery.