356 THE WORLD MACHINE 



of their more than ordinary voyages ; let us say, twenty-five 

 hundred miles. 



When Sebastian de Elcano entered the harbour of San Lucar, 

 in the month of September 1522, with the ships of the ill-fated 

 Magalhaens, he had accomplished a voyage of between 30,000 

 and 40,000 miles ; his armorial bearings carried a globe with 

 the inscription, " Primus circum dedisti me." The ranges of the 

 earth which men would now undertake to span had been multi- 

 plied ten or a dozen times. 



The circumference of the earth is roughly 25,000 miles. 

 Could we leave the earth and voyage in space, the first object 

 with which we might meet, barring a chance swarm of whizzing 

 meteorites, would be the moon. It lies at very near ten girdles 

 of the earth that is to say, 240,000 miles. He who first 

 measured the distance to the moon covered a space, then, some- 

 thing like a hundred times the longest voyage which had yet 

 been made by man. 



After that, space is a blank for a long way. Could we 

 journey on from the moon, the first foothold we might gain, 

 the hundreds of little asteroids disregarded, would be, were its 

 position right, the planet Venus. The most brilliant object of 

 the moonless night is, as we know now, about the same dimen- 

 sions as the earth, surrounded doubtless with a dense atmos- 

 phere, and perchance as likely to be peopled with intelligent 

 beings as any other of the planets. Its distance from the 

 earth at its nearest approach is about one hundred times the 

 distance of the moon that is to say, about twenty-five million 

 miles. A spin to Hesperus, therefore, would, under the most 

 favourable circumstances, involve a journey a thousand times 

 longer than a trip around the globe. A voyage to Mars would, 

 at the nearest, be one- third farther. 



The sun is at about four times the distance of Venus at its 

 nearest approach that is to say, roughly, four hundred times 

 the distance of the moon ; roughly, four thousand circumferences 

 of the earth. This is about ninety-three million miles. In the 

 antique illustration of the railway train, a flying express which 

 would carry the traveller from New York to San Francisco in 

 two days would bring him to the sun in two hundred years. 

 Were some solar Krakatoa to explode, we might see the effects 

 eight minutes after ; but the report, did sound carry so far, 

 would not be heard until fourteen years later. 



