3 86 MY LIFE 



cross-hair did not show the true level, but pointed upwards, 

 and the water was truly level, then the distant mark, being 

 the same height above the water as the top disc at half the 

 distance and the telescope, these two objects must have ap- 

 peared in a straight line, the nearer one covering the more 

 distant. It should appear on the straight line drawn from 

 the eye at A through B, whereas it appears a long way below 

 it, thus proving curvature, the essential point to be shown. 



Thus the view in the large telescope and in the level- 

 telescope both told exactly the same thing, and, moreover, 

 proved that the curvature was very nearly the amount 

 calculated from the known dimensions of the earth. Mr. 

 Hampden declined to look through either telescope, saying 

 he trusted to Mr. Carpenter, while the latter declared posi- 

 tively that they had won, and that we knew it; that the fact 

 that the distant signal appeared below the middle one as far 

 as the middle one did below the cross-hair, proved that the 

 three were in a straight line, and that the earth was flat, and 

 he rejected the view in the large telescope as proving nothing 

 for the reasons already stated. 



At first Mr. Hampden refused to appoint an umpire, be- 

 cause my referee, Mr. Coulcher, refused to discuss the 

 question with Mr. Carpenter; but after a few days he agreed 

 that Mr. Walsh should be the umpire, after receiving the 

 reports of the two referees. He had, in fact, unbounded con- 

 fidence in what Mr. Carpenter told him, and firmly believed 

 that the experiments had demonstrated the flat earth, and 

 that no honest man could think otherwise. 



But Mr. Walsh decided without any hesitation that I had 

 proved what I undertook to prove. He published the whole 

 of the particulars with the reports of the referees and their 

 sketches in the Field of March 18 and 26, while a consider- 

 able correspondence and discussion went on for some weeks 

 later. At Mr. Hampden's request he allowed Mr. Carpenter 

 to send in a long argument to show that the experiments 

 were all in Mr. Hampden's favour, and having considered 

 them, he wrote to Mr. Hampden that he should hand me the 

 stakes on a certain day if he had no other reason to adduce 



