China, and I generally carried half a dozen or more about me in a stiff envelope. Now came the crisis of my destiny! If the relative position of the wafers remained for an hour unchanged, there was no hope for poor John Whopper. With my watch—which, by the way, I had protected against the disturbance of the magnetic currents by a compensation balance—in my hand, I gazed earnestly and anxiously upon the two wafers. Fifteen minutes passed. In this time, the earth had revolved one ninety-sixth part of its daily course, and the inhabitants on the surface had travelled two hundred and fifty miles. If my hopes are well founded, it is hardly time yet for me to perceive any change in the two red spots upon which my gaze is fixed. A half hour slowly passes. I do believe that the wafers are not directly opposite to each other! let me wait a little while longer, that I may be certain. There is no mistake about it,—the right edge of one wafer just touches the left edge of the other. Eureka! Hurrah! I am right. I am right. This big cylinder is the axis of the earth, fixed and immovable; and these huge walls are revolving round it. There's a discovery to make a man immortal! What fools the old geographers were that used to say,—"the axis is an imaginary line, running through," etc., etc. The name of Whopper will now be heralded to all coming generations with the names of Bacon and Newton and La Place and Humboldt, and all the rest of them! Fame, with her great silver trumpet—

"Stop, my boy," I imagine the impatient reader is now saying. "You had better get out into daylight before you crow so loud; we don't see how your great discovery is going to help you to do that." I presume not; but you will see, if you are only patient.

I now reasoned thus with myself: "If the axis of the earth is hollow,—about which I have no doubt,—and open at both ends,—inasmuch as it is winter at the south pole when it is summer at the north, and vice versa,—there must always be a strong current of air passing through it,—the cold air of one extreme rushing into the warmer region at the opposite pole. I have, then, only to find some way of introducing my body into the interior of this axis; and, by taking advantage of the current, I shall soon be able to see daylight again."

The next thing, therefore, to be done was to find out whether it would be possible for me to get inside the cylinder. I had observed, that in some places the metal of which it was composed, showed the appearance of being honey-combed; and this gave me some encouragement. I now crawled, or rather swam, about the surface of this cylindrical mass of metal, and soon found an orifice large enough for me to thrust in my hand and arm up to the elbow. True enough, there was a strong draught in there, so strong that it seemed as if my arm would be wrenched from the socket. Every doubt and difficulty were now removed, if I could only find a hole in the cylinder three feet in diameter; and after an hour's search, I lighted upon just what I wanted,—a good smooth opening, and somewhat larger than was actually needed to pass my body through. This, however, was fortunate, because I must have space enough to project myself with some force from the orifice, or I might strike the side of the cylinder, and be dashed into fragments.

Every thing was now ready: nerving my whole system for the terrible effort and the frightful risk, I sprang with all my might into the axis of the earth. After what I had experienced when I put my arm into the cylinder, I expected, of course, as soon as my whole body was thrown in there, that I should undergo the terrible sensation of being whirled upward by a tornado. Instead of this, to my astonishment, the moment that I had cleared the orifice through which I jumped I felt as though I were floating stationary in the air. Could it be that I was deceived in regard to the existence of the current? This could hardly be: it was not possible that I was stationary, for the hole through which I leaped had vanished in a flash. It then for the first time occurred to me, that being in the current, and as it were a part of the current, moving in it and with it without any resistance, it was impossible for me to tell whether I was advancing or not; and then I remembered how men that went up in balloons, after they had lost sight of the earth, could not perceive whether they were in motion or at rest; and how our teacher at the Roxbury school used to explain the fact that we were not conscious of the rotation of the globe on which we stood, upon the same principle. When I thought of all this, I broke into a loud laugh, and for a long time I could hear the echoes thundering through the cylinder.

I cannot say how glad I felt that my journey through the axis of the earth occurred at that period of the year when the current set from the south to the north. The prospect of safety if I were to be discharged from the south pole, would be slight indeed; but familiarity with the writings of various explorers in the Arctic regions gave me the very natural feeling that I should be in a measure at home in that part of the world.

The absence of any sense of motion, with the quietness and darkness that surrounded me, began to induce a feeling of weariness; and I thought that I should like to see how it looked where I was; so I lighted my lantern, which I had extinguished when I leaped into the axis, when the most dazzling and marvellous sight burst upon my view. I found that I was not very far from the side of the cylinder, which was polished—probably by the constant friction of the swift current passing through it—so that it glistened like a diamond, only it was of one uniform vermilion hue. Reflected, as in a fiery mirror, I caught an occasional glimpse of myself, magnified to a gigantic size by the concave form of the cylinder, and elongated in the most remarkable manner by the rapidity with which I shot by the surface; and, after this, I had no further doubts as to whether I was moving on or standing still. I next amused myself by making all sorts of uproarious sounds, which were repeated up and down, and back and forth, from the metallic walls, until I was somewhat frightened at the cries I made; for it seemed as if fifty wild demons were shouting and yelling around me. There are some of my readers who will remember the old chemical chimney in Roxbury, and what strange sounds were heard there when the boys stood below, laughing and talking. What I now heard recalled most vividly all those experiences. To soothe my mind a little, I then took a jews-harp from my pocket and played the "Star-spangled Banner." The effect was beautiful and almost magical, and I sank at once into a delicious reverie.

But, as the time drew near when I supposed that I might expect to emerge from my present position, I began to feel anxious as to what would become of me when I came out. I anticipated, of course, that, moving at such a fearful rate, I must expect to shoot up rather high in the air; and the question was, where I should probably land. If, as is generally supposed, it is a clear, open sea at the pole, I shall not land at all, but come down into the water. In this case, I am inevitably lost: but still my faith was not shaken; after all that I had endured, it did not seem likely that I should be left to perish in the sea. I could do nothing but trust and wait.

In process of time the light began