other, and that their poles are open twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the concave, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking. John Cleves Symmes of Ohio, late Captain of Infantry.
I ask one hundred brave companions, well equipped, to start for Siberia, in autumn, with reindeer and sledges, on the ice of the frozen sea. I engage we find a warm country and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men, on reaching about sixty-nine miles northward of latitude 82°. We will return in the succeeding spring.—J. C. S.
Captain Symmes seems pretty positive about getting back, though how he intended to get up again after getting down into one of the lower spheres he doesn’t say. Perhaps a hundred brave companions, standing on each other’s heads, might manage it,