thinkest thou of Nature?" Now here was the same interrogation a third time repeated. I now determined to study well ere venturing to reply. This I did, all the while upborne on the air by a force whose nature was not easily understood, but which I inwardly resolved to investigate and explore. The resolution was, as will be hereafter seen, most faithfully kept, with results highly gratifying and satisfactory, which will be presented in the sequel to this volume.
While delving in the mines of my soul for a proper answer, I took notice that we gently floated off and upward, at an angle of fifty-one degrees with the horizon. The storm was going in one direction, and we in the other; so that in a little time we were entirely beyond its influence, as was also that portion of the earth over which it first began to rage. There was no standard by which the rate of our velocity could be measured: but it must have been prodigious, judging by the rapidity with which the mountains, rivers and cities of the earth seemingly swept by us—for indeed there was at this point of the experience but very little, if any, sense of motion,—no cutting of the air,—no hissing as we passed through it; but it seemed as if we were in the center of a large transparent globe or sphere, which itself moved on as if impelled by a force entirely superior to that which governs rude matter. The earth itself, from the elevation we were at, seemed to have lost its general convex shape, and now looked as if it were a huge basin, so singularly did it appear to concave itself. Instinctively I realized that this was the appearance it would naturally assume to a person who looked upon it through bodily eyes from the great height at which we now were; but it was not so easy
