All that Columbus can have felt when he first set foot on a new hemisphere I felt in tenfold force as I assured myself that not, as often before, in dreams, but in very truth and fact, I had traversed forty million miles of space, and landed in a new world.
Of the perils that might await me I could hardly care to think.

They might be greater in degree.
They could hardly be other in kind, than those which a traveller might incur in Papua, or Central Africa, or in the North-West Passage.

They could have none of that wholly novel, strange, incalculable character which sometimes had given to the chances of my etherial voyage a vague horror and mystery that appalled imagination.

For the first time during my journey I could neither eat nor sleep; yet I must do both.

I might soon meet with difficulties and dangers that would demand all the resources of perfect physical and mental condition, with heavy calls on the utmost powers of nerve and muscle.