half past two in the morning of December 6th
Theories of this nature and all manner of scientific questions were , of course , perfectly permissible to terrestrial astronomers laboring under the disadvantage of imperfect instruments . But Barbican could not think of wasting his time in any speculation of the kind , and now , seeing that his Projectile perceptibly approached the lunar disc , though he despaired of ever reaching it , he was more sanguine than ever of being soon able to discover positively and unquestionably some of the secrets of its formation . -LSB- Footnote C : We must again remind our readers that , in our map , though every thing is set down as it appears to the eye not as it is reversed by the telescope , still , for the reason made so clear by Barbican , the right hand side must be the west and the left the east . -RSB- At half past two in the morning of December 6th , the travellers crossed the 30th northern parallel , at a distance from the lunar surface of 625 miles , reduced to about 6 by their spy-glasses . Barbican could not yet see the least probability of their landing at any point of the disc . The velocity of the Projectile was decidedly slow , but for that reason extremely puzzling . Barbican could not account for it .