Peculiar Theory, in Which Many Had Faith, That Was Put Forward by John C. Symmes

John C. Symmes (1779–1829) believed that the globe was hollow and inhabited. He claimed the earth was open at the poles to admit air, and contained within it other concentric hollow globes all inhabited in a like manner. In 1823 congress was petitioned to send an expedition to test out his theory, with himself in charge, but the matter was dropped. Humboldt states that Symmes often invited himself and Humphry Davy to descend to the earth’s interior and investigate animal and plant life. Symmes said the inside of the earth was lighted by two subterranean suns which he named “Pluto” and “Proserpine.” Arctic exploration and the discovery of the north and south poles proved part of his theory a myth.

The following report of a trial in West Jersey for witchcraft, is preserved in an Almanac published in the year 1807. The trial took place in Burlington county, in the 1730, a little more than a century ago, and as an incident of the “good old times” of which we often hear, has some interest for the modern reader. We find it in the Mount Holly Mirror.

Were there no other reason for promoting an increase of knowledge, it would be desirable for the sake of humanity only, to give such information as exhibits the singular ignorance of former ages and the improvements of succeeding generations. The following account taken from the Pennsylvania Gazette, of October 1730, is inserted to evince not only the absurdity, but the cruelty, of a superstitious error which about that period infected not merely the common people, but the expounders of law and dispensers of justice. We may now flatter ourselves that the terror of witchcraft is no more ; and that’a poor woman may be both old and ugly without being in danger of hanging for being too light in the water, or drowning for being too heavy: