Puzzling Questions

: All Around The Moon

It was not until the Projectile had passed a little beyond Tycho's

immense concavity that Barbican and his friends had a good opportunity

for observing the brilliant streaks sent so wonderfully flying in all

directions from this celebrated mountain as a common centre. They

examined them for some time with the closest attention.



What could be the nature of this radiating aureola? By what geological

phenome a could this blazing coma have been possibly produced? Such

questions were the most natural things in the world for Barbican and his

companions to propound to themselves, as indeed they have been to every

astronomer from the beginning of time, and probably will be to the end.



What did they see? What you can see, what anybody can see on a clear

night when the Moon is full--only our friends had all the advantages of

a closer view. From Tycho, as a focus, radiated in all directions, as

from the head of a peeled orange, more than a hundred luminous streaks

or channels, edges raised, middle depressed--or perhaps vice versa,

owing to an optical illusion--some at least twelve miles wide, some

fully thirty. In certain directions they ran for a distance of at least

six hundred miles, and seemed--especially towards the west, northwest,

and north--to cover half the southern hemisphere. One of these flashes

extended as far as Neander on the 40th meridian; another, curving

around so as to furrow the Mare Nectaris, came to an end on the chain

of the Pyrenees, after a course of perhaps a little more than seven

hundred miles. On the east, some of them barred with luminous network

the Mare Nubium and even the Mare Humorum.



The most puzzling feature of these glittering streaks was that they ran

their course directly onward, apparently neither obstructed by valley,

crater, or mountain ridge however high. They all started, as said

before, from one common focus, Tycho's crater. From this they

certainly all seemed to emanate. Could they be rivers of lava once

vomited from that centre by resistless volcanic agency and afterwards

crystallized into glassy rock? This idea of Herschel's, Barbican had no

hesitation in qualifying as exceedingly absurd. Rivers running in

perfectly straight lines, across plains, and up as well as down

mountains!



"Other astronomers," he continued, "have looked on these streaks as a

peculiar kind of moraines, that is, long lines of erratic blocks

belched forth with mighty power at the period of Tycho's own

upheaval."



"How do you like that theory, Barbican," asked the Captain.



"It's not a particle better than Herschel's," was the reply; "no

volcanic action could project rocks to a distance of six or seven

hundred miles, not to talk of laying them down so regularly that we

can't detect a break in them."



"Happy thought!" cried Ardan suddenly; "it seems to me that I can tell

the cause of these radiating streaks!"



"Let us hear it," said Barbican.



"Certainly," was Ardan's reply; "these streaks are all only the parts of

what we call a 'star,' as made by a stone striking ice; or by a ball, a

pane of glass."



"Not bad," smiled Barbican approvingly; "only where is the hand that

flung the stone or threw the ball?"



"The hand is hardly necessary," replied Ardan, by no means disconcerted;

"but as for the ball, what do you say to a comet?"



Here M'Nicholl laughed so loud that Ardan was seriously irritated.

However, before he could say anything cutting enough to make the Captain

mind his manners, Barbican had quickly resumed:



"Dear friend, let the comets alone, I beg of you; the old astronomers

fled to them on all occasions and made them explain every difficulty--"



--"The comets were all used up long ago--" interrupted M'Nicholl.



--"Yes," went on Barbican, as serenely as a judge, "comets, they said,

had fallen on the surface in meteoric showers and crushed in the crater

cavities; comets had dried up the water; comets had whisked off the

atmosphere; comets had done everything. All pure assumption! In your

case, however, friend Michael, no comet whatever is necessary. The shock

that gave rise to your great 'star' may have come from the interior

rather than the exterior. A violent contraction of the lunar crust in

the process of cooling may have given birth to your gigantic 'star'

formation."



"I accept the amendment," said Ardan, now in the best of humor and

looking triumphantly at M'Nicholl.



"An English scientist," continued Barbican, "Nasmyth by name, is

decidedly of your opinion, especially ever since a little experiment of

his own has confirmed him in it. He filled a glass globe with water,

hermetically sealed it, and then plunged it into a hot bath. The

enclosed water, expanding at a greater rate than the glass, burst the

latter, but, in doing so, it made a vast number of cracks all diverging

in every direction from the focus of disruption. Something like this he

conceives to have taken place around Tycho. As the crust cooled, it

cracked. The lava from the interior, oozing out, spread itself on both

sides of the cracks. This certainly explains pretty satisfactorily why

those flat glistening streaks are of much greater width than the

fissures through which the lava had at first made its way to the

surface."



"Well done for an Englishman!" cried Ardan in great spirits.



"He's no Englishman," said M'Nicholl, glad to have an opportunity of

coming off with some credit. "He is the famous Scotch engineer who

invented the steam hammer, the steam ram, and discovered the 'willow

leaves' in the Sun's disc."



"Better and better," said Ardan--"but, powers of Vulcan! What makes it

so hot? I'm actually roasting!"



This observation was hardly necessary to make his companions conscious

that by this time they felt extremely uncomfortable. The heat had become

quite oppressive. Between the natural caloric of the Sun and the

reflected caloric of the Moon, the Projectile was fast turning into a

regular bake oven. This transition from intense cold to intense heat was

already about quite as much as they could bear.



"What shall we do, Barbican?" asked Ardan, seeing that for some time no

one else appeared inclined to say a word.



"Nothing, at least yet awhile, friend Ardan," replied Barbican, "I have

been watching the thermometer carefully for the last few minutes, and,

though we are at present at 38 deg. centigrade, or 100 deg. Fahrenheit, I have

noticed that the mercury is slowly falling. You can also easily remark

for yourself that the floor of the Projectile is turning away more and

more from the lunar surface. From this I conclude quite confidently, and

I see that the Captain agrees with me, that all danger of death from

intense heat, though decidedly alarming ten minutes ago, is over for the

present and, for some time at least, it may be dismissed from further

consideration."



"I'm not very sorry for it," said Ardan cheerfully; "neither to be

baked like a pie in an oven nor roasted like a fat goose before a fire

is the kind of death I should like to die of."



"Yet from such a death you would suffer no more than your friends the

Selenites are exposed to every day of their lives," said the Captain,

evidently determined on getting up an argument.



"I understand the full bearing of your allusion, my dear Captain,"

replied Ardan quickly, but not at all in a tone showing that he was

disposed to second M'Nicholl's expectations.



He was, in fact, fast losing all his old habits of positivism. Latterly

he had seen much, but he had reflected more. The deeper he had

reflected, the more inclined he had become to accept the conclusion that

the less he knew. Hence he had decided that if M'Nicholl wanted an

argument it should not be with him. All speculative disputes he should

henceforth avoid; he would listen with pleasure to all that could be

urged on each side; he might even skirmish a little here and there as

the spirit moved him; but a regular pitched battle on a subject purely

speculative he was fully determined never again to enter into.



"Yes, dear Captain," he continued, "that pointed arrow of yours has by

no means missed its mark, but I can't deny that my faith is beginning to

be what you call a little 'shaky' in the existence of my friends the

Selenites. However, I should like to have your square opinion on the

matter. Barbican's also. We have witnessed many strange lunar phenomena

lately, closer and clearer than mortal eye ever rested on them before.

Has what we have seen confirmed any theory of yours or confounded any

hypothesis? Have you seen enough to induce you to adopt decided

conclusions? I will put the question formally. Do you, or do you not,

think that the Moon resembles the Earth in being the abode of animals

and intelligent beings? Come, answer, messieurs. Yes, or no?"



"I think we can answer your question categorically," replied Barbican,

"if you modify its form a little."



"Put the question any way you please," said Ardan; "only you answer it!

I'm not particular about the form."



"Good," said Barbican; "the question, being a double one, demands a

double answer. First: Is the Moon inhabitable? Second: Has the Moon

ever been inhabited?"



"That's the way to go about it," said the Captain. "Now then, Ardan,

what do you say to the first question? Yes, or no?"



"I really can't say anything," replied Ardan. "In the presence of such

distinguished scientists, I'm only a listener, a 'mere looker on in

Vienna' as the Divine Williams has it. However, for the sake of

argument, suppose I reply in the affirmative, and say that the Moon is

inhabitable."



"If you do, I shall most unhesitatingly contradict you," said Barbican,

feeling just then in splendid humor for carrying on an argument, not, of

course, for the sake of contradicting or conquering or crushing or

showing off or for any other vulgar weakness of lower minds, but for the

noble and indeed the only motive that should impel a philosopher--that

of enlightening and convincing, "In taking the negative side,

however, or saying that the Moon is not inhabitable, I shall not be

satisfied with merely negative arguments. Many words, however, are not

required. Look at her present condition: her atmosphere dwindled away to

the lowest ebb; her 'seas' dried up or very nearly so; her waters

reduced to next to nothing; her vegetation, if existing at all, existing

only on the scantiest scale; her transitions from intense heat to

intense cold, as we ourselves can testify, sudden in the extreme; her

nights and her days each nearly 360 hours long. With all this positively

against her and nothing at all that we know of positively for her, I

have very little hesitation in saying that the Moon appears to me to be

absolutely uninhabitable. She seems to me not only unpropitious to the

development of the animal kingdom but actually incapable of sustaining

life at all--that is, in the sense that we usually attach to such a

term."



"That saving clause is well introduced, friend Barbican," said

M'Nicholl, who, seeing no chance of demolishing Ardan, had not yet made

up his mind as to having another little bout with the President. "For

surely you would not venture to assert that the Moon is uninhabitable by

a race of beings having an organization different from ours?"



"That question too, Captain," replied Barbican, "though a much more

difficult one, I shall try to answer. First, however, let us see,

Captain, if we agree on some fundamental points. How do we detect the

existence of life? Is it not by movement? Is not motion its result,

no matter what may be its organization?"



"Well," said the Captain in a drawling way, "I guess we may grant that."



"Then, dear friends," resumed Barbican, "I must remind you that, though

we have had the privilege of observing the lunar continents at a

distance of not more than one-third of a mile, we have never yet caught

sight of the first thing moving on her surface. The presence of

humanity, even of the lowest type, would have revealed itself in some

form or other, by boundaries, by buildings, even by ruins. Now what

have we seen? Everywhere and always, the geological works of nature;

nowhere and never, the orderly labors of man. Therefore, if any

representatives of animal life exist in the Moon, they must have taken

refuge in those bottomless abysses where our eyes were unable to track

them. And even this I can't admit. They could not always remain in these

cavities. If there is any atmosphere at all in the Moon, it must be

found in her immense low-lying plains. Over those plains her inhabitants

must have often passed, and on those plains they must in some way or

other have left some mark, some trace, some vestige of their existence,

were it even only a road. But you both know well that nowhere are any

such traces visible: therefore, they don't exist; therefore, no lunar

inhabitants exist--except, of course, such a race of beings, if we can

imagine any such, as could exist without revealing their existence by

movement."



"That is to say," broke in Ardan, to give what he conceived a sharper

point to Barbican's cogent arguments, "such a race of beings as could

exist without existing!"



"Precisely," said Barbican: "Life without movement, and no life at all,

are equivalent expressions."



"Captain," said Ardan, with all the gravity he could assume, "have you

anything more to say before the Moderator of our little Debating Society

gives his opinion on the arguments regarding the question before the

house?"



"No more at present," said the Captain, biding his time.



"Then," resumed Ardan, rising with much dignity, "the Committee on Lunar

Explorations, appointed by the Honorable Baltimore Gun Club, solemnly

assembled in the Projectile belonging to the aforesaid learned and

respectable Society, having carefully weighed all the arguments advanced

on each side of the question, and having also carefully considered all

the new facts bearing on the case that have lately come under the

personal notice of said Committee, unanimously decides negatively on the

question now before the chair for investigation--namely, 'Is the Moon

inhabitable?' Barbican, as chairman of the Committee, I empower you to

duly record our solemn decision--No, the Moon is not inhabitable."



Barbican, opening his note-book, made the proper entry among the minutes

of the meeting of December 6th.



"Now then, gentlemen," continued Ardan, "if you are ready for the second

question, the necessary complement of the first, we may as well approach

it at once. I propound it for discussion in the following form: Has the

Moon ever been inhabited? Captain, the Committee would be delighted to

hear your remarks on the subject."



"Gentlemen," began the Captain in reply, "I had formed my opinion

regarding the ancient inhabitability of our Satellite long before I ever

dreamed of testing my theory by anything like our present journey. I

will now add that all our observations, so far made, have only served to

confirm me in my opinion. I now venture to assert, not only with every

kind of probability in my favor but also on what I consider most

excellent arguments, that the Moon was once inhabited by a race of

beings possessing an organization similar to our own, that she once

produced animals anatomically resembling our terrestrial animals, and

that all these living organizations, human and animal, have had their

day, that that day vanished ages and ages ago, and that, consequently,

Life, extinguished forever, can never again reveal its existence there

under any form."



"Is the Chair," asked Ardan, "to infer from the honorable gentleman's

observations that he considers the Moon to be a world much older than

the Earth?"



"Not exactly that," replied the Captain without hesitation; "I rather

mean to say that the Moon is a world that grew old more rapidly than the

Earth; that it came to maturity earlier; that it ripened quicker, and

was stricken with old age sooner. Owing to the difference of the volumes

of the two worlds, the organizing forces of matter must have been

comparatively much more violent in the interior of the Moon than in the

interior of the Earth. The present condition of its surface, as we see

it lying there beneath us at this moment, places this assertion beyond

all possibility of doubt. Wrinkled, pitted, knotted, furrowed, scarred,

nothing that we can show on Earth resembles it. Moon and Earth were

called into existence by the Creator probably at the same period of

time. In the first stages of their existence, they do not seem to have

been anything better than masses of gas. Acted upon by various forces

and various influences, all of course directed by an omnipotent

intelligence, these gases by degrees became liquid, and the liquids grew

condensed into solids until solidity could retain its shape. But the two

heavenly bodies, though starting at the same time, developed at a very

different ratio. Most undoubtedly, our globe was still gaseous or at

most only liquid, at the period when the Moon, already hardened by

cooling, began to become inhabitable."



"Most undoubtedly is good!" observed Ardan admiringly.



"At this period," continued the learned Captain, "an atmosphere

surrounded her. The waters, shut in by this gaseous envelope, could no

longer evaporate. Under the combined influences of air, water, light,

and solar heat as well as internal heat, vegetation began to overspread

the continents by this time ready to receive it, and most undoubtedly--I

mean--a--incontestably--it was at this epoch that life manifested

itself on the lunar surface. I say incontestably advisedly, for Nature

never exhausts herself in producing useless things, and therefore a

world, so wonderfully inhabitable, must of necessity have had

inhabitants."



"I like of necessity too," said Ardan, who could never keep still; "I

always did, when I felt my arguments to be what you call a little

shaky."



"But, my dear Captain," here observed Barbican, "have you taken into

consideration some of the peculiarities of our Satellite which are

decidedly opposed to the development of vegetable and animal existence?

Those nights and days, for instance, 354 hours long?"



"I have considered them all," answered the brave Captain. "Days and

nights of such an enormous length would at the present time, I grant,

give rise to variations in temperature altogether intolerable to any

ordinary organization. But things were quite different in the era

alluded to. At that time, the atmosphere enveloped the Moon in a gaseous

mantle, and the vapors took the shape of clouds. By the screen thus

formed by the hand of nature, the heat of the solar rays was tempered

and the nocturnal radiation retarded. Light too, as well as heat, could

be modified, tempered, and genialized if I may use the expression, by

the air. This produced a healthy counterpoise of forces, which, now that

the atmosphere has completely disappeared, of course exists no longer.

Besides--friend Ardan, you will excuse me for telling you something new,

something that will surprise you--"



--"Surprise me, my dear boy, fire away surprising me!" cried Ardan. "I

like dearly to be surprised. All I regret is that you scientists have

surprised me so much already that I shall never have a good, hearty,

genuine surprise again!"



--"I am most firmly convinced," continued the Captain, hardly waiting

for Ardan to finish, "that, at the period of the Moon's occupancy by

living creatures, her days and nights were by no means 354 hours long."



"Well! if anything could surprise me," said Ardan quickly, "such an

assertion as that most certainly would. On what does the honorable

gentleman base his most firm conviction?"



"We know," replied the Captain, "that the reason of the Moon's present

long day and night is the exact equality of the periods of her rotation

on her axis and of her revolution around the Earth. When she has turned

once around the Earth, she has turned once around herself. Consequently,

her back is turned to the Sun during one-half of the month; and her face

during the other half. Now, I don't believe that this state of things

existed at the period referred to."



"The gentleman does not believe!" exclaimed Ardan. "The Chair must be

excused for reminding the honorable gentleman that it can not accept his

incredulity as a sound and valid argument. These two movements have

certainly equal periods now; why not always?"



"For the simple reason that this equality of periods is due altogether

to the influence of terrestrial attraction," replied the ready Captain.

"This attraction at present, I grant, is so great that it actually

disables the Moon from revolving on herself; consequently she must

always keep the same face turned towards the Earth. But who can assert

that this attraction was powerful enough to exert the same influence at

the epoch when the Earth herself was only a fluid substance? In fact,

who can even assert that the Moon has always been the Earth's

satellite?"



"Ah, who indeed?" exclaimed Ardan. "And who can assert that the Moon did

not exist long before the Earth was called into being at all? In fact,

who can assert that the Earth itself is not a great piece broken off the

Moon? Nothing like asking absurd questions! I've often found them

passing for the best kind of arguments!"



"Friend Ardan," interposed Barbican, who noticed that the Captain was a

little too disconcerted to give a ready reply; "Friend Ardan, I must say

you are not quite wrong in showing how certain methods of reasoning,

legitimate enough in themselves, may be easily abused by being carried

too far. I think, however, that the Captain might maintain his position

without having recourse to speculations altogether too gigantic for

ordinary intellect. By simply admitting the insufficiency of the

primordeal attraction to preserve a perfect balance between the

movements of the lunar rotation and revolution, we can easily see how

the nights and days could once succeed each other on the Moon exactly as

they do at present on the Earth."



"Nothing can be clearer!" resumed the brave Captain, once more rushing

to the charge. "Besides, even without this alternation of days and

nights, life on the lunar surface was quite possible."



"Of course it was possible," said Ardan; "everything is possible except

what contradicts itself. It is possible too that every possibility is a

fact; therefore, it is a fact. However," he added, not wishing to

press the Captain's weak points too closely, "let all these logical

niceties pass for the present. Now that you have established the

existence of your humanity in the Moon, the Chair would respectfully ask

how it has all so completely disappeared?"



"It disappeared completely thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago,"

replied the unabashed Captain. "It perished from the physical

impossibility of living any longer in a world where the atmosphere had

become by degrees too rare to be able to perform its functions as the

great resuscitating medium of dependent existences. What took place on

the Moon is only what is to take place some day or other on the Earth,

when it is sufficiently cooled off."



"Cooled off?"



"Yes," replied the Captain as confidently and with as little hesitation

as if he was explaining some of the details of his great machine-shop in

Philadelphia; "You see, according as the internal fire near the surface

was extinguished or was withdrawn towards the centre, the lunar shell

naturally cooled off. The logical consequences, of course, then

gradually took place: extinction of organized beings; and then

extinction of vegetation. The atmosphere, in the meantime, became

thinner and thinner--partly drawn off with the water evaporated by the

terrestrial attraction, and partly sinking with the solid water into the

crust-cracks caused by cooling. With the disappearance of air capable of

respiration, and of water capable of motion, the Moon, of course, became

uninhabitable. From that day it became the abode of death, as completely

as it is at the present moment."



"That is the fate in store for our Earth?"



"In all probability."



"And when is it to befall us?"



"Just as soon as the crust becomes cold enough to be uninhabitable."



"Perhaps your philosophership has taken the trouble to calculate how

many years it will take our unfortunate Terra Mater to cool off?"



"Well; I have."



"And you can rely on your figures?"



"Implicitly."



"Why not tell it at once then to a fellow that's dying of impatience to

know all about it? Captain, the Chair considers you one of the most

tantalizing creatures in existence!"



"If you only listen, you will hear," replied M'Nicholl quietly. "By

careful observations, extended through a series of many years, men have

been able to discover the average loss of temperature endured by the

Earth in a century. Taking this as the ground work of their

calculations, they have ascertained that our Earth shall become an

uninhabitable planet in about--"



"Don't cut her life too short! Be merciful!" cried Ardan in a pleading

tone half in earnest. "Come, a good long day, your Honor! A good long

day!"



"The planet that we call the Earth," continued the Captain, as grave as

a judge, "will become uninhabitable to human beings, after a lapse of

400 thousand years from the present time."



"Hurrah!" cried Ardan, much relieved. "Vive la Science! Henceforward,

what miscreant will persist in saying that the Savants are good for

nothing? Proudly pointing to this calculation, can't they exclaim to all

defamers: 'Silence, croakers! Our services are invaluable! Haven't we

insured the Earth for 400 thousand years?' Again I say vive la

Science!"



"Ardan," began the Captain with some asperity, "the foundations on

which Science has raised--"



"I'm half converted already," interrupted Ardan in a cheery tone; "I do

really believe that Science is not altogether unmitigated homebogue!

Vive--"



--"But what has all this to do with the question under discussion?"

interrupted Barbican, desirous to keep his friends from losing their

tempers in idle disputation.



"True!" said Ardan. "The Chair, thankful for being called to order,

would respectfully remind the house that the question before it is: Has

the Moon been inhabited? Affirmative has been heard. Negative is called

on to reply. Mr. Barbican has the parole."



But Mr. Barbican was unwilling just then to enter too deeply into such

an exceedingly difficult subject. "The probabilities," he contented

himself with saying, "would appear to be in favor of the Captain's

speculations. But we must never forget that they are

speculations--nothing more. Not the slightest evidence has yet been

produced that the Moon is anything else than 'a dead and useless waste

of extinct volcanoes.' No signs of cities, no signs of buildings, not

even of ruins, none of anything that could be reasonably ascribed to the

labors of intelligent creatures. No sign of change of any kind has been

established. As for the agreement between the Moon's rotation and her

revolution, which compels her to keep the same face constantly turned

towards the Earth, we don't know that it has not existed from the

beginning. As for what is called the effect of volcanic agency upon her

surface, we don't know that her peculiar blistered appearance may not

have been brought about altogether by the bubbling and spitting that

blisters molten iron when cooling and contracting. Some close observers

have even ventured to account for her craters by saying they were due to

pelting showers of meteoric rain. Then again as to her atmosphere--why

should she have lost her atmosphere? Why should it sink into craters?

Atmosphere is gas, great in volume, small in matter; where would there

be room for it? Solidified by the intense cold? Possibly in the night

time. But would not the heat of the long day be great enough to thaw it

back again? The same trouble attends the alleged disappearance of the

water. Swallowed up in the cavernous cracks, it is said. But why are

there cracks? Cooling is not always attended by cracking. Water cools

without cracking; cannon balls cool without cracking. Too much stress

has been laid on the great difference between the nucleus and the

crust: it is really impossible to say where one ends and the other

begins. In fact, no theory explains satisfactorily anything regarding

the present state of the Moon's surface. In fact, from the day that

Galileo compared her clustering craters to 'eyes on a peacock's tail' to

the present time, we must acknowledge that we know nothing more than we

can actually see, not one particle more of the Moon's history than our

telescopes reveal to our corporal eyes!"



"In the lucid opinion of the honorable and learned gentleman who spoke

last," said Ardan, "the Chair is compelled to concur. Therefore, as to

the second question before the house for deliberation, Has the Moon

been ever inhabited? the Chair gets out of its difficulty, as a Scotch

jury does when it has not evidence enough either way, by returning a

solemn verdict of Not Proven!"



"And with this conclusion," said Barbican, hastily rising, "of a subject

on which, to tell the truth, we are unable as yet to throw any light

worth speaking of, let us be satisfied for the present. Another question

of greater moment to us just now is: where are we? It seems to me that

we are increasing our distance from the Moon very decidedly and very

rapidly."



It was easy to see that he was quite right in this observation. The

Projectile, still following a northerly course and therefore approaching

the lunar equator, was certainly getting farther and farther from the

Moon. Even at 30 deg. S., only ten degrees farther north than the latitude

of Tycho, the travellers had considerable difficulty, comparatively,

in observing the details of Pitatus, a walled mountain on the south

shores of the Mare Nubium. In the "sea" itself, over which they now

floated, they could see very little, but far to the left, on the 20th

parallel, they could discern the vast crater of Bullialdus, 9,000

feet deep. On the right, they had just caught a glimpse of Purbach, a

depressed valley almost square in shape with a round crater in the

centre, when Ardan suddenly cried out:



"A Railroad!"



And, sure enough, right under them, a little northeast of Purbach, the

travellers easily distinguished a long line straight and black, really

not unlike a railroad cutting through a low hilly country.



This, Barbican explained, was of course no railway, but a steep cliff,

at least 1,000 feet high, casting a very deep shadow, and probably the

result of the caving in of the surface on the eastern edge.



Then they saw the immense crater of Arzachel and in its midst a cone

mountain shining with dazzling splendor. A little north of this, they

could detect the outlines of another crater, Alphonse, at least 70

miles in diameter. Close to it they could easily distinguish the immense

crater or, as some observers call it, Ramparted Plain, Ptolemy, so

well known to lunar astronomers, occupying, as it does, such a favorable

position near the centre of the Moon, and having a diameter fully, in

one direction at least, 120 miles long.



The travellers were now in about the same latitude as that at which they

had at first approached the Moon, and it was here that they began most

unquestionably to leave her. They looked and looked, readjusting their

glasses, but the details were becoming more and more difficult to catch.

The reliefs grew more and more blurred and the outlines dimmer and

dimmer. Even the great mountain profiles began to fade away, the

dazzling colors to grow duller, the jet black shadows greyer, and the

general effect mistier.



At last, the distance had become so great that, of this lunar world so

wonderful, so fantastic, so weird, so mysterious, our travellers by

degrees lost even the consciousness, and their sensations, lately so

vivid, grew fainter and fainter, until finally they resembled those of a

man who is suddenly awakened from a peculiarly strange and impressive

dream.