Lunar Landscapes

: All Around The Moon

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. At such a

pr ximity to the Moon, the velocity, one would think, should be very

great indeed to be able to counteract the lunar attraction. Why did it

not fall? Barbican could not tell; his companions were equally in the

dark. Ardan said he gave it up. Besides they had no time to spend in

investigating it. The lunar panorama was unrolling all its splendors

beneath them, and they could not bear to lose one of its slightest

details.



The lunar disc being brought within a distance of about six miles by the

spy-glasses, it is a fair question to ask, what could an aeronaut at

such an elevation from our Earth discover on its surface? At present

that question can hardly be answered, the most remarkable balloon

ascensions never having passed an altitude of five miles under

circumstances favorable for observers. Here, however, is an account,

carefully transcribed from notes taken on the spot, of what Barbican and

his companions did see from their peculiar post of observation.



Varieties of color, in the first place, appeared here and there upon the

disc. Selenographers are not quite agreed as to the nature of these

colors. Not that such colors are without variety or too faint to be

easily distinguished. Schmidt of Athens even says that if our oceans on

earth were all evaporated, an observer in the Moon would hardly find the

seas and continents of our globe even so well outlined as those of the

Moon are to the eye of a terrestrial observer. According to him, the

shade of color distinguishing those vast plains known as "seas" is a

dark gray dashed with green and brown,--a color presented also by a few

of the great craters.



This opinion of Schmidt's, shared by Beer and Maedler, Barbican's

observations now convinced him to be far better founded than that of

certain astronomers who admit of no color at all being visible on the

Moon's surface but gray. In certain spots the greenish tint was quite

decided, particularly in Mare Serenitatis and Mare Humorum, the very

localities where Schmidt had most noticed it. Barbican also remarked

that several large craters, of the class that had no interior cones,

reflected a kind of bluish tinge, somewhat like that given forth by a

freshly polished steel plate. These tints, he now saw enough to convince

him, proceeded really from the lunar surface, and were not due, as

certain astronomers asserted, either to the imperfections of the

spy-glasses, or to the interference of the terrestrial atmosphere. His

singular opportunity for correct observation allowed him to entertain no

doubt whatever on the subject. Hampered by no atmosphere, he was free

from all liability to optical illusion. Satisfied therefore as to the

reality of these tints, he considered such knowledge a positive gain to

science. But that greenish tint--to what was it due? To a dense tropical

vegetation maintained by a low atmosphere, a mile or so in thickness?

Possibly. But this was another question that could not be answered at

present.



Further on he could detect here and there traces of a decidedly ruddy

tint. Such a shade he knew had been already detected in the Palus

Somnii, near Mare Crisium, and in the circular area of Lichtenberg,

near the Hercynian Mountains, on the eastern edge of the Moon. To what

cause was this tint to be attributed? To the actual color of the surface

itself? Or to that of the lava covering it here and there? Or to the

color resulting from the mixture of other colors seen at a distance too

great to allow of their being distinguished separately? Impossible to

tell.



Barbican and his companions succeeded no better at a new problem that

soon engaged their undivided attention. It deserves some detail.



Having passed Lambert, being just over Timocharis, all were

attentively gazing at the magnificent crater of Archimedes with a

diameter of 52 miles across and ramparts more than 5000 feet in height,

when Ardan startled his companions by suddenly exclaiming:



"Hello! Cultivated fields as I am a living man!"



"What do you mean by your cultivated fields?" asked M'Nicholl sourly,

wiping his glasses and shrugging his shoulders.



"Certainly cultivated fields!" replied Ardan. "Don't you see the

furrows? They're certainly plain enough. They are white too from

glistening in the sun, but they are quite different from the radiating

streaks of Copernicus. Why, their sides are perfectly parallel!"



"Where are those furrows?" asked M'Nicholl, putting his glasses to his

eye and adjusting the focus.



"You can see them in all directions," answered Ardan; "but two are

particularly visible: one running north from Archimedes, the other

south towards the Apennines."



M'Nicholl's face, as he gazed, gradually assumed a grin which soon

developed into a snicker, if not a positive laugh, as he observed to

Ardan:



"Your Selenites must be Brobdignagians, their oxen Leviathans, and their

ploughs bigger than Marston's famous cannon, if these are furrows!"



"How's that, Barbican?" asked Ardan doubtfully, but unwilling to submit

to M'Nicholl.



"They're not furrows, dear friend," said Barbican, "and can't be,

either, simply on account of their immense size. They are what the

German astronomers called Rillen; the French, rainures, and the

English, grooves, canals, clefts, cracks, chasms, or

fissures."



"You have a good stock of names for them anyhow," observed Ardan, "if

that does any good."



"The number of names given them," answered Barbican, "shows how little

is really known about them. They have been observed in all the level

portion of the Moon's surface. Small as they appear to us, a little

calculation must convince you that they are in some places hundreds of

miles in length, a mile in width and probably in many points several

miles in depth. Their width and depth, however, vary, though their

sides, so far as observed, are always rigorously parallel. Let us take a

good look at them."



Putting the glass to his eye, Barbican examined the clefts for some time

with close attention. He saw that their banks were sharp edged and

extremely steep. In many places they were of such geometrical regularity

that he readily excused Gruithuysen's idea of deeming them to be

gigantic earthworks thrown up by the Selenite engineers. Some of them

were as straight as if laid out with a line, others were curved a little

here and there, though still maintaining the strict parallelism of their

sides. These crossed each other; those entered craters and came out at

the other side. Here, they furrowed annular plateaus, such as

Posidonius or Petavius. There, they wrinkled whole seas, for

instance, Mare Serenitatis.



These curious peculiarities of the lunar surface had interested the

astronomic mind to a very high degree at their first discovery, and have

proved to be very perplexing problems ever since. The first observers do

not seem to have noticed them. Neither Hevelius, nor Cassini, nor La

Hire, nor Herschel, makes a single remark regarding their nature.



It was Schroeter, in 1789, who called the attention of scientists to

them for the first time. He had only 11 to show, but Lohrmann soon

recorded 75 more. Pastorff, Gruithuysen, and particularly Beer and

Maedler were still more successful, but Julius Schmidt, the famous

astronomer of Athens, has raised their number up to 425, and has even

published their names in a catalogue. But counting them is one thing,

determining their nature is another. They are not fortifications,

certainly: and cannot be ancient beds of dried up rivers, for two very

good and sufficient reasons: first, water, even under the most favorable

circumstances on the Moon's surface, could have never ploughed up such

vast channels; secondly, these chasms often traverse lofty craters

through and through, like an immense railroad cutting.



At these details, Ardan's imagination became unusually excited and of

course it was not without some result. It even happened that he hit on

an idea that had already suggested itself to Schmidt of Athens.



"Why not consider them," he asked, "to be the simple phenomena of

vegetation?"



"What do you mean?" asked Barbican.



"Rows of sugar cane?" suggested M'Nicholl with a snicker.



"Not exactly, my worthy Captain," answered Ardan quietly, "though you

were perhaps nearer to the mark than you expected. I don't mean exactly

rows of sugar cane, but I do mean vast avenues of trees--poplars, for

instance--planted regularly on each side of a great high road."



"Still harping on vegetation!" said the Captain. "Ardan, what a splendid

historian was spoiled in you! The less you know about your facts, the

readier you are to account for them."



"Ma foi," said Ardan simply, "I do only what the greatest of your

scientific men do--that is, guess. There is this difference however

between us--I call my guesses, guesses, mere conjecture;--they dignify

theirs as profound theories or as astounding discoveries!"



"Often the case, friend Ardan, too often the case," said Barbican.



"In the question under consideration, however," continued the Frenchman,

"my conjecture has this advantage over some others: it explains why

these rills appear and seem to disappear at regular intervals."



"Let us hear the explanation," said the Captain.



"They become invisible when the trees lose their leaves, and they

reappear when they resume them."



"His explanation is not without ingenuity," observed Barbican to

M'Nicholl, "but, my dear friend," turning to Ardan, "it is hardly

admissible."



"Probably not," said Ardan, "but why not?"



"Because as the Sun is nearly always vertical to the lunar equator, the

Moon can have no change of seasons worth mentioning; therefore her

vegetation can present none of the phenomena that you speak of."



This was perfectly true. The slight obliquity of the Moon's axis, only

1-1/2 deg., keeps the Sun in the same altitude the whole year around. In the

equatorial regions he is always vertical, and in the polar he is never

higher than the horizon. Therefore, there can be no change of seasons;

according to the latitude, it is a perpetual winter, spring, summer, or

autumn the whole year round. This state of things is almost precisely

similar to that which prevails in Jupiter, who also stands nearly

upright in his orbit, the inclination of his axis being only about 3 deg..



But how to account for the grooves? A very hard nut to crack. They

must certainly be a later formation than the craters and the rings, for

they are often found breaking right through the circular ramparts.

Probably the latest of all lunar features, the results of the last

geological epochs, they are due altogether to expansion or shrinkage

acting on a large scale and brought about by the great forces of nature,

operating after a manner altogether unknown on our earth. Such at least

was Barbican's idea.



"My friends," he quietly observed, "without meaning to put forward any

pretentious claims to originality, but by simply turning to account some

advantages that have never before befallen contemplative mortal eye, why

not construct a little hypothesis of our own regarding the nature of

these grooves and the causes that gave them birth? Look at that great

chasm just below us, somewhat to the right. It is at least fifty or

sixty miles long and runs along the base of the Apennines in a line

almost perfectly straight. Does not its parallelism with the mountain

chain suggest a causative relation? See that other mighty rill, at

least a hundred and fifty miles long, starting directly north of it and

pursuing so true a course that it cleaves Archimedes almost cleanly

into two. The nearer it lies to the mountain, as you perceive, the

greater its width; as it recedes in either direction it grows narrower.

Does not everything point out to one great cause of their origin? They

are simple crevasses, like those so often noticed on Alpine glaciers,

only that these tremendous cracks in the surface are produced by the

shrinkage of the crust consequent on cooling. Can we point out some

analogies to this on the Earth? Certainly. The defile of the Jordan,

terminating in the awful depression of the Dead Sea, no doubt occurs to

you on the moment. But the Yosemite Valley, as I saw it ten years ago,

is an apter comparison. There I stood on the brink of a tremendous chasm

with perpendicular walls, a mile in width, a mile in depth and eight

miles in length. Judge if I was astounded! But how should we feel it,

when travelling on the lunar surface, we should suddenly find ourselves

on the brink of a yawning chasm two miles wide, fifty miles long, and so

fathomless in sheer vertical depth as to leave its black profundities

absolutely invisible in spite of the dazzling sunlight!"



"I feel my flesh already crawling even in the anticipation!" cried

Ardan.



"I shan't regret it much if we never get to the Moon," growled

M'Nicholl; "I never hankered after it anyhow!"



By this time the Projectile had reached the fortieth degree of lunar

latitude, and could hardly be further than five hundred miles from the

surface, a distance reduced to about 5 miles by the travellers' glasses.

Away to their left appeared Helicon, a ring mountain about 1600 feet

high; and still further to the left the eye could catch a glimpse of the

cliffs enclosing a semi-elliptical portion of Mare Imbrium, called the

Sinus Iridium, or Bay of the Rainbows.



In order to allow astronomers to make complete observations on the lunar

surface, the terrestrial atmosphere should possess a transparency

seventy times greater than its present power of transmission. But in the

void through which the Projectile was now floating, no fluid whatever

interposed between the eye of the observer and the object observed.

Besides, the travellers now found themselves at a distance that had

never before been reached by the most powerful telescopes, including

even Lord Rosse's and the great instrument on the Rocky Mountains.

Barbican was therefore in a condition singularly favorable to resolve

the great question concerning the Moon's inhabitableness. Nevertheless,

the solution still escaped him. He could discover nothing around him but

a dreary waste of immense plains, and towards the north, beneath him,

bare mountains of the aridest character.



Not the slightest vestige of man's work could be detected over the vast

expanse. Not the slightest sign of a ruin spoke of his ever having been

there. Nothing betrayed the slightest trace of the development of animal

life, even in an inferior degree. No movement. Not the least glimpse of

vegetation. Of the three great kingdoms that hold dominion on the

surface of the globe, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal, one

alone was represented on the lunar sphere: the mineral, the whole

mineral, and nothing but the mineral.



"Why!" exclaimed Ardan, with a disconcerted look, after a long and

searching examination, "I can't find anybody. Everything is as

motionless as a street in Pompeii at 4 o'clock in the morning!"






"Good comparison, friend Ardan;" observed M'Nicholl. "Lava, slag,

volcanic eminences, vitreous matter glistening like ice, piles of

scoria, pitch black shadows, dazzling streaks, like rivers of light

breaking over jagged rocks--these are now beneath my eye--these alone I

can detect--not a man--not an animal--not a tree. The great American

Desert is a land of milk and honey in comparison with the joyless orb

over which we are now moving. However, even yet we can predicate

nothing positive. The atmosphere may have taken refuge in the depths of

the chasms, in the interior of the craters, or even on the opposite side

of the Moon, for all we know!"



"Still we must remember," observed Barbican, "that even the sharpest eye

cannot detect a man at a distance greater than four miles and a-half,

and our glasses have not yet brought us nearer than five."



"Which means to say," observed Ardan, "that though we can't see the

Selenites, they can see our Projectile!"



But matters had not improved much when, towards four o'clock in the

morning, the travellers found themselves on the 50th parallel, and at a

distance of only about 375 miles from the lunar surface. Still no trace

of the least movement, or even of the lowest form of life.



"What peaked mountain is that which we have just passed on our right?"

asked Ardan. "It is quite remarkable, standing as it does in almost

solitary grandeur in the barren plain."



"That is Pico," answered Barbican. "It is at least 8000 feet high and

is well known to terrestrial astronomers as well by its peculiar shadow

as on account of its comparative isolation. See the collection of

perfectly formed little craters nestling around its base."



"Barbican," asked M'Nicholl suddenly, "what peak is that which lies

almost directly south of Pico? I see it plainly, but I can't find it

on my map."



"I have remarked that pyramidal peak myself," replied Barbican; "but I

can assure you that so far it has received no name as yet, although it

is likely enough to have been distinguished by the terrestrial

astronomers. It can't be less than 4000 feet in height."



"I propose we called it Barbican!" cried Ardan enthusiastically.



"Agreed!" answered M'Nicholl, "unless we can find a higher one."



"We must be before-hand with Schmidt of Athens!" exclaimed Ardan. "He

will leave nothing unnamed that his telescope can catch a glimpse of."



"Passed unanimously!" cried M'Nicholl.



"And officially recorded!" added the Frenchman, making the proper entry

on his map.



"Salve, Mt. Barbican!" then cried both gentlemen, rising and taking

off their hats respectfully to the distant peak.



"Look to the west!" interrupted Barbican, watching, as usual, while his

companions were talking, and probably perfectly unconscious of what they

were saying; "directly to the west! Now tell me what you see!"



"I see a vast valley!" answered M'Nicholl.



"Straight as an arrow!" added Ardan.



"Running through lofty mountains!" cried M'Nicholl.



"Cut through with a pair of saws and scooped out with a chisel!" cried

Ardan.



"See the shadows of those peaks!" cried M'Nicholl catching fire at the

sight. "Black, long, and sharp as if cast by cathedral spires!"



"Oh! ye crags and peaks!" burst forth Ardan; "how I should like to catch

even a faint echo of the chorus you could chant, if a wild storm roared

over your beetling summits! The pine forests of Norwegian mountains

howling in midwinter would not be an accordeon in comparison!"



"Wonderful instance of subsidence on a grand scale!" exclaimed the

Captain, hastily relapsing into science.



"Not at all!" cried the Frenchman, still true to his colors; "no

subsidence there! A comet simply came too close and left its mark as it

flew past."



"Fanciful exclamations, dear friends," observed Barbican; "but I'm not

surprised at your excitement. Yonder is the famous Valley of the Alps,

a standing enigma to all selenographers. How it could have been formed,

no one can tell. Even wilder guesses than yours, Ardan, have been

hazarded on the subject. All we can state positively at present

regarding this wonderful formation, is what I have just recorded in my

note-book: the Valley of the Alps is about 5 mile wide and 70 or 80

long: it is remarkably flat and free from debris, though the mountains

on each side rise like walls to the height of at least 10,000

feet.--Over the whole surface of our Earth I know of no natural

phenomenon that can be at all compared with it."



"Another wonder almost in front of us!" cried Ardan. "I see a vast lake

black as pitch and round as a crater; it is surrounded by such lofty

mountains that their shadows reach clear across, rendering the interior

quite invisible!"



"That's Plato;" said M'Nicholl; "I know it well; it's the darkest spot

on the Moon: many a night I gazed at it from my little observatory in

Broad Street, Philadelphia."



"Right, Captain," said Barbican; "the crater Plato, is, indeed,

generally considered the blackest spot on the Moon, but I am inclined to

consider the spots Grimaldi and Riccioli on the extreme eastern edge

to be somewhat darker. If you take my glass, Ardan, which is of somewhat

greater power than yours, you will distinctly see the bottom of the

crater. The reflective power of its plateau probably proceeds from the

exceedingly great number of small craters that you can detect there."



"I think I see something like them now," said Ardan. "But I am sorry the

Projectile's course will not give us a vertical view."



"Can't be helped!" said Barbican; "we must go where it takes us. The day

may come when man can steer the projectile or the balloon in which he is

shut up, in any way he pleases, but that day has not come yet!"



Towards five in the morning, the northern limit of Mare Imbrium was

finally passed, and Mare Frigoris spread its frost-colored plains

far to the right and left. On the east the travellers could easily see

the ring-mountain Condamine, about 4000 feet high, while a little

ahead on the right they could plainly distinguish Fontenelle with an

altitude nearly twice as great. Mare Frigoris was soon passed, and the

whole lunar surface beneath the travellers, as far as they could see in

all directions, now bristled with mountains, crags, and peaks. Indeed,

at the 70th parallel the "Seas" or plains seem to have come to an end.

The spy-glasses now brought the surface to within about three miles, a

distance less than that between the hotel at Chamouni and the summit of

Mont Blanc. To the left, they had no difficulty in distinguishing the

ramparts of Philolaus, about 12,000 feet high, but though the crater

had a diameter of nearly thirty miles, the black shadows prevented the

slightest sign of its interior from being seen. The Sun was now sinking

very low, and the illuminated surface of the Moon was reduced to a

narrow rim.



By this time, too, the bird's eye view to which the observations had so

far principally confined, decidedly altered its character. They could

now look back at the lunar mountains that they had been just sailing

over--a view somewhat like that enjoyed by a tourist standing on the

summit of Mt. St. Gothard as he sees the sun setting behind the peaks of

the Bernese Oberland. The lunar landscapes however, though seen under

these new and ever varying conditions, "hardly gained much by the

change," according to Ardan's expression. On the contrary, they looked,

if possible, more dreary and inhospitable than before.



The Moon having no atmosphere, the benefit of this gaseous envelope in

softening off and nicely shading the approaches of light and darkness,

heat and cold, is never felt on her surface. There, no twilight ever

softly ushers in the brilliant sun, or sweetly heralds the near approach

of night's dark shadow. Night follows day, and day night, with the

startling suddenness of a match struck or a lamp extinguished in a

cavern. Nor can it present any gradual transition from either extreme of

temperature. Hot jumps to cold, and cold jumps to hot. A moment after a

glacial midnight, it is a roasting noon. Without an instant's warning

the temperature falls from 212 deg. Fahrenheit to the icy winter of

interstellar space. The surface is all dazzling glare, or pitchy gloom.

Wherever the direct rays of the sun do not fall, darkness reigns

supreme. What we call diffused light on Earth, the grateful result of

refraction, the luminous matter held in suspension by the air, the

mother of our dawns and our dusks, of our blushing mornings and our dewy

eyes, of our shades, our penumbras, our tints and all the other magical

effects of chiaro-oscuro--this diffused light has absolutely no

existence on the surface of the Moon. Nothing is there to break the

inexorable contrast between intense white and intense black. At mid-day,

let a Selenite shade his eyes and look at the sky: it will appear to him

as black as pitch, while the stars still sparkle before him as vividly

as they do to us on the coldest and darkest night in winter.



From this you can judge of the impression made on our travellers by

those strange lunar landscapes. Even their decided novelty and very

strange character produced any thing but a pleasing effect on the organs

of sight. With all their enthusiasm, the travellers felt their eyes "get

out of gear," as Ardan said, like those of a man blind from his birth

and suddenly restored to sight. They could not adjust them so as to be

able to realize the different plains of vision. All things seemed in a

heap. Foreground and background were indistinguishably commingled. No

painter could ever transfer a lunar landscape to his canvas.



"Landscape," Ardan said; "what do you mean by a landscape? Can you call

a bottle of ink intensely black, spilled over a sheet of paper intensely

white, a landscape?"



At the eightieth degree, when the Projectile was hardly 100 miles

distant from the Moon, the aspect of things underwent no improvement. On

the contrary, the nearer the travellers approached the lunar surface,

the drearier, the more inhospitable, and the more unearthly,

everything seem to look. Still when five o'clock in the morning brought

our travellers to within 50 miles of Mount Gioja--which their

spy-glasses rendered as visible as if it was only about half a mile off,

Ardan could not control himself.



"Why, we're there" he exclaimed; "we can touch her with our hands! Open

the windows and let me out! Don't mind letting me go by myself. It is

not very inviting quarters I admit. But as we are come to the jumping

off place, I want to see the whole thing through. Open the lower window

and let me out. I can take care of myself!"



"That's what's more than any other man can do," said M'Nicholl drily,

"who wants to take a jump of 50 miles!"



"Better not try it, friend Ardan," said Barbican grimly: "think of

Satellite! The Moon is no more attainable by your body than by our

Projectile. You are far more comfortable in here than when floating

about in empty space like a bolide."



Ardan, unwilling to quarrel with his companions, appeared to give in;

but he secretly consoled himself by a hope which he had been

entertaining for some time, and which now looked like assuming the

appearance of a certainty. The Projectile had been lately approaching

the Moon's surface so rapidly that it at last seemed actually impossible

not to finally touch it somewhere in the neighborhood of the north pole,

whose dazzling ridges now presented themselves in sharp and strong

relief against the black sky. Therefore he kept silent, but quietly

bided his time.



The Projectile moved on, evidently getting nearer and nearer to the

lunar surface. The Moon now appeared to the travellers as she does to us

towards the beginning of her Second Quarter, that is as a bright

crescent instead of a hemisphere. On one side, glaring dazzling light;

on the other, cavernous pitchy darkness. The line separating both was

broken into a thousand bits of protuberances and concavities, dented,

notched, and jagged.



At six o'clock the travellers found themselves exactly over the north

pole. They were quietly gazing at the rapidly shifting features of the

wondrous view unrolling itself beneath them, and were silently wondering

what was to come next, when, suddenly, the Projectile passed the

dividing line. The Sun and Moon instantly vanished from view. The next

moment, without the slightest warning the travellers found themselves

plunged in an ocean of the most appalling darkness!