Chapter 11 - Page 2

those unknown
points of our terrestrial globe.

The islands--the next feature on the Moon's surface--are exceedingly
numerous. Generally oblong or circular in shape and almost as regular in
outline as if drawn with a compass, they form vast archipelagoes like
the famous group lying between Greece and Asia Minor, which mythology
has made the scene of her earliest and most charming legends. As we gaze
at them, the names of Naxos, Tenedos, Milo, and Carpathos rise up before
our mind's eye, and we begin looking around for the Trojan fleet and
Jason's Argo. This, at least, was Ardan's idea, and at first his eyes
would see nothing on the map but a Grecian archipelago. But his
companions, sound practical men, and therefore totally devoid of
sentiment, were reminded by these rugged coasts of the beetling cliffs
of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; so that, where the Frenchman saw the
tracks of ancient heroes, the Americans saw only commodious shipping
points and favorable sites for trading posts--all, of course, in the
purest interest of lunar commerce and industry.

To end our hasty sketch of the continental portion of the Moon, we must
say a few words regarding her orthography or mountain systems. With a
fair telescope you can distinguish very readily her mountain chains, her
isolated mountains, her circuses or ring formations, and her rills,
cracks and radiating streaks. The character of the whole lunar relief is
comprised in these divisions. It is a surface prodigiously reticulated,
upheaved and depressed, apparently without the slightest order or
system. It is a vast Switzerland, an enormous Norway, where everything
is the result of direct plutonic action. This surface, so rugged, craggy
and wrinkled, seems to be the result of successive contractions of the
crust, at an early period of the planet's existence. The examination of
the lunar disc is therefore highly favorable for the study of the great
geological phenomena of our own globe. As certain astronomers have
remarked, the Moon's surface, though older than the Earth's, has
remained younger. That is, it has undergone less change. No water has
broken through its rugged elevations, filled up its scowling cavities,
and by incessant action tended continuously to the production of a
general level. No atmosphere, by its disintegrating, decomposing
influence has softened off the rugged features of the plutonic
mountains. Volcanic action alone, unaffected by either aqueous or
atmospheric forces, can here be seen in all its glory. In other words
the Moon looks now as our Earth did endless ages ago, when "she was void
and empty and when darkness sat upon the face of the deep;" eons of ages
ago, long before the tides of the ocean and the winds of the