“What do you think that plain is like, seen from the height we are at?” asked Michel.
“I don’t know,” answered Nicholl.
“Well, with all these pieces of lava, sharpened like spindles, it looks like ‘an immense game of spilikins,’ thrown down pell-mell. We only want a hook to draw them up.”
“Be serious for once in your life,” said Barbicane.
“I will be serious,” replied Michel tranquilly, “and instead of spilikins let us say they are bones. This plain would then be only an immense cemetery upon which would repose the immortal remains of a thousand distinct generations. Do you like that comparison better?”
“One is as good as the other,” answered Barbicane.
“The devil! You are difficult to please,” replied Michel.
“My worthy friend,” resumed the prosaic Barbicane, “it does not matter what it looks like when we don’t know what it is.”
“A good answer,” exclaimed Michel; “that will teach me to argue with savants.”
In the meantime the projectile went with almost uniform speed round the lunar disc. It may be easily imagined that the travellers did not dream of taking a minute’s rest. A fresh landscape lay before their eyes every instant. About half-past one in the morning they caught a glimpse of the summit of another mountain. Barbicane consulted his map, and recognised Eratosthenes.
It was a circular mountain 4,500 metres high, one of those amphitheatres so numerous upon the satellite. Barbicane informed his friends of Kepler’s singular opinion upon the formation of these circles. According to the celebrated mathematician, these crateriform cavities had been dug out by the hand of man.
“What for?” asked Nicholl.
“In order to preserve themselves from the ardour of the solar rays, which strike the moon during fifteen consecutive days.”
“The Selenites were not fools!” said Michel.
“It was a singular idea!” answered Nicholl. “But it is probable that Kepler did not know the real dimensions of these circles, for digging them would have been giants’ labour, impracticable for Selenites.”
“Why so, if the weight on the surface of the moon is six times less than upon the surface of the earth?” said Michel.
“But if the Selenites are six times smaller?” replied Nicholl.
“And if there are no Selenites?” added Barbicane, which terminated the discussion.
Eratosthenes soon disappeared from the horizon without the projectile having been sufficiently near it to allow a rigorous observation. This mountain separated the Apennines from the Carpathians.
In lunar orography, several chains of mountains have been distinguished which are principally distributed over the northern hemisphere. Some, however, occupy certain portions of the southern hemisphere.
The following is a list of these different chains, with their latitudes and the height of their highest summits:—
| Mount | Doerfel | 84° | lat. S. | 7,603 | metres |
| ” | Leibnitz | 65° | ” | 7,600 | ” |
| ” | Rook | 20°–30° | ” | 1,600 | ” |
| ” | Altai | 17°–28° | ” | 4,047 | ” |
| ” | Cordilleras | 10°–20° | ” | 3,898 | ” |
| ” | Pyrenees | 8°–18° | ” | 3,631 | ” |
| ” | Oural | 5°–13° | ” | 838 | ” |
| ” | Alembert | 4°–10° | ” | 5,847 | ” |
| ” | Hoemus | 8°–21° | lat. N. | 2,021 | ” |
| ” | Carpathians | 15°–19° | ” | 1,939 | ” |
| ” | Appenines | 14°–27° | ” | 5,501 | ” |
| ” | Taurus | 21°–28° | ” | 2,746 | ” |
| ” | Riphees | 25°–33° | ” | 4,171 | ” |
| ” | Hercynians | 17°–29° | ” | 1,170 | ” |
| ” | Caucasia | 32°–41° | ” | 5,567 | ” |
| ” | Alps | 42°–49° | ” | 3,617 | ” |
The most important of these different chains is that of the Apennines, the development of which extends 150 leagues, and is yet inferior to that of the great orographical movements of the earth. The Apennines run along the eastern border of the Sea of Rains, and are continued on the north by the Carpathians, the profile of which measures about 100 leagues.
The travellers could only catch a glimpse of the summit of these Apennines which lie between west long. 10° and east long. 16°; but the chain of the Carpathians was visible from 18° to 30° east long., and they could see how they were distributed.
One hypothesis seemed to them very justifiable. Seeing that this chain of the Carpathians was here and there circular in form and with high peaks, they concluded that it anciently formed important amphitheatres. These mountainous circles must have been broken up by the vast cataclysm to which the Sea of Rains was due. These Carpathians looked then what the amphitheatres of Purbach, Arzachel, and Ptolemy would if some cataclysm were to throw down their left ramparts and transform them into continuous chains. They present an average height of 3,200 metres, a height comparable to certain of the Pyrenees. Their southern slopes fall straight into the immense Sea of Rains.
About 2 a.m. Barbicane was at the altitude of the 20th lunar parallel, not far from that little mountain, 1,559 metres high, which bears the name of Pythias. The distance from the projectile to the moon was only 1,200 kilometres, brought by means of telescopes to two and a half leagues.
The “Mare Imbrium” lay before the eyes of the travellers like an immense depression of which the details were not very distinct. Near them on the left rose Mount Lambert, the altitude of which is estimated at 1,813 metres, and farther on, upon the borders of the Ocean of Tempests, in north lat. 23° and east long. 29°, rose the shining mountain of Euler. This mountain, which rises only 1,815 metres above the lunar surface, has been the object of an interesting work by the astronomer Schroeter. This savant, trying to find out the origin of the lunar mountains, asked himself whether the volume of the crater always looked equal to the volume of the ramparts that formed it. Now this he found to be generally the case, and he hence concluded that a single eruption of volcanic matter had sufficed to form these ramparts, for successive eruptions would have destroyed the connection. Mount Euler alone was an exception to this general law, and it must have taken several successive eruptions to form it, for the volume of its cavity is double that of its enclosure.
All these hypotheses were allowable to terrestrial observers whose instruments were incomplete; but Barbicane was no longer contented to accept them, and seeing that his projectile drew regularly nearer the lunar disc he did not despair of ultimately reaching it, or at least of finding out the secrets of its formation.
XIII
Lunar Landscapes
At half-past two in the morning the bullet was over the 30th lunar parallel at an effective distance of 1,000 kilometres, reduced by the optical instruments to ten. It still seemed impossible that it could reach any point on the disc. Its movement of translation,
