Jules Verne - All Around the Moon

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"I certainly see some sense in this method," said Ardan, "if they took
extraordinary pains to observe correctly. The least carelessness would
set them wrong, not only by feet but by miles. We have time enough,
however, to listen to another method before we get into the full blaze
of the glorious old Sol."

"The other method," interrupted M'Nicholl laying down his telescope to
rest his eyes, and now joining in the conversation to give himself
something to do, "is called that of the _tangent rays_. A solar ray,
barely passing the edge of the Moon's surface, is caught on the peak of
a mountain the rest of which lies in shadow. The distance between this
starry peak and the line separating the light from the darkness, we
measure carefully by means of our telescope. Then--"

"I see it at a glance!" interrupted Ardan with lighting eye; "the ray,
being a tangent, of course makes right angles with the radius, which is
known: consequently we have two sides and one angle--quite enough to
find the other parts of the triangle. Very ingenious--but now, that I
think of it--is not this method absolutely impracticable for every
mountain except those in the immediate neighborhood of the light and
shadow line?"

"That's a defect easily remedied by patience," explained Barbican--the
Captain, who did not like being interrupted, having withdrawn to his
telescope--"As this line is continually changing, in course of time all
the mountains must come near it. A third method--to measure the mountain
profile directly by means of the micrometer--is evidently applicable
only to altitudes lying exactly on the lunar rim."

"That is clear enough," said Ardan, "and another point is also very
clear. In Full Moon no measurement is possible. When no shadows are
made, none can be measured. Measurements, right or wrong, are possible
only when the solar rays strike the Moon's surface obliquely with regard
to the observer. Am I right, Signor Barbicani, maestro illustrissimo?"

"Perfectly right," replied Barbican. "You are an apt pupil."

"Say that again," said Ardan. "I want Mac to hear it."

Barbican humored him by repeating the observation, but M'Nicholl would
only notice it by a grunt of doubtful meaning.

"Was Galileo tolerably successful in his calculations?" asked Ardan,
resuming the conversation.

Before answering this question, Barbican unrolled the map of the Moon,
which a faint light like that of day-break now enabled him to examine.
He then went on: "Galileo was wonderfully successful--considering that
the telescope which he employed was a poor instrument of his own
construction, magnifying only thirty times. He gave the lunar mountains
a height of about 26,000 feet--an altitude cut down by Hevelius, but
almost doubled by Riccioli. Herschel was the first to come pretty close
to the truth, but Beer and Maedler, whose _Mappa Selenographica_ now
lies before us, have left really nothing more to be done for lunar
astronomy--except, of course, to pay a personal visit to the
Moon--which we have tried to do, but I fear with a very poor prospect of
success."

"Cheer up! cheer up!" cried Ardan. "It's not all over yet by long odds.
Who can say what is still in store for us? Another bolide may shunt us
off our ellipse and even send us to the Moon's surface."

Then seeing Barbican shake his head ominously and his countenance become
more and more depressed, this true friend tried to brighten him up a bit
by feigning to take deep interest in a subject that to him was
absolutely the driest in the world.

"Meer and Baedler--I mean Beer and Maedler," he went on, "must have
measured at least forty or fifty mountains to their satisfaction."

"Forty or fifty!" exclaimed Barbican. "They measured no fewer than a
thousand and ninety-five lunar mountains and crater summits with a
perfect success. Six of these reach an altitude of upwards of 18,000
feet, and twenty-two are more than 15,000 feet high."

"Which is the highest in the lot?" asked Ardan, keenly relishing
Barbican's earnestness.

"_Doerfel_ in the southern hemisphere, the peak of which I have just
pointed out, is the highest of the lunar mountains so far measured,"
replied Barbican. "It is nearly 25,000 feet high."

"Indeed! Five thousand feet lower than Mount Everest--still for a lunar
mountain, it is quite a respectable altitude."

"Respectable! Why it's an enormous altitude, my dear friend, if you
compare it with the Moon's diameter. The Earth's diameter being more
than 3-1/2 times greater than the Moon's, if the Earth's mountains bore
the same ratio to those of the Moon, Everest should be more than sixteen
miles high, whereas it is not quite six."

"How do the general heights of the Himalayahs compare with those of the
highest lunar mountains?" asked Ardan, wondering what would be his next
question.

"Fifteen peaks in the eastern or higher division of the Himalayahs, are
higher than the loftiest lunar peaks," replied Barbican. "Even in the
western, or lower section of the Himalayahs, some of the peaks exceed
_Doerfel_."

"Which are the chief lunar mountains that exceed Mont Blanc in
altitude?" asked Ardan, bravely suppressing a yawn.

"The following dozen, ranged, if my memory does not fail me, in the
exact order of their respective heights;" replied Barbican, never
wearied in answering such questions: "_Newton_, _Curtius_, _Casatus_,
_Rheita_, _Short_, _Huyghens_, _Biancanus_, _Tycho_, _Kircher_,
_Clavius_, _Endymion_, and _Catharina_."

"Now those not quite up to Mont Blanc?" asked Ardan, hardly knowing what
to say.

"Here they are, about half a dozen of them: _Moretus_, _Theophilus_,
_Harpalus_, _Eratosthenes_, _Werner_, and _Piccolomini_," answered
Barbican as ready as a schoolboy reciting his lesson, and pointing them
out on the map as quickly as a compositor distributing his type.

"The next in rank?" asked Ardan, astounded at his friend's wonderful
memory.

"The next in rank," replied Barbican promptly, "are those about the size
of the Matterhorn, that is to say about 2-3/4 miles in height. They are
_Macrobius_, _Delambre_, and _Conon_. Come," he added, seeing Ardan
hesitating and at a loss what other question to ask, "don't you want to
know what lunar mountains are about the same height as the Peak of
Teneriffe? or as AEtna? or as Mount Washington? You need not be afraid of
puzzling me. I studied up the subject thoroughly, and therefore know all
about it."

"Oh! I could listen to you with delight all day long!" cried Ardan,
enthusiastically, though with some embarrassment, for he felt a twinge
of conscience in acting so falsely towards his beloved friend. "The fact
is," he went on, "such a rational conversation as the present, on such
an absorbing subject, with such a perfect master--"

"The Sun!" cried M'Nicholl starting up and cheering. "He's cleared the
disc completely, and he's now himself again! Long life to him! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" cried the others quite as enthusiastically (Ardan did not seem
a bit desirous to finish his sentence).

They tossed their maps aside and hastened to the window.

CHAPTER XVII.

TYCHO.

It was now exactly six o'clock in the evening. The Sun, completely clear
of all contact with the lunar disc, steeped the whole Projectile in his
golden rays. The travellers, vertically over the Moon's south pole,
were, as Barbican soon ascertained, about 30 miles distant from it, the
exact distance they had been from the north pole--a proof that the
elliptic curve still maintained itself with mathematical rigor.

For some time, the travellers' whole attention was concentrated on the
glorious Sun. His light was inexpressibly cheering; and his heat, soon
penetrating the walls of the Projectile, infused a new and sweet life
into their chilled and exhausted frames. The ice rapidly disappeared,
and the windows soon resumed their former perfect transparency.

"Oh! how good the pleasant sunlight is!" cried the Captain, sinking on a
seat in a quiet ecstasy of enjoyment. "How I pity Ardan's poor friends
the Selenites during that night so long and so icy! How impatient they
must be to see the Sun back again!"

"Yes," said Ardan, also sitting down the better to bask in the vivifying
rays, "his light no doubt brings them to life and keeps them alive.
Without light or heat during all that dreary winter, they must freeze
stiff like the frogs or become torpid like the bears. I can't imagine
how they could get through it otherwise."

"I'm glad _we're_ through it anyhow," observed M'Nicholl. "I may at once
acknowledge that I felt perfectly miserable as long as it lasted. I can
now easily understand how the combined cold and darkness killed Doctor
Kane's Esquimaux dogs. It was near killing me. I was so miserable that
at last I could neither talk myself nor bear to hear others talk."

"My own case exactly," said Barbican--"that is," he added hastily,
correcting himself, "I tried to talk because I found Ardan so
interested, but in spite of all we said, and saw, and had to think of,
Byron's terrible dream would continually rise up before me:

"The bright Sun was extinguished, and the Stars
Wandered all darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless and pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the Moonless air.
Morn came and went, and came and brought no day!
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation, and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for _light_!"

As he pronounced these words in accents at once monotonous and
melancholy, Ardan, fully appreciative, quietly gesticulated in perfect
cadence with the rhythm. Then the three men remained completely silent
for several minutes. Buried in recollection, or lost in thought, or
magnetized by the bright Sun, they seemed to be half asleep while
steeping their limbs in his vitalizing beams.

Barbican was the first to dissolve the reverie by jumping up. His sharp
eye had noticed that the base of the Projectile, instead of keeping
rigidly perpendicular to the lunar surface, turned away a little, so as
to render the elliptical orbit somewhat elongated. This he made his
companions immediately observe, and also called their attention to the
fact that from this point they could easily have seen the Earth had it
been Full, but that now, drowned in the Sun's beams, it was quite
invisible. A more attractive spectacle, however, soon engaged their
undivided attention--that of the Moon's southern regions, now brought
within about the third of a mile by their telescopes. Immediately
resuming their posts by the windows, they carefully noted every feature
presented by the fantastic panorama that stretched itself out in endless
lengths beneath their wondering eyes.

[Illustration: THEY SEEMED HALF ASLEEP.]

Mount _Leibnitz_ and Mount _Doerfel_ form two separate groups developed
in the regions of the extreme south. The first extends westwardly from
the pole to the 84th parallel; the second, on the southeastern border,
starting from the pole, reaches the neighborhood of the 65th. In the
entangled valleys of their clustered peaks, appeared the dazzling sheets
of white, noted by Father Secchi, but their peculiar nature Barbican
could now examine with a greater prospect of certainty than the
illustrious Roman astronomer had ever enjoyed.

"They're beds of snow," he said at last in a decided tone.

"Snow!" exclaimed M'Nicholl.

"Yes, snow, or rather glaciers heavily coated with glittering ice. See
how vividly they reflect the Sun's rays. Consolidated beds of lava could
never shine with such dazzling uniformity. Therefore there must be both
water and air on the Moon's surface. Not much--perhaps very little if
you insist on it--but the fact that there is some can now no longer be
questioned."

This assertion of Barbican's, made so positively by a man who never
decided unless when thoroughly convinced, was a great triumph for Ardan,
who, as the gracious reader doubtless remembers, had had a famous
dispute with M'Nicholl on that very subject at Tampa.[D] His eyes
brightened and a smile of pleasure played around his lips, but, with a
great effort at self-restraint, he kept perfectly silent and would not
permit himself even to look in the direction of the Captain. As for
M'Nicholl, he was apparently too much absorbed in _Doerfel_ and
_Leibnitz_ to mind anything else.

These mountains rose from plains of moderate extent, bounded by an
indefinite succession of walled hollows and ring ramparts. They are the
only chains met in this region of ridge-brimmed craters and circles;
distinguished by no particular feature, they project a few pointed peaks
here and there, some of which exceed four miles and a half in height.
This altitude, however, foreshortened as it was by the vertical position
of the Projectile, could not be noticed just then, even if correct
observation had been permitted by the dazzling surface.

Once more again before the travellers' eyes the Moon's disc revealed
itself in all the old familiar features so characteristic of lunar
landscapes--no blending of tones, no softening of colors, no graduation
of shadows, every line glaring in white or black by reason of the total
absence of refracted light. And yet the wonderfully peculiar character
of this desolate world imparted to it a weird attraction as strangely
fascinating as ever.

Over this chaotic region the travellers were now sweeping, as if borne
on the wings of a storm; the peaks defiled beneath them; the yawning
chasms revealed their ruin-strewn floors; the fissured cracks untwisted
themselves; the ramparts showed all their sides; the mysterious holes
presented their impenetrable depths; the clustered mountain summits and
rings rapidly decomposed themselves: but in a moment again all had
become more inextricably entangled than ever. Everything appeared to be
the finished handiwork of volcanic agency, in the utmost purity and
highest perfection. None of the mollifying effects of air or water could
here be noticed. No smooth-capped mountains, no gently winding river
channels, no vast prairie-lands of deposited sediment, no traces of
vegetation, no signs of agriculture, no vestiges of a great city.
Nothing but vast beds of glistering lava, now rough like immense piles
of scoriae and clinker, now smooth like crystal mirrors, and reflecting
the Sun's rays with the same intolerable glare. Not the faintest speck
of life. A world absolutely and completely dead, fixed, still,
motionless--save when a gigantic land-slide, breaking off the vertical
wall of a crater, plunged down into the soundless depths, with all the
fury too of a crashing avalanche, with all the speed of a Niagara, but,
in the total absence of atmosphere, noiseless as a feather, as a snow
flake, as a grain of impalpable dust.

Careful observations, taken by Barbican and repeated by his companions,
soon satisfied them that the ridgy outline of the mountains on the
Moon's border, though perhaps due to different forces from those acting
in the centre, still presented a character generally uniform. The same
bulwark-surrounded hollows, the same abrupt projections of surface. Yet
a different arrangement, as Barbican pointed out to his companions,
might be naturally expected. In the central portion of the disc, the
Moon's crust, before solidification, must have been subjected to two
attractions--that of the Moon herself and that of the Earth--acting,
however, in contrary directions and therefore, in a certain sense,
serving to neutralize each other. Towards the border of her disc, on the
contrary, the terrestrial attraction, having acted in a direction
perpendicular to that of the lunar, should have exerted greater power,
and therefore given a different shape to the general contour. But no
remarkable difference had so far been perceived by terrestrial
observers; and none could now be detected by our travellers. Therefore
the Moon must have found in herself alone the principle of her shape and
of her superficial development--that is, she owed nothing to external
influences. "Arago was perfectly right, therefore," concluded Barbican,
"in the remarkable opinion to which he gave expression thirty years ago:

'No external action whatever has contributed to the formation of the
Moon's diversified surface.'"

"But don't you think, Barbican," asked the Captain, "that every force,
internal or external, that might modify the Moon's shape, has ceased
long ago?"

"I am rather inclined to that opinion," said Barbican; "it is not,
however, a new one. Descartes maintained that as the Earth is an extinct
Sun, so is the Moon an extinct Earth. My own opinion at present is that
the Moon is now the image of death, but I can't say if she has ever been
the abode of life."

"The abode of life!" cried Ardan, who had great repugnance in accepting
the idea that the Moon was no better than a heap of cinders and ashes;
"why, look there! If those are not as neat a set of the ruins of an
abandoned city as ever I saw, I should like to know what they are!"

[Illustration: ONCE MORE THE PIPES OF AN AQUEDUCT.]

He pointed to some very remarkable rocky formations in the
neighborhood of _Short_, a ring mountain rising to an altitude
considerably higher than that of Mont Blanc. Even Barbican and M'Nicholl
could detect some regularity and semblance of order in the arrangement
of these rocks, but this, of course, they looked on as a mere freak of
nature, like the Lurlei Rock, the Giant's Causeway, or the Old Man of
the Franconia Mountains. Ardan, however, would not accept such an easy
mode of getting rid of a difficulty.

"See the ruins on that bluff," he exclaimed; "those steep sides must
have been washed by a great river in the prehistoric times. That was the
fortress. Farther down lay the city. There are the dismantled ramparts;
why, there's the very coping of a portico still intact! Don't you see
three broken pillars lying beside their pedestals? There! a little to
the left of those arches that evidently once bore the pipes of an
aqueduct! You don't see them? Well, look a little to the right, and
there is something that you can see! As I'm a living man I have no
difficulty in discerning the gigantic butments of a great bridge that
formerly spanned that immense river!"

Did he really see all this? To this day he affirms stoutly that he did,
and even greater wonders besides. His companions, however, without
denying that he had good grounds for his assertion on this subject or
questioning the general accuracy of his observations, content themselves
with saying that the reason why they had failed to discover the
wonderful city, was that Ardan's telescope was of a strange and
peculiar construction. Being somewhat short-sighted, he had had it
manufactured expressly for his own use, but it was of such singular
power that his companions could not use it without hurting their eyes.

But, whether the ruins were real or not, the moments were evidently too
precious to be lost in idle discussion. The great city of the Selenites
soon disappeared on the remote horizon, and, what was of far greater
importance, the distance of the Projectile from the Moon's disc began to
increase so sensibly that the smaller details of the surface were soon
lost in a confused mass, and it was only the lofty heights, the wide
craters, the great ring mountains, and the vast plains that still
continued to give sharp, distinctive outlines.

A little to their left, the travellers could now plainly distinguish one
of the most remarkable of the Moon's craters, _Newton_, so well known to
all lunar astronomers. Its ramparts, forming a perfect circle, rise to
such a height, at least 22,000 feet, as to seem insurmountable.

"You can, no doubt, notice for yourselves," said Barbican, "that the
external height of this mountain is far from being equal to the depth of
its crater. The enormous pit, in fact, seems to be a soundless sea of
pitchy black, the bottom of which the Sun's rays have never reached.
There, as Humboldt says, reigns eternal darkness, so absolute that
Earth-shine or even Sunlight is never able to dispel it. Had Michael's
friends the old mythologists ever known anything about it, they would
doubtless have made it the entrance to the infernal regions. On the
whole surface of our Earth, there is no mountain even remotely
resembling it. It is a perfect type of the lunar crater. Like most of
them, it shows that the peculiar formation of the Moon's surface is due,
first, to the cooling of the lunar crust; secondly, to the cracking from
internal pressure; and, thirdly, to the violent volcanic action in
consequence. This must have been of a far fiercer nature than it has
ever been with us. The matter was ejected to a vast height till great
mountains were formed; and still the action went on, until at last the
floor of the crater sank to a depth far lower than the level of the
external plain."

"You may be right," said Ardan by way of reply; "as for me, I'm looking
out for another city. But I'm sorry to say that our Projectile is
increasing its distance so fast that, even if one lay at my feet at this
moment, I doubt very much if I could see it a bit better than either you
or the Captain."

_Newton_ was soon passed, and the Projectile followed a course that took
it directly over the ring mountain _Moretus_. A little to the west the
travellers could easily distinguish the summits of _Blancanus_, 7,000
feet high, and, towards seven o'clock in the evening, they were
approaching the neighborhood of _Clavius_.

This walled-plain, one of the most remarkable on the Moon, lies 55 deg. S.
by 15 deg. E. Its height is estimated at 16,000 feet, but it is considered
to be about a hundred and fifty miles in diameter. Of this vast crater,
the travellers now at a distance of 250 miles, reduced to 2-1/2 by their
telescopes, had a magnificent bird's-eye view.

"Our terrestrial volcanoes," said Barbican, "as you can now readily
judge for yourselves, are no more than molehills when compared with
those of the Moon. Measure the old craters formed by the early eruptions
of Vesuvius and AEtna, and you will find them little more than three
miles in diameter. The crater of Cantal in central France is only about
six miles in width; the famous valley in Ceylon, called the _Crater_,
though not at all due to volcanic action, is 44 miles across and is
considered to be the greatest in the world. But even this is very little
in comparison to the diameter of _Clavius_ lying beneath us at the
present moment."

"How much is its diameter?" asked the Captain.

"At least one hundred and forty-two miles," replied Barbican; "it is
probably the greatest in the Moon, but many others measure more than a
hundred miles across."

"Dear boys," said Ardan, half to himself, half to the others, "only
imagine the delicious state of things on the surface of the gentle Moon
when these craters, brimming over with hissing lava, were vomiting
forth, all at the same time, showers of melted stones, clouds of
blinding smoke, and sheets of blasting flame! What an intensely
overpowering spectacle was here presented once, but now, how are the
mighty fallen! Our Moon, as at present beheld, seems to be nothing more
than the skinny spectre left after a brilliant display of fireworks,
when the spluttering crackers, the glittering wheels, the hissing
serpents, the revolving suns, and the dazzling stars, are all 'played
out', and nothing remains to tell of the gorgeous spectacle but a few
blackened sticks and half a dozen half burned bits of pasteboard. I
should like to hear one of you trying to explain the cause, the reason,
the principle, the philosophy of such tremendous cataclysms!"

Barbican's only reply was a series of nods, for in truth he had not
heard a single word of Ardan's philosophic explosion. His ears were with
his eyes, and these were obstinately bent on the gigantic ramparts of
_Clavius_, formed of concentric mountain ridges, which were actually
leagues in depth. On the floor of the vast cavity, could be seen
hundreds of smaller craters, mottling it like a skimming dish, and
pierced here and there by sharp peaks, one of which could hardly be less
than 15,000 feet high.

All around, the plain was desolate in the extreme. You could not
conceive how anything could be barrener than these serrated outlines, or
gloomier than these shattered mountains--until you looked at the plain
that encircled them. Ardan hardly exaggerated when he called it the
scene of a battle fought thousands of years ago but still white with the
hideous bones of overthrown peaks, slaughtered mountains and mutilated
precipices!

"Hills amid the air encountered hills,
Hurled to and fro in jaculation dire,"

murmured M'Nicholl, who could quote you Milton quite as readily as the
Bible.

"This must have been the spot," muttered Barbican to himself, "where the
brittle shell of the cooling sphere, being thicker than usual, offered
greater resistance to an eruption of the red-hot nucleus. Hence these
piled up buttresses, and these orderless heaps of consolidated lava and
ejected scoriae."

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