Part 11

“Yes, time enough, perhaps, provided that sufficient water and air and other vital requisites remained after the exhaustion of the volcanic energies.”

“Oh, let us say that they did remain. I am eager to believe that the moon has not always been so desolate as she appears at present.”

“Very well, you are at liberty to believe that if you like. No astronomer is likely positively to contradict you, although he may smile a little incredulously. Besides, as I have already told you, there are certain rather inconclusive indications of some kind of life, and of some kind of activity, still on the moon.”

“Please show them to me, then, or tell me about them. Perhaps I shall find them less inconclusive than you do.”

“Everything in its turn,” I replied. “We shall come to the indications that I have spoken of after we resume the inspection of the photographs.”

“Then I am ready to resume at once.”

Accordingly we returned to the table and the photographs under the pleasant shade of the elm. Taking up the photograph numbered 7, I remarked that it exhibited the moon as it appears a little after First Quarter; that is to say, a trifle more than half the face turned toward the earth is in the sunlight. I called attention once more to the six “seas,” which we had already remarked, and to the continued conspicuousness of Theophilus and its companions, a little above the middle of the visible hemisphere.

“You observe now,” I continued, “how the rotundity of the lunar globe begins to manifest itself as the sunlight sweeps farther eastward. The crescent shape is gone and the line between day and night begins to be bowed outward, convexly. The Mare Crisium is particularly well defined, and also the diamond-shaped region called the Palus Somnii. With the sun so nearly vertical above it, the remarkable peak of Proclus, between the Palus Somnii and the Mare Crisium, has become very brilliant. In a telescope you would see it glowing almost like a star. You observe also that several long, straight, bright rays proceed from it in several directions.”

“All the more reason, it seems to me,” said my friend, “why your unimaginative astronomer, Riccioli, should have named it for some brilliant gem instead of attaching to so dazzling an object the prosaic designation of ‘Proclus.’”

“After all,” I replied, “what’s in a name?” Now that you are familiar with the appearance of Proclus, its name will henceforth call up to your mind an image as brilliant as if it had been named ‘Mount Diamond’ or ‘Mount Amethyst.’”

NO. 7. JULY 2, 1903; MOON’S AGE 7.24 DAYS. ]

“Pardon me,” said my friend, “but it was not of names like those that I was thinking. Observe how he who named the neighboring Palus Somnii, ‘Marsh of a Dream,’ exhibited an exquisite delicacy of fancy. It suggests something indefinitely strange, romantic, imaginative. That unknown astronomer, unknown at least to me, put a little of himself, a little of his inmost mind, into the name, and I thank him for it. I shall never forget the ‘Marsh of a Dream’ in the moon. It will haunt my own dreams. I shall be all my life seeking and never finding its meaning.”

“Since you are in so poetic a mood,” I responded, “I rejoice that besides its bald facts, its fireless volcanoes, and its dried-up plains, the moon possesses many things that can stir the imagination of the most sentimental observer. But, in order that we may not wander too far from the paths of science, let me recall your attention to the photograph. We have been going over ground already trodden by returning to the neighborhood of the Mare Crisium. I shall now lead you back to the terminator, where we shall find a little that is new. Still nearly hidden in night we perceive many great rings on which the sun is beginning to rise, and four of the most important ranges of mountains are coming into view. One of these, on the southern border of the Mare Serenitatis, is visible throughout its entire extent. It forms a portion of the coquettish ornaments with which the Moon Maiden has decorated her hair, as we shall see clearly in the next photograph. This range is named the Hæmus mountains. Near its center, quite at the edge of the ‘sea,’ is a bright crater ring, one of the most conspicuous on the moon. It is called Menelaus.”

“Menelaus?” exclaimed my friend. “Ah, then Riccioli did not confine his favoritism to the astronomers and philosophers in putting their names in the moon. Menelaus, if I remember my classical reading correctly, was the husband of Helen of Troy.”

“Yes, the brother of Agamemnon himself. You must admit that Riccioli occasionally felt his imagination a little awakened. He was not altogether destitute of the spirit of poetry.”

“But did he also put Helen in the moon?”

“I am sorry to say that he did not. It would have been a very suitable abode for her. However, if you like, you may recognize Helen in the Moon Maiden herself.”

“Thank you, that will be, indeed, an unexpected pleasure.”

“Meanwhile allow me to point out to you that there is a curious light streak, very faintly shown in the photograph, which crosses the Mare Serenitatis from Menelaus to the opposite shore, and reappears more distinctly, on the lighter-colored plain toward the north. This streak comes all the way from a great ring mountain named Tycho in the southern part of the moon. It is more than 2,000 miles long, and is one of the greatest mysteries of the lunar world. Tycho, which lies just on the sunrise line, is not well seen in this photograph. It has a great number of these strange streaks or rays proceeding from it in all directions. We shall study them in one of the photographs which are to come. One word in regard to the plain north of the Mare Serenitatis of which I have just spoken. It, too, has a name that is calculated to appeal to your lively imagination. It is called the Lacus Somniorum, which if my knowledge of Latin is correct, means ‘Lake of the Sleepers.’”

“Then your old friend Riccioli certainly did not bestow the appellation.”

“No, it was one of his more fanciful, or, if you prefer, more poetical predecessors, perhaps the same who imagined the ‘Marsh of a Dream.’”

“Oh, that gives me another reason to think of him with admiration and gratitude. He, at least, had a soul that rose above mere prosaic facts.”

“Perhaps. But do not think too lightly of the facts of the moon. After all the human mind must base itself upon the solid ground of fact. Without that we should become mere dreamers, and be suited only to inhabit your favorite ‘Marsh.’”

“The other mountain ranges of which I have spoken,” I continued, “are faintly distinguishable eastward from the Mare Serenitatis. They are the Apennines, the Caucasus, and the Alps. But perhaps we had better turn at once to photograph No. 8 where they are much more clearly seen, because the sunrise there has advanced a couple of hundred miles farther east.”

“But, dear me, how slowly the sun rises on the moon! Was this photograph taken a day later than the other?”

NO. 8. AUGUST 31, 1903; MOON’S AGE 9.22 DAYS. ]

“Almost exactly two days later. When it was made the moon was nearly nine and a quarter days old, and its age at the time No. 7 was made was only seven and a quarter days. But, owing to the effects of libration, an explanation of which I have put into a note for your private reading when you feel like it, [see p. 57, footnote], the difference of phase amounts to less than two days. You are right, however, in remarking that sunrise is a very slow process on the moon. It requires about two weeks to pass from the western side of the moon to the eastern side, and both day and night at any point on the moon last about a fortnight. This results from the fact that, as I have told you, the moon does not turn rapidly on its axis like our own globe, but keeps always the same side directed toward the earth. Accordingly, a lunar day and night are together about a month long.”

“And was it so when, as I must persist in believing, there were inhabitants on the moon?”