But the sight of this desolate world did not fail to captivate
them by its very strangeness. They were moving over this region
as if they had been borne on the breath of some storm, watching
heights defile under their feet, piercing the cavities with their
eyes, going down into the rifts, climbing the ramparts, sounding
these mysterious holes, and leveling all cracks. But no trace
of vegetation, no appearance of cities; nothing but stratification,
beds of lava, overflowings polished like immense mirrors,
reflecting the sun’s rays with overpowering brilliancy.
Nothing belonging to a _living_ world– everything to a dead
world, where avalanches, rolling from the summits of the mountains,
would disperse noiselessly at the bottom of the abyss, retaining
the motion, but wanting the sound. In any case it was the image
of death, without its being possible even to say that life had ever
existed there.
Michel Ardan, however, thought he recognized a heap of ruins,
to which he drew Barbicane’s attention. It was about the 80th
parallel, in 30@ longitude. This heap of stones, rather
regularly placed, represented a vast fortress, overlooking a
long rift, which in former days had served as a bed to the
rivers of prehistorical times. Not far from that, rose to a
height of 17,400 feet the annular mountain of Short, equal to
the Asiatic Caucasus. Michel Ardan, with his accustomed ardor,
maintained “the evidences” of his fortress. Beneath it he
discerned the dismantled ramparts of a town; here the still
intact arch of a portico, there two or three columns lying under
their base; farther on, a succession of arches which must have
supported the conduit of an aqueduct; in another part the sunken
pillars of a gigantic bridge, run into the thickest parts of
the rift. He distinguished all this, but with so much imagination
in his glance, and through glasses so fantastical, that we must
mistrust his observation. But who could affirm, who would dare
to say, that the amiable fellow did not really see that which
his two companions would not see?
Moments were too precious to be sacrificed in idle discussion.
The selenite city, whether imaginary or not, had already
disappeared afar off. The distance of the projectile from the
lunar disc was on the increase, and the details of the soil were
being lost in a confused jumble. The reliefs, the circles,
the craters, and the plains alone remained, and still showed
their boundary lines distinctly. At this moment, to the left,
lay extended one of the finest circles of lunar orography,
one of the curiosities of this continent. It was Newton,
which Barbicane recognized without trouble, by referring to
the _Mappa Selenographica_.
Newton is situated in exactly 77@ south latitude, and 16@
east longitude. It forms an annular crater, the ramparts of
which, rising to a height of 21,300 feet, seemed to be impassable.
Barbicane made his companions observe that the height of this
mountain above the surrounding plain was far from equaling the
depth of its crater. This enormous hole was beyond all
measurement, and formed a gloomy abyss, the bottom of which the
sun’s rays could never reach. There, according to Humboldt,
reigns utter darkness, which the light of the sun and the earth
cannot break. Mythologists could well have made it the mouth of hell.
“Newton,” said Barbicane, “is the most perfect type of these
annular mountains, of which the earth possesses no sample.
They prove that the moon’s formation, by means of cooling, is
due to violent causes; for while, under the pressure of internal
fires the reliefs rise to considerable height, the depths withdraw
far below the lunar level.”
“I do not dispute the fact,” replied Michel Ardan.
Some minutes after passing Newton, the projectile directly
overlooked the annular mountains of Moret. It skirted at some
distance the summits of Blancanus, and at about half-past seven
in the evening reached the circle of Clavius.
This circle, one of the most remarkable of the disc, is situated
in 58@ south latitude, and 15@ east longitude. Its height is
estimated at 22,950 feet. The travelers, at a distance of
twenty-four miles (reduced to four by their glasses) could
admire this vast crater in its entirety.