are rare in the moon, and even when met with, only short and without spurs or valleys. The longest ridge extends about 450 miles, but its peaks rise to the prodigious height of 17,000 feet. On the other hand, the moon abounds in countless, isolated cones, which in the northern half group themselves into long, broad belts. Like the thorns of a chestnut, thousands of these mountains rise suddenly from the plain, and are seen to stretch their long, gaunt arms from the outline of the moon's disk into the dark sky. Even the vast plains of our little neighbor are covered with long, curiously-formed ranges of low hills, which, though often a mile wide, never rise beyond a thousand feet, and therefore show us their shadow only when the sun is extremely low. Much as these strange forms differ from all we see on earth, we are still more struck with the quaint, mysterious fissures, narrow but deep, which pass in almost straight lines, like railways, right through plain and mountain, cut even craters in two, and often end themselves in craters. At full moon they appear to us as lines of brilliant light, at other times as black threads, and must, therefore, have a width of at least a thousand feet. We have, on earth, nothing to compare with them; for even the terrible gullies which cross the prairies of Texas, dwindle into utter nothingness by the side of these gigantic rents. As long as men saw every day new surprising analogies between the moon and the earth, and the grey spots were oceans, the light ones continents, these inexplicable lines also appeared now as rivers and now as canals, or even as beautifully Macadamized turnpikes! The citizens of the moon can, however, hardly yet afford building roads, by water or by land, of such gigantic width; nor will the fact, that these deep furrows cut through craters and lofty mountains, and invariably preserve the same level, admit of such an interpretation. At all events those only can see canals and roads on the moon, who have already found there cities and fortified places. What gigantic and astounding revolutions must have passed over the moon, to produce these colossal mountains, rising not unfrequently to a height of 26,000 feet; these peculiar, massive rings, these enormous cliffs and furrows! How insignificant appear, in comparison, the greatest events of that kind, on our earth, where even proud Etna hardly rivals the smallest of the moon's craters! Their universal tendency to round forms has led to the idea that all these elevations and indentations are the effect of one and the same mysterious power. Everything favors the presumption, that the moon was originally a liquid mass, and that, whilst it became solid, new forces were unloosened in the interior, causing gigantic eruptions, as when the pent up air bubbles up from a mass of molten metal. Some of these bubbles would upon bursting, naturally leave behind a circular ridge and a slight rise in the centre of the cavity. These forces seem to have been most active near the poles whose desolate regions are dotted over with countless hills and mountains; near the equator vast plains stretch out, broken only here and there by a lofty peak or solitary crater. Thus man, pigmy man, ventures already to read the riddles of mysterious events that happened in the earliest times of its history in a great world, which his foot has never yet trodden! He has, however, not only measured the mountains of the moon, and laid out maps and charts of her surface, but he has given names to mountains and islands. Formerly the most renowned philosophers were thus immortalized, we trust without any insidious comparison between philosophy and moonshine. Of late, however, dead or living astronomers, who often enjoyed little enough of this world's goods, have been presented with large estates in the moon. Thus Kepler, whom the great emperor and the empire of Germany suffered to starve, obtained one of the most brilliant mountains for his share; and Tycho, Copernicus, Hipparchus and Albategnius are his neighbors in those regions, though tolerably far apart on earth, in point of time, country, and religion. Even Humboldt has already his possessions in the moon. Nothing strikes the general observer so much, when his eye rambles inquiringly over the surface of the moon, as the incredible variety of light in different parts. Some have sought the cause of this striking phenomenon in the diversity of the soil, ascribing to the darker portions a looser earth, and perceiving in the greenish sheen of some plains even traces of vegetation. Doubtful as it needs be, whether color could be seen at such a distance, this is certain, that the lighter portions represent rigid masses and reflecting elevations. A most strange sensation is produced by the long beams of dazzling light, resembling liquid silver, which, now isolated and now united together into broad bands of rays, pass in countless hosts over whole, large regions. They often centre in some peculiarly brilliant, circular mountain, and the gigantic Tycho sends his rays of surpassing splendor over more than onefourth of the whole orb, over hill and dale, valley and mountain. At other places they form broad masses of mystic light, often twenty miles square. Mountain ridges or lava streams they are not, though formerly the world believed them such, because they pass over the very tops of mountains. Can they be glassy or crystallized masses of volcanic material, which suddenly cooled, now stand in rigid pallor and reflect lights with an intensity unknown to our earth? As yet we have met with no trace of life on the moon. Are there no inhabitants on our strange satellite? In our day, when the plurality of worlds threatens to become the war-cry of sects and schools, the question is but natural, and many an eager inquirer has no doubt asked himself: what may life be on the moon? Have they built cities and founded empires there like the men of the earth? Does a blue sky smile upon them, and do merry springs leap down the green slopes of their mountains. Nor is the question altogether of recent date. While Sir John Herschel explored the wonders of the southern heaven on the Cape of Good Hope, there appeared unexpectedly a little pamphlet, which created no small sensation even among the learned. It purported to be his first account of new discoveries in the moon, and contained marvellous reports of sheep of strange shape, of men with the wings of bats, of cities and fortified towns. The world, however, soon found that this was an ingenious hoax from the pen of an American, who had thus practically tested the credulity of his contemporaries. The credit which the clever imposture found, even among the wellinformed, is ample apology for the sanguine hopes of those who still hope, by the aid of improved instruments, to discover the Man in the Moon; or, like good old Bishop Wilkins, to pay him a neighborly visit, for which, in sober earnest, most ingenious plans have been devised. Distinguished astronomers insist upon having seen large buildings in the moon; Gruithuisen tells us of an edifice near the equator, in its most fertile regions, of twenty-five niles diameter and surrounded with large walls, which face, One point, above all, is apparently al- The eye, then, is utterly incapable of discovering life-endowed beings in the moon. This would, of course, in itself not preclude the existence of inhabitants in that globe. Every argument, on the contrary, leads rather to the conclusion, that the life of other worlds is, on the whole, governed by the same laws as that of our earth. The same infinite variety which astounds the eye and mind of man, when he studies our animal creation here below, and the exquisite adaptation of these countless forms to their precise purpose, must needs continue throughout creation. God is not only great, but also consistent in his greatness, and the eternal laws of nature, which are, after all, but an expression of His will, must apply The inquiring to other worlds also. mind will, therefore, not without benefit try to derive additional knowledge ever from the scanty facts with which we are acquainted. We know tolerably well the soil, the climate and the surface of the moon. What, then, do they teach us as to life on that globe? The first circumstance that strikes the traveller on the moon, is the wonderful facility of motion. Gravity is in the moon six times less than on the earth, so that the same power with which we here lift eighteen pounds would there raise a hundred weight. The arm that can throw a stone on earth ten feet high, would on the moon throw it up to sixty feet. The inequalities of the soil there would, to an earth-born man, be no difficulties; he would glide over hills and mountains, which here below require gigantic structures, like the winged birds of heaven. This must at once produce a radical difference between life on earth and life on the moon. If we look next for the two great elements of earthly life, air and water, we find that the moon is but ill provided for in that respect. With all sympathy for great discoverers and sanguine optimists, we are compelled to deny the existence of either water and air, as we have it on earth, in our satellite. We know the presence of air by the fact that all air breaks and weakens rays of light, which pass through it. The atmosphere of the moon shows no such effects. Her landscapes appear as clear and distinct on the margin as in the centre of the orb, and when stars pass over the latter, they show no diminution of light at the time of their entrance into the luminous circle, no increase of light when they leave it again. The evaporation of water also would be betrayed by the same breaking of rays, if that element were mixed up with the air, as it is in our own atmosphere, or if it covered any part of the moon's surface. Unwilling as we are to banish her inhabitants exclusively to that side of the moon, which human eye has never yet beheld, because it is constantly turned away from the earth, and there, at fancy's bid to revel in a paradise with purling brooks and balmy zephyrs, nothing is left but to assume that the air is too thin and the water too ethereal to be perceived by the instruments now at our command. The careful calculations of the great astronomer Bessel resulted in the bare possibility of an atmosphere, a thousand times thinner than our own, showing conclusively how little we can expect to find life on the moon resembling in any way life on earth. The inhabitants of that world, if there be any, must have other bodies than ours, other blood must run through their veins, and other lungs breathe their air-we could never live in such a world. And what a curious almanac these good people in the moon would have! There, days are as long as years, and day and year are equal to our months, 29 days, 12 hours and 45 minutes. The seasons differ but very little from each other. On the equator there reigns eternal summer, for the sun is ever in the zenith; the poles are buried in eternal winter. The days are of equal length throughout the year; all days equally light, all nights equally dark. The absence of an atmosphere deprives the moon of the sweet charms of a twilight, and glaring day would follow gloomy night with the rapidity of lightning, if the slow rising and setting of the sun did not slightly break the suddenness of the transition. Human eyes, however, could not bear the fierce contrasts of light and shadow; they would long in vain for the soft intervals between the two extremes, the other colors, which beautify our world with their joyous variety and soft harmony. The sky is there not blue, but even in daytime black, and by the side of the dazzling sun the stars claim their place and light in the heavens. Near the poles the mountain tops shine in unbroken splendor year after year, but the valleys know neither day nor night, scantily lighted as they ever are by the faint glimmer reflected from the surrounding walls. That side of the moon which is turned from us, has a night of nearly fifteen days; the stars only, and planets, shine on its ever dark sky. The side we see, on the contrary, knows no night; the earth lights it up with never ceasing earth-shine, a light fourteen times stronger than that which we receive from the moon. We recognize our own light, lent to our friend, in the faint, greyish glimmer of that portion of the moon which before and after the new moon receives no light from the sun, but only from the earth, and reflects it back again upon us. Mornings in fall show it more brilliant than evenings in spring, because in autumn the continents of the earth with their stronger light illumine the moon, while in spring she only receives a fainter light from our oceans. Our orb appears to the Man in the Moon as changeable as his home to us, and he might speak of the first or last quarter of the earth, of new earth and full earth. The whole heaven moves before hin once in 29 days around its axis; the sun and stars rise and set regularly once in the long day; but the vast orb of our earth is nearly immovable. All around is in slow, unceasing motion: the mild face of the earth alone, a gorgeous moon of immense magnitude, never sets nor rises, but remains ever fixed in the zenith. It there appears sixteen times larger than the moon to us, and daily exhibits its vast panorama of oceans, continents and islands. Bright lights and dark shadows are seen in ever-varied change, as land or water, clearings or forests appear, new with every cloud or fog, and different at different seasons. The Man in the Moon has thus not only his watch and his almanac daily before him in the ever-changing face of the earth, but he may, for all we know, have maps of our globe which many a geographer would envy on account of their fullness and accuracy. Long before Columbus discovered America, and Cook New Holland, our lunar neighbor knew most correctly the form and the outlines of the new continents. There was no new world for him, and there is none left. He could tell us the secrets of the interior of Africa, and reveal to us the fearful mysteries of the Polar Seas. But how he on his side must marvel at our vast fields of snow, our volcanoes and tropical storms and tempests—he who knows neither fire, nor snow, nor clouds! What strange fables he may have invented to explain the shadows of our clouds as they chase each other over sea and land, and hide from him in an instant the sunlit landscape! And stranger still, on the side of the moon which is turned from the earth, he knows nothing at all about us, unless news reach him from the happier side. Or he may undertake-the great event in his life-a long and painful journey to the bright half of his globe, to stare at the wondrously brilliant earth-star with its unread mysteries and marvellous changes of flitting lights and shadows. Who knows what earnest prayers may rise from the moon, full of thanks for the floods of light and heat we pour upon them, or of ardent wishes that their souls might hereafter be allowed to dwell in the bright homes of the beauteous earth-star? Only in one point has the dark side of the moon a rare advantage. With its dark, unbroken night, a true and literal "fortnight," it is the observatory of the moon, the best of the whole planetary system. There no light from the earth, no twilight, hinders the most delicate observations, and neither clouds nor fogs ever step between the telescope and the heavenly bodies. It is a cold world, however, all over that pale, lifeless globe. The rays of the sun can hardly warn that thin, imper ceptible atmosphere, and on the plains near the equator, a fortnight of scorching sun and burning heat, which parches and withers all life, is instantaneously followed by another fortnight of fearful cold. Human eyes could not bear their ever cloudless, colorless horizon. Over the mournful scene looking like one vast ruin of nature, broods eternal silence. The thin air cannot carry the waves of sound. Not a word, not a song is ever heard amid those desolate mountains; no voice ever passes over the sunken plains. Pain and joy are equally silent. A rock may glide from its ancient resting-place, a mountain may fall from its eternal foundation-no thunder is heard, no echo awakened. Grim silence reigns supreme. No rainbow is set in the clouds as a token from on high; storm and tempest give not way to the merry song of birds and the breath of gentle, balmy winds. There we look in vain for green forests with their cool shade, for playful fountains to cheer and to refresh us. All around we see nothing but bare mountains, desolate masses of rock, countless stones amidst huge bowlders of glassy fabric. Human bodies could not endure these long days and endless nights; human souls could not bear that silent, lifeless world of desolation. Even this universal devastation, however, does not absolutely preclude the existence of created beings on the moon. We can think as little of a roble tree without leaves, flowers and fruits, as of an orb, rolling in silent, serene majesty through the midnight firmament, without organic life and intelligence. The earth teaches us the same lesson by simple logic. The earth also, once incandescent and scarcely cooled, has been the theatre of fearful convulsions; gigantic forces have torn her interior, and deeply furrowed her surface. But hardly was apparent peace restored upon the still unshapen globe when it produced, at the word of the Almighty, a creation full of fresh life, at first rude, raw and imperfect, like nature itself, but daily growing nobler, more varied, more spiritual. We know this, for each varied organization of such life, as it perished, has left its epitaph written upon imperishable monuments. May we then not believe, that, like the earth, the moon also has first had her period of storm and strife? Of this her vast plains, her rugged craters and mysterious furrows give proof in abundance. The present seems to be her period of rest, during which nature gains strength to produce a life endowed creation. This we learn from her unchanging face, and clear, imperceptible atmosphere. There must come a time for the moon as for the earth, though perhaps after thousands of years only, when thinking, intelligent beings will rise from her dust. The whole universe has some elements in common. The great cosmic powers, light and heat, are the same first conditions of organic life throughout the vast creation; they send their waves through the wide ocean of the world, and play against all of its gigantic islands. There is, no doubt, vital power in them, and at the proper time, at His bidding, life will spring forth and order will reign, where now destruction and chaos alone seem to rule supreme. The moon is one of the great heavenly bodies, all of which work together in beautiful harmony to the glory of God. They all move, like loving sisters, hand in hand through the great universe. As they live with each other, so they evidently live for each other. Superstition, ignorance, and even willful exaggeration have much obscured the effects of this mutual influence. The moon especially has been treated as if she existed for the benefit of the earth only. From the times of antiquity the world has been filled with fanciful stories of her influence on our weather, our vegetation, our health, and even the state of our mind. Many have believed in a daily direct communication between the two great bodies; they looked, upon meteoric stones as coming to us directly from the craters of the moon's volcanoes, and the fertile imagination of happy dreamers reduced a crude mass of half-true, halffabulous details into a regular system, long before the moon itself was even tolerably well known to us. It is notorious that men of such rank as Piazzi and Sir William Herschel considered certain light appearances in the moon as volcanic eruptions, whilst a German astronomer of great merit, Schroeter, saw in them enormous fires raging in some of the capitals of our satellite! Meteoric stones are, in our day, fortunately better explained. Unless the volcanoes on the moon had a force thirty times greater than our own, they could not project masses far enough to come within reach of our atmosphere. Such gigantic and continued eruptions could, moreover, not fail to cause some permanent change in the surface of the moon, which has never yet been perceived. Great heavenly bodies commune not, like men, by throwing bombshells at each other; their influence is felt through the agency of light, heat and attraction. The light of the moon, it is true, is 90,000 times weaker than sunlight, and that its rays warm not, is a popular assertion. But people are not always right, with due deference be it said, even in matters of science. They used to say that moonlight nights were colder than others. So they are; but the moon is not to be blamed for it. She shines brighter when the sky is not obscured; but when that is the case, the earth also grows colder, because radiation is prevented. Thus the two facts are perfectly true, only there is no connection of cause and effect between them. Melloni's experiments, made in 1846, prove even that the rays of the moon have a certain amount of heat, though so little, that the most powerful lenses fail to make it perceptible on the thermometer. The old Phoenicians already knew the moon well on their long, bold sea voyages; they knew that the gigantic breathing of the ocean, its ebb and tide, were her work. Antiquity looked with awe and wonder upon this supernatural power of the great pale orb. Modern science sees in it one of the most glorious effects of the great, mysterious power of attraction, that binds and holds the universe together. The moon, though so near to us, cannot move the firm continent, but she allures the elastic waters of the earth, until they raise huge foamcovered masses of the ocean up towards the distant charmer. In one great, unbroken wave of vast dimensions they follow the receding moon with eager haste, and in the short space of 24 hours rush round our globe, until continent and island break their imposing power. Twice in the day and twice at night does this immense giant-snake, wound round our globe, breathe; for six hours it swells and rises high into the pure air of the atmosphere; for six hours afterwards it sinks and vanishes, falling back into its eternal limits. Although the mysterious sympathies of the great worlds of the universe are all alike, and sun and moon work jointly in this great movement, the power of the latter far exceeds, by its greater vicinity to the earth, that of the sun. Hence the tides follow closely the magic course of the moon in the heavens, and recur regularly |
