CHAPTER XVII
TYCHO
At six in the evening the projectile passed the south pole atless than forty miles off, a distance equal to that alreadyreached at the north pole. The elliptical curve was beingrigidly carried out.
At this moment the travelers once more entered the blessed raysof the sun. They saw once more those stars which move slowlyfrom east to west. The radiant orb was saluted by a triple hurrah.With its light it also sent heat, which soon pierced the metal walls.The glass resumed its accustomed appearance. The layers of icemelted as if by enchantment; and immediately, for economy's sake,the gas was put out, the air apparatus alone consuming itsusual quantity.
"Ah!" said Nicholl, "these rays of heat are good. With whatimpatience must the Selenites wait the reappearance of the orbof day."
"Yes," replied Michel Ardan, "imbibing as it were the brilliantether, light and heat, all life is contained in them."
At this moment the bottom of the projectile deviated somewhatfrom the lunar surface, in order to follow the slightlylengthened elliptical orbit. From this point, had the earthbeen at the full, Barbicane and his companions could haveseen it, but immersed in the sun's irradiation she wasquite invisible. Another spectacle attracted their attention,that of the southern part of the moon, brought by the glassesto within 450 yards. They did not again leave the scuttles,and noted every detail of this fantastical continent.
Mounts Doerful and Leibnitz formed two separate groups very nearthe south pole. The first group extended from the pole to theeighty-fourth parallel, on the eastern part of the orb; thesecond occupied the eastern border, extending from the
[email protected] oflatitude to the pole.
On their capriciously formed ridge appeared dazzling sheets, asmentioned by Pere Secchi. With more certainty than theillustrious Roman astronomer, Barbicane was enabled to recognizetheir nature.
"They are snow," he exclaimed.
"Snow?" repeated Nicholl.
"Yes, Nicholl, snow; the surface of which is deeply frozen.See how they reflect the luminous rays. Cooled lava would nevergive out such intense reflection. There must then be water,there must be air on the moon. As little as you please, but thefact can no longer be contested." No, it could not be. And ifever Barbicane should see the earth again, his notes will bearwitness to this great fact in his selenographic observations.
These mountains of Doerful and Leibnitz rose in the midst ofplains of a medium extent, which were bounded by an indefinitesuccession of circles and annular ramparts. These two chainsare the only ones met with in this region of circles.Comparatively but slightly marked, they throw up here and theresome sharp points, the highest summit of which attains analtitude of 24,600 feet.
But the projectile was high above all this landscape, and theprojections disappeared in the intense brilliancy of the disc.And to the eyes of the travelers there reappeared that originalaspect of the lunar landscapes, raw in tone, without gradationof colors, and without degrees of shadow, roughly black andwhite, from the want of diffusion of light.
But the sight of this desolate world did not fail to captivatethem by its very strangeness. They were moving over this regionas if they had been borne on the breath of some storm, watchingheights defile under their feet, piercing the cavities with theireyes, going down into the rifts, climbing the ramparts, soundingthese mysterious holes, and leveling all cracks. But no traceof 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 deadworld, where avalanches, rolling from the summits of the mountains,would disperse noiselessly at the bottom of the abyss, retainingthe motion, but wanting the sound. In any case it was the imageof death, without its being possible even to say that life had everexisted there.
Michel Ardan, however, thought he recognized a heap of ruins,to which he drew Barbicane's attention. It was about the 80thparallel, in
[email protected] longitude. This heap of stones, ratherregularly placed, represented a vast fortress, overlooking along rift, which in former days had served as a bed to therivers of prehistorical times. Not far from that, rose to aheight of 17,400 feet the annular mountain of Short, equal tothe Asiatic Caucasus. Michel Ardan, with his accustomed ardor,maintained "the evidences" of his fortress. Beneath it hediscerned the dismantled ramparts of a town; here the stillintact arch of a portico, there two or three columns lying undertheir base; farther on, a succession of arches which must havesupported the conduit of an aqueduct; in another part the sunkenpillars of a gigantic bridge, run into the thickest parts ofthe rift. He distinguished all this, but with so much imaginationin his glance, and through glasses so fantastical, that we mustmistrust his observation. But who could affirm, who would dareto say, that the amiable fellow did not really see that whichhis two companions would not see?
Moments were too precious to be sacrificed in idle discussion.The selenite city, whether imaginary or not, had alreadydisappeared afar off. The distance of the projectile from thelunar disc was on the increase, and the details of the soil werebeing lost in a confused jumble. The reliefs, the circles,the craters, and the plains alone remained, and still showedtheir 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 tothe _Mappa Selenographica_.
Newton is situated in exactly
[email protected] south latitude, and
[email protected] longitude. It forms an annular crater, the ramparts ofwhich, rising to a height of 21,300 feet, seemed to be impassable.
Barbicane made his companions observe that the height of thismountain above the surrounding plain was far from equaling thedepth of its crater. This enormous hole was beyond allmeasurement, and formed a gloomy abyss, the bottom of which thesun's rays could never reach. There, according to Humboldt,reigns utter darkness, which the light of the sun and the earthcannot break. Mythologists could well have made it the mouth of hell.
"Newton," said Barbicane, "is the most perfect type of theseannular mountains, of which the earth possesses no sample.They prove that the moon's formation, by means of cooling, isdue to violent causes; for while, under the pressure of internalfires the reliefs rise to considerable height, the depths withdrawfar below the lunar level."
"I do not dispute the fact," replied Michel Ardan.
Some minutes after passing Newton, the projectile directlyoverlooked the annular mountains of Moret. It skirted at somedistance the summits of Blancanus, and at about half-past sevenin the evening reached the circle of Clavius.
This circle, one of the most remarkable of the disc, is situatedin
[email protected] south latitude, and
[email protected] east longitude. Its height isestimated at 22,950 feet. The travelers, at a distance oftwenty-four miles (reduced to four by their glasses) couldadmire this vast crater in its entirety.
"Terrestrial volcanoes," said Barbicane, "are but mole-hillscompared with those of the moon. Measuring the old cratersformed by the first eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna, we find themlittle more than three miles in breadth. In France the circleof Cantal measures six miles across; at Ceyland the circle ofthe island is forty miles, which is considered the largest onthe globe. What are these diameters against that of Clavius,which we overlook at this moment?"
"What is its breadth?" asked Nicholl.
"It is 150 miles," replied Barbicane. "This circle is certainlythe most important on the moon, but many others measure 150,100, or 75 miles."
"Ah! my friends," exclaimed Michel, "can you picture toyourselves what this now peaceful orb of night must have beenwhen its craters, filled with thunderings, vomited at the sametime smoke and tongues of flame. What a wonderful spectaclethen, and now what decay! This moon is nothing more than a thincarcase of fireworks, whose squibs, rockets, serpents, and suns,after a superb brilliancy, have left but sadly broken cases.Who can say the cause, the reason, the motive force ofthese cataclysms?"
Barbican
e was not listening to Michel Ardan; he wascontemplating these ramparts of Clavius, formed by largemountains spread over several miles. At the bottom of theimmense cavity burrowed hundreds of small extinguished craters,riddling the soil like a colander, and overlooked by a peak15,000 feet high.
Around the plain appeared desolate. Nothing so arid as thesereliefs, nothing so sad as these ruins of mountains, and (if wemay so express ourselves) these fragments of peaks and mountainswhich strewed the soil. The satellite seemed to have burst atthis spot.
The projectile was still advancing, and this movement didnot subside. Circles, craters, and uprooted mountains succeededeach other incessantly. No more plains; no more seas. A neverending Switzerland and Norway. And lastly, in the canter ofthis region of crevasses, the most splendid mountain on thelunar disc, the dazzling Tycho, in which posterity will everpreserve the name of the illustrious Danish astronomer.
In observing the full moon in a cloudless sky no one has failedto remark this brilliant point of the southern hemisphere.Michel Ardan used every metaphor that his imagination couldsupply to designate it by. To him this Tycho was a focus oflight, a center of irradiation, a crater vomiting rays. It wasthe tire of a brilliant wheel, an _asteria_ enclosing the discwith its silver tentacles, an enormous eye filled with flames,a glory carved for Pluto's head, a star launched by theCreator's hand, and crushed against the face of the moon!
Tycho forms such a concentration of light that the inhabitantsof the earth can see it without glasses, though at a distanceof 240,000 miles! Imagine, then, its intensity to the eye ofobservers placed at a distance of only fifty miles! Seen throughthis pure ether, its brilliancy was so intolerable that Barbicaneand his friends were obliged to blacken their glasses with the gassmoke before they could bear the splendor. Then silent, scarcelyuttering an interjection of admiration, they gazed, they contemplated.All their feelings, all their impressions, were concentrated in thatlook, as under any violent emotion all life is concentrated at the heart.
Tycho belongs to the system of radiating mountains, likeAristarchus and Copernicus; but it is of all the most completeand decided, showing unquestionably the frightful volcanicaction to which the formation of the moon is due. Tycho issituated in
[email protected] south latitude, and
[email protected] east longitude. Its centeris occupied by a crater fifty miles broad. It assumes a slightlyelliptical form, and is surrounded by an enclosure of annularramparts, which on the east and west overlook the outer plain froma height of 15,000 feet. It is a group of Mont Blancs, placedround one common center and crowned by radiating beams.
What this incomparable mountain really is, with all theprojections converging toward it, and the interior excrescencesof its crater, photography itself could never represent.Indeed, it is during the full moon that Tycho is seen in allits splendor. Then all shadows disappear, the foreshorteningof perspective disappears, and all proofs become white-- adisagreeable fact: for this strange region would have beenmarvelous if reproduced with photographic exactness. It isbut a group of hollows, craters, circles, a network of crests;then, as far as the eye could see, a whole volcanic networkcast upon this encrusted soil. One can then understand thatthe bubbles of this central eruption have kept their first form.Crystallized by cooling, they have stereotyped that aspectwhich the moon formerly presented when under the Plutonian forces.
The distance which separated the travelers from the annularsummits of Tycho was not so great but that they could catchthe principal details. Even on the causeway forming thefortifications of Tycho, the mountains hanging on to theinterior and exterior sloping flanks rose in stories likegigantic terraces. They appeared to be higher by 300 or 400feet to the west than to the east. No system of terrestrialencampment could equal these natural fortifications. A townbuilt at the bottom of this circular cavity would have beenutterly inaccessible.
Inaccessible and wonderfully extended over this soil coveredwith picturesque projections! Indeed, nature had not left thebottom of this crater flat and empty. It possessed its ownpeculiar orography, a mountainous system, making it a worldin itself. The travelers could distinguish clearly cones,central hills, remarkable positions of the soil, naturallyplaced to receive the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of Selenite architecture.There was marked out the place for a temple, here the ground of aforum, on this spot the plan of a palace, in another the plateaufor a citadel; the whole overlooked by a central mountain of1,500 feet. A vast circle, in which ancient Rome could havebeen held in its entirety ten times over.
"Ah!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, enthusiastic at the sight; "whata grand town might be constructed within that ring of mountains!A quiet city, a peaceful refuge, beyond all human misery. How calmand isolated those misanthropes, those haters of humanity mightlive there, and all who have a distaste for social life!"
"All! It would be too small for them," replied Barbicane simply.