At six in the evening the projectile1 passed the south pole at less than forty miles off, a distance equal to that already reached at the north pole. The elliptical curve was being rigidly2 carried out.
At this moment the travelers once more entered the blessed rays of the sun. They saw once more those stars which move slowly from east to west. The radiant orb3 was saluted4 by a triple hurrah5. With its light it also sent heat, which soon pierced the metal walls. The glass resumed its accustomed appearance. The layers of ice melted as if by enchantment6; and immediately, for economy’s sake, the gas was put out, the air apparatus7 alone consuming its usual quantity.
“Ah!” said Nicholl, “these rays of heat are good. With what impatience8 must the Selenites wait the reappearance of the orb of day.”
“Yes,” replied Michel Ardan, “imbibing as it were the brilliant ether, light and heat, all life is contained in them.”
At this moment the bottom of the projectile deviated9 somewhat from the lunar surface, in order to follow the slightly lengthened10 elliptical orbit. From this point, had the earth been at the full, Barbicane and his companions could have seen it, but immersed in the sun’s irradiation she was quite invisible. Another spectacle attracted their attention, that of the southern part of the moon, brought by the glasses to within 450 yards. They did not again leave the scuttles11, and noted12 every detail of this fantastical continent.
Mounts Doerful and Leibnitz formed two separate groups very near the south pole. The first group extended from the pole to the eighty-fourth parallel, on the eastern part of the orb; the second occupied the eastern border, extending from the 65° of latitude13 to the pole.
On their capriciously formed ridge14 appeared dazzling sheets, as mentioned by Pere Secchi. With more certainty than the illustrious Roman astronomer15, Barbicane was enabled to recognize their nature.
“They are snow,” he exclaimed.
“Snow?” repeated Nicholl.
“Yes, Nicholl, snow; the surface of which is deeply frozen. See how they reflect the luminous16 rays. Cooled lava17 would never give out such intense reflection. There must then be water, there must be air on the moon. As little as you please, but the fact can no longer be contested.” No, it could not be. And if ever Barbicane should see the earth again, his notes will bear witness to this great fact in his selenographic observations.
These mountains of Doerful and Leibnitz rose in the midst of plains of a medium extent, which were bounded by an indefinite succession of circles and annular18 ramparts. These two chains are the only ones met with in this region of circles. Comparatively but slightly marked, they throw up here and there some sharp points, the highest summit of which attains19 an altitude of 24,600 feet.
But the projectile was high above all this landscape, and the projections20 disappeared in the intense brilliancy of the disc. And to the eyes of the travelers there reappeared that original aspect of the lunar landscapes, raw in tone, without gradation of colors, and without degrees of shadow, roughly black and white, from the want of diffusion21 of light.
But the sight of this desolate22 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 defile23 under their feet, piercing the cavities with their eyes, going down into the rifts25, 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 avalanches26, rolling from the summits of the mountains, would disperse27 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° longitude28. This heap of stones, rather regularly placed, represented a vast fortress29, overlooking a long rift24, 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 ardor30, maintained “the evidences” of his fortress. Beneath it he discerned the dismantled31 ramparts of a town; here the still intact arch of a portico32, 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 distinguished33 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 amiable34 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 jumble35. The reliefs, the circles, the craters36, 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 situated38 in exactly 77° south latitude, and 16° east longitude. It forms an annular crater37, 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, reigns39 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 remarkable40 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.
“Terrestrial volcanoes,” said Barbicane, “are but mole-hills compared with those of the moon. Measuring the old craters formed by the first eruptions42 of Vesuvius and Etna, we find them little more than three miles in breadth. In France the circle of Cantal measures six miles across; at Ceyland the circle of the island is forty miles, which is considered the largest on the 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 certainly the most important on the moon, but many others measure 150, 100, or 75 miles.”
“Ah! my friends,” exclaimed Michel, “can you picture to yourselves what this now peaceful orb of night must have been when its craters, filled with thunderings, vomited43 at the same time smoke and tongues of flame. What a wonderful spectacle then, and now what decay! This moon is nothing more than a thin carcase 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 motive44 force of these cataclysms45?”
Barbicane was not listening to Michel Ardan; he was contemplating46 these ramparts of Clavius, formed by large mountains spread over several miles. At the bottom of the immense cavity burrowed47 hundreds of small extinguished craters, riddling48 the soil like a colander49, and overlooked by a peak 15,000 feet high.
Around the plain appeared desolate. Nothing so arid50 as these reliefs, nothing so sad as these ruins of mountains, and (if we may so express ourselves) these fragments of peaks and mountains which strewed51 the soil. The satellite seemed to have burst at this spot.
The projectile was still advancing, and this movement did not subside52. Circles, craters, and uprooted53 mountains succeeded each other incessantly54. No more plains; no more seas. A never ending Switzerland and Norway. And lastly, in the canter of this region of crevasses55, the most splendid mountain on the lunar disc, the dazzling Tycho, in which posterity56 will ever preserve the name of the illustrious Danish astronomer.
In observing the full moon in a cloudless sky no one has failed to remark this brilliant point of the southern hemisphere. Michel Ardan used every metaphor57 that his imagination could supply to designate it by. To him this Tycho was a focus of light, a center of irradiation, a crater vomiting58 rays. It was the tire of a brilliant wheel, an asteria enclosing the disc with its silver tentacles59, an enormous eye filled with flames, a glory carved for Pluto’s head, a star launched by the Creator’s hand, and crushed against the face of the moon!
Tycho forms such a concentration of light that the inhabitants of the earth can see it without glasses, though at a distance of 240,000 miles! Imagine, then, its intensity60 to the eye of observers placed at a distance of only fifty miles! Seen through this pure ether, its brilliancy was so intolerable that Barbicane and his friends were obliged to blacken their glasses with the gas smoke before they could bear the splendor61. Then silent, scarcely uttering an interjection of admiration62, they gazed, they contemplated63. All their feelings, all their impressions, were concentrated in that look, as under any violent emotion all life is concentrated at the heart.
Tycho belongs to the system of radiating mountains, like Aristarchus and Copernicus; but it is of all the most complete and decided64, showing unquestionably the frightful65 volcanic66 action to which the formation of the moon is due. Tycho is situated in 43° south latitude, and 12° east longitude. Its center is occupied by a crater fifty miles broad. It assumes a slightly elliptical form, and is surrounded by an enclosure of annular ramparts, which on the east and west overlook the outer plain from a height of 15,000 feet. It is a group of Mont Blancs, placed round one common center and crowned by radiating beams.
What this incomparable mountain really is, with all the projections converging67 toward it, and the interior excrescences of its crater, photography itself could never represent. Indeed, it is during the full moon that Tycho is seen in all its splendor. Then all shadows disappear, the foreshortening of perspective disappears, and all proofs become white — a disagreeable fact: for this strange region would have been marvelous if reproduced with photographic exactness. It is but a group of hollows, craters, circles, a network of crests68; then, as far as the eye could see, a whole volcanic network cast upon this encrusted soil. One can then understand that the bubbles of this central eruption41 have kept their first form. Crystallized by cooling, they have stereotyped69 that aspect which the moon formerly70 presented when under the Plutonian forces.
The distance which separated the travelers from the annular summits of Tycho was not so great but that they could catch the principal details. Even on the causeway forming the fortifications of Tycho, the mountains hanging on to the interior and exterior71 sloping flanks rose in stories like gigantic terraces. They appeared to be higher by 300 or 400 feet to the west than to the east. No system of terrestrial encampment could equal these natural fortifications. A town built at the bottom of this circular cavity would have been utterly72 inaccessible73.
Inaccessible and wonderfully extended over this soil covered with picturesque74 projections! Indeed, nature had not left the bottom of this crater flat and empty. It possessed75 its own peculiar76 orography, a mountainous system, making it a world in itself. The travelers could distinguish clearly cones77, central hills, remarkable positions of the soil, naturally placed to receive the chefs-d’oeuvre of Selenite architecture. There was marked out the place for a temple, here the ground of a forum78, on this spot the plan of a palace, in another the plateau for a citadel79; the whole overlooked by a central mountain of 1,500 feet. A vast circle, in which ancient Rome could have been held in its entirety ten times over.
“Ah!” exclaimed Michel Ardan, enthusiastic at the sight; “what a grand town might be constructed within that ring of mountains! A quiet city, a peaceful refuge, beyond all human misery80. How calm and isolated81 those misanthropes82, those haters of humanity might live there, and all who have a distaste for social life!”
“All! It would be too small for them,” replied Barbicane simply.
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1
projectile
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| n.投射物，发射体；adj.向前开进的；推进的；抛掷的 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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orb
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| n.太阳；星球；v.弄圆；成球形 | |
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saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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hurrah
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| int.好哇，万岁，乌拉 | |
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enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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7
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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9
deviated
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| v.偏离，越轨( deviate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lengthened
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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11
scuttles
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| n.天窗( scuttle的名词复数 )v.使船沉没( scuttle的第三人称单数 )；快跑，急走 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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astronomer
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| n.天文学家 | |
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16
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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lava
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| n.熔岩，火山岩 | |
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annular
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| adj.环状的 | |
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19
attains
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的第三人称单数 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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projections
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| 预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物 | |
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diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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defile
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| v.弄污，弄脏；n.(山间)小道 | |
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rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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rifts
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| n.裂缝( rift的名词复数 )；裂隙；分裂；不和 | |
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avalanches
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| n.雪崩( avalanche的名词复数 ) | |
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27
disperse
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| vi.使分散；使消失；vt.分散；驱散 | |
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longitude
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| n.经线，经度 | |
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fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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dismantled
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| 拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消 | |
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portico
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| n.柱廊，门廊 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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craters
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| n.火山口( crater的名词复数 )；弹坑等 | |
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crater
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| n.火山口，弹坑 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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reigns
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| n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 )；君主统治时期；任期；当政期 | |
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40
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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eruption
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| n.火山爆发；（战争等）爆发；（疾病等）发作 | |
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eruptions
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| n.喷发，爆发( eruption的名词复数 ) | |
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43
vomited
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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cataclysms
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| n.（突然降临的）大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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46
contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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47
burrowed
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| v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的过去式和过去分词 )；翻寻 | |
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48
riddling
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| adj.谜一样的，解谜的n.筛选 | |
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49
colander
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| n.滤器，漏勺 | |
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50
arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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51
strewed
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| v.撒在…上( strew的过去式和过去分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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52
subside
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| vi.平静，平息；下沉，塌陷，沉降 | |
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53
uprooted
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| v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的过去式和过去分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园 | |
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54
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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crevasses
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| n.破口，崩溃处，裂缝( crevasse的名词复数 ) | |
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56
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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57
metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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58
vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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59
tentacles
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| n.触手( tentacle的名词复数 )；触角；触须；触毛 | |
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60
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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61
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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66
volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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67
converging
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| adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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68
crests
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| v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的第三人称单数 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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69
stereotyped
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| adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的 | |
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70
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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71
exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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72
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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73
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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75
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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77
cones
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| n.（人眼）圆锥细胞；圆锥体( cone的名词复数 )；球果；圆锥形东西；（盛冰淇淋的）锥形蛋卷筒 | |
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78
forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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79
citadel
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| n.城堡；堡垒；避难所 | |
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80
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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81
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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82
misanthropes
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| n.厌恶人类者( misanthrope的名词复数 ) | |
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