|
“Have you ever seen the moon?” asked a professor,
ironically, of one of his pupils.
“No, sir!” replied the pupil, still more ironically,
“but I must say I have heard it spoken of.”
In one sense, the pupil’s witty answer might be given by a large
majority of sublunary beings. How many people have heard speak of the moon who
have never seen it— at least through a glass or a telescope! How many
have never examined the map of their satellite!
In looking at a selenographic map, one peculiarity strikes us. Contrary
to the arrangement followed for that of the Earth and Mars, the continents
occupy more particularly the southern hemisphere of the lunar globe. These
continents do not show such decided, clear, and regular boundary lines as South
America, Africa, and the Indian peninsula. Their angular, capricious, and
deeply indented coasts are rich in gulfs and peninsulas. They remind one of the
confusion in the islands of the Sound, where the land is excessively indented. If
navigation ever existed on the surface of the moon, it must have been
wonderfully difficult and dangerous; and we may well pity the Selenite sailors
and hydrographers; the former, when they came upon these perilous coasts, the
latter when they took the soundings of its stormy banks.
We may also notice that, on the lunar sphere, the south pole is much
more continental than the north pole. On the latter, there is but one slight
strip of land separated from other continents by vast seas. Toward the south,
continents clothe almost the whole of the hemisphere. It is even possible that
the Selenites have already planted the flag on one of their poles, while
Franklin, Ross, Kane, Dumont, d’Urville, and Lambert have never yet been
able to attain that unknown point of the terrestrial globe.
As to islands, they are numerous on the surface of the moon. Nearly all
oblong or circular, and as if traced with the compass, they seem to form one
vast archipelago, equal to that charming group lying between Greece and Asia
Minor, and which mythology in ancient times adorned with most graceful legends.
Involuntarily the names of Naxos, Tenedos, and Carpathos, rise before the mind,
and we seek vainly for Ulysses’ vessel or the “clipper” of
the Argonauts. So at least it was in Michel Ardan’s eyes. To him it was a
Grecian archipelago that he saw on the map. To the eyes of his matter-of-fact
companions, the aspect of these coasts recalled rather the parceled-out land of
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and where the Frenchman discovered traces of the
heroes of fable, these Americans were marking the most favorable points for the
establishment of stores in the interests of lunar commerce and industry.
After wandering over these vast continents, the eye is attracted by the
still greater seas. Not only their formation, but their situation and aspect
remind one of the terrestrial oceans; but again, as on earth, these seas occupy
the greater portion of the globe. But in point of fact, these are not liquid
spaces, but plains, the nature of which the travelers hoped soon to determine.
Astronomers, we must allow, have graced these pretended seas with at least odd
names, which science has respected up to the present time. Michel Ardan was
right when he compared this map to a “Tendre card,” got up by a
Scudary or a Cyrano de Bergerac. “Only,” said he, “it is no
longer the sentimental card of the seventeenth century, it is the card of life,
very neatly divided into two parts, one feminine, the other masculine; the
right hemisphere for woman, the left for man.”
In speaking thus, Michel made his prosaic companions shrug their
shoulders. Barbicane and Nicholl looked upon the lunar map from a very
different point of view to that of their fantastic friend. Nevertheless, their
fantastic friend was a little in the right. Judge for yourselves.
In the left hemisphere stretches the “Sea of Clouds,” where
human reason is so often shipwrecked. Not far off lies the “Sea of
Rains,” fed by all the fever of existence. Near this is the “Sea of
Storms,” where man is ever fighting against his passions, which too often
gain the victory. Then, worn out by deceit, treasons, infidelity, and the whole
body of terrestrial misery, what does he find at the end of his career? that
vast “Sea of Humors,” barely softened by some drops of the waters
from the “Gulf of Dew!” Clouds, rain, storms, and humors—
does the life of man contain aught but these? and is it not summed up in these
four words?
The right hemisphere, “dedicated to the ladies,” encloses
smaller seas, whose significant names contain every incident of a feminine
existence. There is the “Sea of Serenity,” over which the young
girl bends; “The Lake of Dreams,” reflecting a joyous future;
“The Sea of Nectar,” with its waves of tenderness and breezes of
love; “The Sea of Fruitfulness;” “The Sea of Crises;”
then the “Sea of Vapors,” whose dimensions are perhaps a little too
confined; and lastly, that vast “Sea of Tranquillity,” in which
every false passion, every useless dream, every unsatisfied desire is at length
absorbed, and whose waves emerge peacefully into the “Lake of
Death!”
What a strange succession of names! What a singular division of the
moon’s two hemispheres, joined to one another like man and woman, and
forming that sphere of life carried into space! And was not the fantastic
Michel right in thus interpreting the fancies of the ancient astronomers? But
while his imagination thus roved over “the seas,” his grave
companions were considering things more geographically. They were learning this
new world by heart. They were measuring angles and diameters.
|