THE MOON AND LUNAR PHENOMENA. 85 



The ring-mountain, Eratosthenes, is one of the most remarkable of its class, termed by 

 Madler "the mighty key-stone of the Apennines," standing at the northern extremity of 

 the range. The interior plain has a diameter of thirty-seven miles. It is depressed 3000 

 feet below the level of the outer surface ; and as the bounding wall rises about the same 

 height above it, the entire interior descent is 6000 feet. The enclosed plain is not feature 

 less. From the centre a huge mountain shoots up, at least 10,000 feet above the rim of 

 the encircling rampart, so that its summit and sides are brightly lighted by the sunbeams 

 long before its base, or any portion of the surrounding plain, has received a ray. Still 

 more colossal are the dimensions of Tycho, an object with a radiating aspect, on the 

 southern part of the lunar disk, plainly discernible by the naked eye at full moon. The 

 enclosed area, which is nearly circular, has a diameter of 54 miles ; and from its level, the 

 enclosing ridge rises 17,000 feet with the steepness of a wall. 



In order to afford an idea of lunar scenery, Mr Crampton has drawn with happy boldness 

 the following inferential picture of a tract marked in the south-eastern portion of our map : 

 " It is the Mare Imbrium, or Sea of Showers, as it is called, though no water is to be found, 

 and no shower ever cools or moistens its barren surface. It is about 700 miles in extent 

 every way. Let us cast our eyes around, and what do we see? a boundless plain or desert, 

 stretching away as far as the eye can reach on every side, save in one or two points where 

 a chain of lofty mountains can be perceived, whose brilliant pointed summits, glittering in 

 the sunbeams, just appear upon the distant horizon. The light that glares upon the plain 

 is intense, and the heat of a tropical fierceness, for no cloud shelters us. By that light we 

 may perceive, scattered over the plain, an infinite number of circular pits, of different sizes 

 and depths, varying from a few yards to some hundreds in diameter, and sunk in the body 

 of the planet : some of them but a few feet, and others to an unknown and immeasurable 

 depth. Above, the sky is black, out of which the sun gleams like a red-hot ball, and the 

 stars sparkle like diamonds for no atmosphere such as ours exists, to give, by its refrac 

 tive and reflective powers, the delicious blue to its heavens, and the softened shade to the 

 landscape. The lights and shades are indented upon its features deep and dark, or 

 intensely bright ; no softening away in the distance, no gentle and beautiful perspective, no 

 lovely twilight morning or evening stealing over or away from the scene. All the 

 shadows are abrupt, sudden all the oxitlines sharp, clear ; appearing startlingly near, even 

 when really distant. No sound follows our footfall, or is ever heard in that silent place 

 for there is no atmosphere to conduct it ; no fresh breeze blows on its mountain tops, sighs 

 through its burning deserts, rustles through the brilliant green of forests, or waves over 

 meadows ; the silence of death broods over its arid wastes and rocky shores, against which 

 no tides or billows break." 



How delusive the conceptions excited by the aspect of our satellite silently prosecuting 

 her nightly walk through the heavens ! The silvery splendour cast over the face of 

 terrestrial nature, the moonlight painting the dark be som of the waters with radiance, and 

 lustrously streaming into the sombre glades of the forest, together with the resplendent 

 countenance of the planet, satisfying to the imaginative Easterns, as an image of feminine 

 loveliness these suggest, through the eye to the mind, conceptions of graceful and 

 soothing scenery upon the surface of the lunar world. But the illusion vanishes when 

 we take the telescope. A drear reality is unfolded, at least so it seems to us, from which 

 the beautiful is absent, and the terrible appears. We must go to the wild and frightful 

 precipices of the Andean mountains, or to the charred and sterile declivities of Hecla, to 

 find analagous examples of stern scenery, and with these specimens we must intermingle 

 the naked and arid wastes of the great African desert. Yet, even from such sites, Life, 

 brute and sentient Life, is not banished in the case of our globe. The Arab scours the 

 wilderness, through a land where no water is. The condor and the eagle scream in the 



