A TRIP TO THE MOON. 279 



stronger than that which we receive from the moon. We 

 recognize our own light, lent to our friend, in the faint, 

 grayish glimmer of that portion of the moon which be- 

 fore 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 conti- 

 nents 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 may quite 

 as correctly speak of the first or last quarter of the earth, 

 of new earth and full earth. The whole heaven moves be- 

 fore him once in twenty-nine 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 immova- 

 ble. 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 his 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, 

 and different at different seasons. The man in the moon 

 has thus not only his watch and his almanac daily be- 

 fore 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 full- 

 ness and accuracy. Long before Columbus discovered 



