haisman] THE MOOS STORY 363 



mount ains that cast them. Can you think how this could be done ? 

 You will easily recognize the broad plains. The early observers 

 of the moon, in the days when telescopes were small and weak, 

 thought that these plains must be seas, but we know better now- 

 a-days. There is no water on the moon, you remember. Strange 

 as it may seem to you, every mountain range and crater, even- 

 plain and valley has a name! For the geography of that side of 

 the moon which we can see was known and mapped long before 

 the surface of our earth was studied. Why was this? Don't 

 you see how easy it was for the early moon geographers to map 

 the surface which they could see so well? To map the surface of 

 the earth requires years and years of travel, and the early inhabi- 

 tants of our world had not the great steamships, railroads, auto- 

 mobiles, and aeroplanes which we have to carry us rapidly over 

 long distances. They knew very little of the surface of the earth 

 on which they lived, because they had seen very little of it. But 

 all of them had seen all of the moon that there was to see from 

 where they lived, and without going any farther than, perhaps, 

 their front yards ! 



Mountains and volcanic craters on the moon tell the history 

 of terrific disturbances within the hot interior ages and ages ago, 

 far more severe than we can imagine, disturbances which sent 

 floods of boiling lava and showers of rock fragments and ashes out 

 of the craters of multitudes of huge volcanoes, while earthquakes 

 rocked the globe and raised the ranges of jagged mountains which 

 traverse the face of the moon. 



Now the moon is quiet, peaceful, cold, unchanging; clothed 

 with no vegetation, and supporting on its rocky surface no traces 

 of animal life. Year after year it silently rolls on through the dark 

 and silent vastness of space, its chief duty seeming to be to give 

 to us mortals the most beautiful silvery light which we know. 

 The ancient alchemists sought to turn silver into gold, but the 

 moon, well knowing that we have the gold of sunlight in plenty 

 during the day, captures the gold of the sun, after it has set, and 

 transforms it into silver for our delight during the night. 



You know that our atmosphere serves as a blanket, both to 

 prevent the escape of heat from the earth, and also to shield us 

 from too much heat from the sun. On the moon there is no atmos- 

 phere — that is, no air — and so you can imagine how piercingly 

 cold it must be when the sun is set, and on the other hand how 

 scorchingly hot it is underneath its direct rays! 



