THE MOON 395 



sons to occur on the earth as they do on the moon and 

 that the snows from one winter to another would keep 

 on accumulating until Cuba should be crowded with all 

 the snow it would hold, what a wonderful mountain range 

 would it not make "in the midst of a featureless plain" 

 and how like to the lunar Apennines ! As for the Val- 

 ley of the same name, that is merely the vacant trough of 

 the sound that originally separated the island from the 

 mainland. 



There would, however, be a great difference between 

 the height of the Cuban range of snow mountains and 

 the 30,000-foot Apennines, inasmuch as the surface 

 gravity here is so much greater. The latter mountains 

 are at their maximum possible height, for, however much 

 they may be snowed upon, they cannot grow taller, for 

 the simple reason that their base becomes liquefied 

 and runs out pari passu. Now, snow is snow wherever 

 it may be, and if piled on the island of Cuba would, other 

 things equal, act as it does on the moon. Other things are 

 not equal, however, particularly in this matter of the 

 surface gravity, as just suggested ; consequently our Cu- 

 ban range could, automatically, never exceed a mile in 

 altitude. 



WHITE BAYS, BILLS, etc. Imagine, if you please, an 

 immense marsh 500 miles or so in diameter irregularly 

 cut up into all sorts of small patches of land separated 

 from each other by narrow strips of water of varying 

 depths, with here and there a larger expanse of land bear- 

 ing small ponds or lakes; and picture to your mind's eye 

 how such a scene would be transformed by such a process 

 of glaciation as I have described. In such a case, soon 

 after nightfall, every natural ledge of land, and every 

 ledge that by the sun's evaporation had become uncov- 

 ered, would again become decked with fresh snow, the 

 depth varying, of course, according to the controlling 

 circumstances. Indeed, twenty-four hours after the sun 

 had disappeared below the horizon, and perhaps earlier, 

 every square inch of the lunar landscape, every nook and 

 cranny, including even the beds of all the streams, lakes 



