The Moon-Voyage

CHAPTER V.

THE RO­MANCE OF THE MOON.

A spec­ta­tor en­dowed with in­fi­nite pow­er of sight, and placed at the un­known cen­tre round which grav­itates the uni­verse, would have seen myr­iads of atoms fill­ing all space dur­ing the chaot­ic epoch of cre­ation. But by de­grees, as cen­turies went on, a change took place; a law of grav­ita­tion man­ifest­ed it­self which the wan­der­ing atoms obeyed; these atoms, com­bined chem­ical­ly ac­cord­ing to their affini­ties, formed them­selves in­to molecules, and made those neb­ulous mass­es with which the depths of the heav­ens are strewed.

These mass­es were im­me­di­ate­ly an­imat­ed by a move­ment of ro­ta­tion round their cen­tral point. This cen­tre, made of vague molecules, be­gan to turn on it­self whilst pro­gres­sive­ly con­dens­ing; then, fol­low­ing the im­mutable laws of me­chan­ics, in pro­por­tion as its vol­ume be­came di­min­ished by con­den­sa­tion its move­ment of ro­ta­tion was ac­cel­er­at­ed, and these two ef­fects per­sist­ing, there re­sult­ed a prin­ci­pal plan­et, the cen­tre of the neb­ulous mass.

By watch­ing at­ten­tive­ly the spec­ta­tor would then have seen oth­er molecules in the mass be­have like the cen­tral plan­et, and con­dense in the same man­ner by a move­ment of pro­gres­sive­ly-​ac­cel­er­at­ed ro­ta­tion, and grav­itate round it un­der the form of in­nu­mer­able stars. The neb­ulae, of which as­tronomers count near­ly 5,000 at present, were formed.

Amongst these 5,000 neb­ulae there is one that men have called the Milky Way, and which con­tains eigh­teen mil­lions of stars, each of which has be­come the cen­tre of a so­lar world.

If the spec­ta­tor had then spe­cial­ly ex­am­ined amongst these eigh­teen mil­lions of stars one of the most mod­est and least bril­liant, a star of the fourth or­der, the one that proud­ly named it­self the sun, all the phe­nom­ena to which the for­ma­tion of the uni­verse is due would have suc­ces­sive­ly tak­en place un­der his eyes.

In fact, he would have per­ceived this sun still in its gaseous state, and com­posed of mo­bile molecules; he would have per­ceived it turn­ing on its own ax­is to fin­ish its work of con­cen­tra­tion. This move­ment, faith­ful to the laws of me­chan­ics, would have been ac­cel­er­at­ed by the diminu­tion of vol­ume, and a time would have come when the cen­trifu­gal force would have over­pow­ered the cen­tripetal, which caus­es the molecules all to tend to­wards the cen­tre.

Then an­oth­er phe­nomenon would have passed be­fore the eyes of the spec­ta­tor, and the molecules sit­uat­ed in the plane of the equa­tor would have formed sev­er­al con­cen­tric rings like that of Sat­urn round the sun. In their turn these rings of cos­mic mat­ter, seized with a move­ment of ro­ta­tion round the cen­tral mass, would have been bro­ken up in­to sec­ondary neb­ulae--that is to say, in­to plan­ets.

If the spec­ta­tor had then con­cen­trat­ed all his at­ten­tion on these plan­ets he would have seen them be­have ex­act­ly like the sun and give birth to one or more cos­mic rings, ori­gin of those sec­ondary bod­ies which we call satel­lites.

Thus in go­ing up from the atom to the molecule, from the molecule to the neb­ulae, and from the neb­ulae to the prin­ci­pal star, from the prin­ci­pal star to the sun, from the sun to the plan­et, and from the plan­et to the satel­lite, we have the whole se­ries of trans­for­ma­tions un­der­gone by the ce­les­tial pow­ers from the first days of the uni­verse.

The sun seems lost amidst the im­men­si­ties of the stel­lar uni­verse, and yet it is re­lat­ed, by ac­tu­al the­ories of sci­ence, to the neb­ula of the Milky Way. Cen­tre of a world, and small as it ap­pears amidst the ethe­re­al re­gions, it is still enor­mous, for its size is 1,400,000 times that of the earth. Around it grav­itate eight plan­ets, struck off from its own mass in the first days of cre­ation. These are, in pro­ceed­ing from the near­est to the most dis­tant, Mer­cury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Sat­urn, Uranus, and Nep­tune. Be­tween Mars and Jupiter cir­cu­late reg­ular­ly oth­er small­er bod­ies, the wan­der­ing _débris_, per­haps, of a star bro­ken up in­to thou­sands of pieces, of which the tele­scope has dis­cov­ered eighty-​two at present. Some of these as­ter­oids are so small that they could be walked round in a sin­gle day by go­ing at a gym­nas­tic pace.

Of these at­ten­dant bod­ies which the sun main­tains in their el­lip­ti­cal or­bit by the great law of grav­ita­tion, some pos­sess satel­lites of their own. Uranus has eight, Sat­urn eight, Jupiter four, Nep­tune three per­haps, and the Earth one; this lat­ter, one of the least im­por­tant of the so­lar world, is called the Moon, and it is that one that the en­ter­pris­ing ge­nius of the Amer­icans means to con­quer.

The Queen of Night, from her rel­ative prox­im­ity and the spec­ta­cle rapid­ly re­newed of her dif­fer­ent phas­es, at first di­vid­ed the at­ten­tion of the in­hab­itants of the earth with the sun; but the sun tires the eye­sight, and the splen­dour of its light forces its ad­mir­ers to low­er their eyes.

The blonde Phoebe, more hu­mane, gra­cious­ly al­lows her­self to be seen in her mod­est grace; she is gen­tle to the eye, not am­bi­tious, and yet she some­times eclipses her broth­er the ra­di­ant Apol­lo, with­out ev­er be­ing eclipsed by him. The Ma­hommedans un­der­stood what grat­itude they owed to this faith­ful friend of the earth, and they ruled their months at 29-1/2 days on her rev­olu­tion.

The first peo­ple of the world ded­icat­ed par­tic­ular wor­ship to this chaste god­dess. The Egyp­tians called her Isis, the Phoeni­cians As­tarte, the Greeks Phoebe, daugh­ter of Jupiter and La­tona, and they ex­plained her eclipses by the mys­te­ri­ous vis­its of Di­ana and the hand­some Endymion. The mytho­log­ical leg­end re­lates that the Ne­mean li­on tra­versed the coun­try of the moon be­fore its ap­pari­tion up­on earth, and the po­et Age­sianax, quot­ed by Plutarch, cel­ebrat­ed in his sweet lines its soft eyes, charm­ing nose, and ad­mirable mouth, formed by the lu­mi­nous parts of the adorable Se­lene.

But though the an­cients un­der­stood the char­ac­ter, tem­per­ament, and, in a word, moral qual­ities of the moon from a mytho­log­ical point of view, the most learned amongst them re­mained very ig­no­rant of se­lenog­ra­phy.

Sev­er­al as­tronomers, how­ev­er, of an­cient times dis­cov­ered cer­tain par­tic­ulars now con­firmed by sci­ence. Though the Ar­ca­di­ans pre­tend­ed they had in­hab­it­ed the earth at an epoch be­fore the moon ex­ist­ed, though Sim­pli­cius be­lieved her im­mov­able and fas­tened to the crys­tal vault, though Tac­itus looked up­on her as a frag­ment bro­ken off from the so­lar or­bit, and Clearch, the dis­ci­ple of Aris­to­tle, made of her a pol­ished mir­ror up­on which were re­flect­ed the im­ages of the ocean--though, in short, oth­ers on­ly saw in her a mass of vapours ex­haled by the earth, or a globe half fire and half ice that turned on it­self, oth­er _sa­vants_, by means of wise ob­ser­va­tions and with­out op­ti­cal in­stru­ments, sus­pect­ed most of the laws that gov­ern the Queen of Night.

Thus Thales of Mile­tus, B.C. 460, gave out the opin­ion that the moon was light­ed up by the sun. Aristarchus of Samos gave the right ex­pla­na­tion of her phas­es. Cleomenus taught that she shone by re­flect­ed light. Berose the Chaldean dis­cov­ered that the du­ra­tion of her move­ment of ro­ta­tion was equal to that of her move­ment of rev­olu­tion, and he thus ex­plained why the moon al­ways pre­sent­ed the same side. Last­ly, Hip­parchus, 200 years be­fore the Chris­tian era, dis­cov­ered some in­equal­ities in the ap­par­ent move­ments of the earth's satel­lite.

These dif­fer­ent ob­ser­va­tions were af­ter­wards con­firmed, and oth­er as­tronomers prof­it­ed by them. Ptole­my in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry, and the Ara­bi­an Aboul We­fa in the tenth, com­plet­ed the re­marks of Hip­parchus on the in­equal­ities that the moon un­der­goes whilst fol­low­ing the un­du­lat­ing line of its or­bit un­der the ac­tion of the sun. Then Coper­ni­cus, in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, and Ty­cho Bra­he, in the six­teenth, com­plete­ly ex­posed the sys­tem of the world and the part that the moon plays amongst the ce­les­tial bod­ies.

At that epoch her move­ments were pret­ty well known, but very lit­tle of her phys­ical con­sti­tu­tion was known. It was then that Galileo ex­plained the phe­nom­ena of light pro­duced in cer­tain phas­es by the ex­is­tence of moun­tains, to which he gave an av­er­age height of 27,000 feet.

Af­ter him, Hevelius, an as­tronomer of Dantzig, low­ered the high­est al­ti­tudes to 15,000 feet; but his con­tem­po­rary, Ric­ci­oli, brought them up again to 21,000 feet.

Her­schel, at the end of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, armed with a pow­er­ful tele­scope, con­sid­er­ably re­duced the pre­ced­ing mea­sure­ments. He gave a height of 11,400 feet to the high­est moun­tains, and brought down the av­er­age of dif­fer­ent heights to lit­tle more than 2,400 feet. But Her­schel was mis­tak­en too, and the ob­ser­va­tions of Schroeter, Lou­ville, Hal­ley, Nas­myth, Bian­chi­ni, Pas­torff, Lohrman, Gruithuy­sen, and es­pe­cial­ly the pa­tient stud­ies of MM. Boeer and Moedler, were nec­es­sary to def­inite­ly re­solve the ques­tion. Thanks to these _sa­vants_, the el­eva­tion of the moun­tains of the moon is now per­fect­ly known. Boeer and Moedler mea­sured 1,905 dif­fer­ent el­eva­tions, of which six ex­ceed 15,000 feet and twen­ty-​two ex­ceed 14,400 feet. Their high­est sum­mit tow­ers to a height of 22,606 feet above the sur­face of the lu­nar disc.

At the same time the sur­vey of the moon was be­ing com­plet­ed; she ap­peared rid­dled with craters, and her es­sen­tial­ly vol­canic na­ture was af­firmed by each ob­ser­va­tion. From the ab­sence of re­frac­tion in the rays of the plan­ets oc­cult­ed by her it is con­clud­ed that she can have no at­mo­sphere. This ab­sence of air en­tails ab­sence of wa­ter; it there­fore be­came man­ifest that the Se­len­ites, in or­der to live un­der such con­di­tions, must have a spe­cial or­gan­isa­tion, and dif­fer sin­gu­lar­ly from the in­hab­itants of the earth.

Last­ly, thanks to new meth­ods, more per­fect­ed in­stru­ments searched the moon with­out in­ter­mis­sion, leav­ing not a point of her sur­face un­ex­plored, and yet her di­am­eter mea­sures 2,150 miles; her sur­face is one-​thir­teenth of the sur­face of the globe, and her vol­ume one-​forty-​ninth of the vol­ume of the ter­res­tri­al spheroid; but none of her se­crets could es­cape the as­tronomers' eyes, and these clever _sa­vants_ car­ried their won­der­ful ob­ser­va­tions still fur­ther.

Thus they re­marked that when the moon was at her full the disc ap­peared in cer­tain places striped with white lines, and dur­ing her phas­es striped with black lines. By pros­ecut­ing the study of these with greater pre­ci­sion they suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing out the ex­act na­ture of these lines. They are long and nar­row fur­rows sunk be­tween par­al­lel ridges, bor­der­ing gen­er­al­ly up­on the edges of the craters; their length var­ied from ten to one hun­dred miles, and their width was about 1,600 yards. As­tronomers called them fur­rows, and that was all they could do; they could not as­cer­tain whether they were the dried-​up beds of an­cient rivers or not. The Amer­icans hope, some day or oth­er, to de­ter­mine this ge­olog­ical ques­tion. They al­so un­der­take to re­con­noitre the se­ries of par­al­lel ram­parts dis­cov­ered on the sur­face of the moon by Gruithuy­sen, a learned pro­fes­sor of Mu­nich, who con­sid­ered them to be a sys­tem of el­evat­ed for­ti­fi­ca­tions raised by Se­len­ite en­gi­neers. These two still ob­scure points, and doubt­less many oth­ers, can on­ly be def­inite­ly set­tled by di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the moon.

As to the in­ten­si­ty of her light there is noth­ing more to be learnt; it is 300,000 times weak­er than that of the sun, and its heat has no ap­pre­cia­ble ac­tion up­on ther­mome­ters; as to the phe­nomenon known as the “ashy light,” it is nat­ural­ly ex­plained by the ef­fect of the sun's rays trans­mit­ted from the earth to the moon, and which seem to com­plete the lu­nar disc when it presents a cres­cent form dur­ing its first and last phas­es.

Such was the state of knowl­edge ac­quired re­spect­ing the earth's satel­lite which the Gun Club un­der­took to per­fect un­der all its as­pects, cos­mo­graph­ical, ge­ograph­ical, ge­olog­ical, po­lit­ical, and moral.