After these savants may be cited the selenographic
reliefs of the German astronomer Julius Schmidt, the
topographical works of Father Secchi, the magnificent
sheets of the English amateur, Waren de la Rue, and
lastly a map on orthographical projection of Messrs.
Lecouturier and Chapuis, a fine model set up in 1860,
of very correct design and clear outlines.
Such is the nomenclature of the different maps relating
to the lunar world. Barbicane possessed two,
that of Messrs. Boeer and Moedler and that of Messrs.
Chapuis and Lecouturier. They were to make his
work of observer easier.
They had excellent marine glasses specially constructed
for this journey. They magnified objects a hundred
times; they would therefore have reduced the distance
between the earth and the moon to less than 1,000
leagues. But then at a distance which towards
3 a.m. did not exceed a hundred miles, and in a medium
which no atmosphere obstructed, these instruments
brought the lunar level to less than fifteen hundred
metres.
IMAGINATION AND REALITY.
“Have you ever seen the moon?” a professor
asked one of his pupils ironically.
“No, sir,” answered the pupil more ironically
still, “but I have heard it spoken of.”
In one sense the jocose answer of the pupil might
have been made by the immense majority of sublunary
beings. How many people there are who have heard
the moon spoken of and have never seen it—at
least through a telescope! How many even have
never examined the map of their satellite!
Looking at a comprehensive selenographic map, one
peculiarity strikes us at once. In contrast to
the geographical arrangements of the earth and Mars,
the continents occupy the more southern hemisphere
of the lunar globe. These continents have not
such clear and regular boundary-lines as those of
South America, Africa, and the Indian Peninsula.
Their angular, capricious, and deeply-indented coasts
are rich in gulfs and peninsulas. They recall
the confusion in the islands of the Sound, where the
earth is excessively cut up. If navigation has
ever existed upon the surface of the moon it must
have been exceedingly difficult and dangerous, and
the Selenite mariners and hydrographers were greatly
to be pitied, the former when they came upon these
perilous coasts, the latter when they were marine
surveying on the stormy banks.
It may also be noticed that upon the lunar spheroid
the South Pole is much more continental than the North
Pole. On the latter there is only a slight strip
of land capping it, separated from the other continents
by vast seas. (When the word “seas” is
used the vast plains probably covered by the sea formerly
must be understood.) On the south the land covers
nearly the whole hemisphere. It is, therefore,
possible that the Selenites have already planted their
flag on one of their poles, whilst Franklin, Ross,
Kane, Dumont d’Urville, and Lambert have been
unable to reach this unknown point on the terrestrial
globe.
