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.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE AND WHAT IS NO LONGER ALLOWED TO BE BELIEVED IN THE UNITED STATES.

The immediate effect of Barbicane’s proposition was that of bringing out all astronomical facts relative to the Queen of Night.  Everybody began to study her assiduously.  It seemed as if the moon had appeared on the horizon for the first time, and that no one had ever seen her in the sky before.  She became the fashion; she was the lion of the day, without appearing less modest on that account, and took her place amongst the “stars” without being any the prouder.  The newspapers revived old anecdotes in which this “Sun of the wolves” played a part; they recalled the influence which the ignorance of past ages had ascribed to her; they sang about her in every tone; a little more and they would have quoted her witty sayings; the whole of America was filled with selenomania.

The scientific journals treated the question which touched upon the enterprise of the Gun Club more specially; they published the letter from the Observatory of Cambridge, they commented upon it and approved of it without reserve.

In short, even the most ignorant Yankee was no longer allowed to be ignorant of a single fact relative to his satellite, nor, to the oldest women amongst them, to have any superstitions about her left.  Science flooded them; it penetrated into their eyes and ears; it was impossible to be an ass—­in astronomy.