Photography itself could never represent what this
incomparable mountain, with all its projections converging
to it and its interior excrescences, is really like.
In fact, it is during the full moon that Tycho is
seen in all its splendour. Then all shadows disappear,
the foreshortenings of perspective disappear, and
all proofs come out white—an unfortunate
circumstance, for this strange region would have been
curious to reproduce with photographic exactitude.
It is only an agglomeration of holes, craters, circles,
a vertiginous network of crests. It will be understood,
therefore, that the bubblings of this central eruption
have kept their first forms. Crystallised by cooling,
they have stereotyped the aspect which the moon formerly
presented under the influence of Plutonic forces.
The distance which separated the travellers from the
circular summits of Tycho was not so great that the
travellers could not survey its principal details.
Even upon the embankment which forms the ramparts of
Tycho, the mountains hanging to the interior and exterior
slopes rose in stories like gigantic terraces.
They appeared to be higher by 300 or 400 feet on the
west than on the east. No system of terrestrial
castrametation could equal these natural fortifications.
A town built at the bottom of this circular cavity
would have been utterly inaccessible.
Inaccessible and marvellously extended over this ground
of picturesque relief! Nature had not left the
bottom of this crater flat and empty. It possessed
a special orography, a mountain system which made it
a world apart. The travellers clearly distinguished
the cones, central hills, remarkable movements of
the ground, naturally disposed for the reception of
masterpieces of Selenite architecture. There was
the place for a temple, here for a forum, there the
foundations of a palace, there the plateau of a citadel,
the whole overlooked by a central mountain 1,500 feet
high—a vast circuit which would have held
ancient Rome ten times over.
“Ah!” exclaimed Michel Ardan, made enthusiastic
by the sight, “what grand towns could be built
in this circle of mountains! A tranquil city,
a peaceful refuge, away from all human cares!
How all misanthropes could live there, all haters
of humanity, all those disgusted with social life!”
“All! It would be too small for them!”
replied Barbicane simply.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GRAVE QUESTIONS.
In the meantime the projectile had passed the neighbourhood
of Tycho. Barbicane and his two friends then
observed, with the most scrupulous attention, those
brilliant radii which the celebrated mountain disperses
so curiously on every horizon.
