Pluto is a circular mountain, situated in north lat. 51 deg. and east long. 9 deg..  Its circle is fifty miles long and thirty wide.  Barbicane regretted not passing perpendicularly over this vast opening.  There was an abyss to see, perhaps some mysterious phenomenon to become acquainted with.  But the course of the projectile could not be guided.  There was nothing to do but submit.  A balloon could not be guided, much less a projectile when you are inside.

About 5 a.m. the northern limit of the Sea of Rains was at last passed.  Mounts La Condamine and Fontenelle remained, the one on the left, the other on the right.  That part of the disc, starting from the 60th degree, became absolutely mountainous.  The telescopes brought it to within one league, an inferior distance to that between the summit of Mont Blanc and the sea level.  All this region was bristling with peaks and amphitheatres.  Mount Philolaus rose about the 70th degree to a height of 3,700 metres, opening an elliptical crater sixteen leagues long and four wide.

Then the disc, seen from that distance, presented an exceedingly strange aspect.  The landscapes were very different to earthly ones, and also very inferior.

The moon having no atmosphere, this absence of vaporous covering had consequences already pointed out.  There is no twilight on its surface, night following day and day following night, with the suddenness of a lamp extinguished or lighted in profound darkness.  There is no transition from cold to heat:  the temperature falls in one instant from boiling water heat to the cold of space.

Another consequence of this absence of air is the following:—­Absolute darkness reigns where the sun’s rays do not penetrate.  What is called diffused light upon the earth, the luminous matter that the air holds in suspension, which creates twilights and dawns, which produces shadows, penumbrae, and all the magic of the chiaro-oscuro, does not exist upon the moon.  Hence the harshness of contrasts that only admit two colours, black and white.  If a Selenite shades his eyes from the solar rays the sky appears absolutely dark, and the stars shine as in the darkest nights.

The impression produced on Barbicane and his two friends by this strange state of things may well be imagined.  They did not know how to use their eyes.  They could no longer seize the respective distances in perspective.  A lunar landscape, which does not soften the phenomenon of the chiaro-oscuro, could not be painted by a landscape-painter of the earth.  It would be nothing but blots of ink upon white paper.