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Chapter XI. Fancy and Reality
“Have you ever seen the moon?” asked a professor,
ironically, of one of his pupils.
“No, sir!” replied the pupil, still more ironically,
“but I must say I have heard it spoken of.”
In one sense, the pupil’s witty answer might be given by a
large majority of sublunary beings. How many people have heard
speak of the moon who have never seen it— at least through a
glass or a telescope! How many have never examined the map of their
satellite!
In looking at a selenographic map, one peculiarity strikes us.
Contrary to the arrangement followed for that of the Earth and
Mars, the continents occupy more particularly the southern
hemisphere of the lunar globe. These continents do not show such
decided, clear, and regular boundary lines as South America,
Africa, and the Indian peninsula. Their angular, capricious, and
deeply indented coasts are rich in gulfs and peninsulas. They
remind one of the confusion in the islands of the Sound, where the
land is excessively indented. If navigation ever existed on the
surface of the moon, it must have been wonderfully difficult and
dangerous; and we may well pity the Selenite sailors and
hydrographers; the former, when they came upon these perilous
coasts, the latter when they took the soundings of its stormy
banks.
We may also notice that, on the lunar sphere, the south pole is
much more continental than the north pole. On the latter, there is
but one slight strip of land separated from other continents by
vast seas. Toward the south, continents clothe almost the whole of
the hemisphere. It is even possible that the Selenites have already
planted the flag on one of their poles, while Franklin, Ross, Kane,
Dumont, d’Urville, and Lambert have never yet been able to
attain that unknown point of the terrestrial globe.
As to islands, they are numerous on the surface of the moon.
Nearly all oblong or circular, and as if traced with the compass,
they seem to form one vast archipelago, equal to that charming
group lying between Greece and Asia Minor, and which mythology in
ancient times adorned with most graceful legends. Involuntarily the
names of Naxos, Tenedos, and Carpathos, rise before the mind, and
we seek vainly for Ulysses’ vessel or the
“clipper” of the Argonauts. So at least it was in
Michel Ardan’s eyes. To him it was a Grecian archipelago that
he saw on the map. To the eyes of his matter-of-fact companions,
the aspect of these coasts recalled rather the parceled-out land of
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and where the Frenchman discovered
traces of the heroes of fable, these Americans were marking the
most favorable points for the establishment of stores in the
interests of lunar commerce and industry.
After wandering over these vast continents, the eye is attracted
by the still greater seas. Not only their formation, but their
situation and aspect remind one of the terrestrial oceans; but
again, as on earth, these seas occupy the greater portion of the
globe. But in point of fact, these are not liquid spaces, but
plains, the nature of which the travelers hoped soon to determine.
Astronomers, we must allow, have graced these pretended seas with
at least odd names, which science has respected up to the present
time. Michel Ardan was right when he compared this map to a
“Tendre card,” got up by a Scudary or a Cyrano de
Bergerac. “Only,” said he, “it is no longer the
sentimental card of the seventeenth century, it is the card of
life, very neatly divided into two parts, one feminine, the other
masculine; the right hemisphere for woman, the left for
man.”
In speaking thus, Michel made his prosaic companions shrug their
shoulders. Barbicane and Nicholl looked upon the lunar map from a
very different point of view to that of their fantastic friend.
Nevertheless, their fantastic friend was a little in the right.
Judge for yourselves.
In the left hemisphere stretches the “Sea of
Clouds,” where human reason is so often shipwrecked. Not far
off lies the “Sea of Rains,” fed by all the fever of
existence. Near this is the “Sea of Storms,” where man
is ever fighting against his passions, which too often gain the
victory. Then, worn out by deceit, treasons, infidelity, and the
whole body of terrestrial misery, what does he find at the end of
his career? that vast “Sea of Humors,” barely softened
by some drops of the waters from the “Gulf of Dew!”
Clouds, rain, storms, and humors— does the life of man
contain aught but these? and is it not summed up in these four
words?
The right hemisphere, “dedicated to the ladies,”
encloses smaller seas, whose significant names contain every
incident of a feminine existence. There is the “Sea of
Serenity,” over which the young girl bends; “The Lake
of Dreams,” reflecting a joyous future; “The Sea of
Nectar,” with its waves of tenderness and breezes of love;
“The Sea of Fruitfulness;” “The Sea of
Crises;” then the “Sea of Vapors,” whose
dimensions are perhaps a little too confined; and lastly, that vast
“Sea of Tranquillity,” in which every false passion,
every useless dream, every unsatisfied desire is at length
absorbed, and whose waves emerge peacefully into the “Lake of
Death!”
What a strange succession of names! What a singular division of
the moon’s two hemispheres, joined to one another like man
and woman, and forming that sphere of life carried into space! And
was not the fantastic Michel right in thus interpreting the fancies
of the ancient astronomers? But while his imagination thus roved
over “the seas,” his grave companions were considering
things more geographically. They were learning this new world by
heart. They were measuring angles and diameters.
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