To end our hasty sketch of the continental portion of the Moon, we must
say a few words regarding her orthography or mountain systems. With a
fair telescope you can distinguish very readily her mountain chains, her
isolated mountains, her circuses or ring formations, and her rills,
cracks and radiating streaks. The character of the whole lunar relief is
comprised in these divisions. It is a surface prodigiously reticulated,
upheaved and depressed, apparently without the slightest order or
system. It is a vast Switzerland, an enormous Norway, where everything
is the result of direct plutonic action. This surface, so rugged, craggy
and wrinkled, seems to be the result of successive contractions of the
crust, at an early period of the planet's existence. The examination of
the lunar disc is therefore highly favorable for the study of the great
geological phenomena of our own globe. As certain astronomers have
remarked, the Moon's surface, though older than the Earth's, has
remained younger. That is, it has undergone less change. No water has
broken through its rugged elevations, filled up its scowling cavities,
and by incessant action tended continuously to the production of a
general level.
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