No atmosphere, by its disintegrating, decomposing
influence has softened off the rugged features of the plutonic
mountains. Volcanic action alone, unaffected by either aqueous or
atmospheric forces, can here be seen in all its glory. In other words
the Moon looks now as our Earth did endless ages ago, when "she was void
and empty and when darkness sat upon the face of the deep;" eons of ages
ago, long before the tides of the ocean and the winds of the atmosphere
had begun to strew her rough surface with sand and clay, rock and coal,
forest and meadow, gradually preparing it, according to the laws of our
beneficent Creator, to be at last the pleasant though the temporary
abode of Man!
Having wandered over vast continents, your eye is attracted by the
"seas" of dimensions still vaster. Not only their shape, situation, and
look, remind us of our own oceans, but, again like them, they occupy
the greater part of the Moon's surface. The "seas," or, more correctly,
plains, excited our travellers' curiosity to a very high degree, and
they set themselves at once to examine their nature.
The astronomer who first gave names to those "seas" in all probability
was a Frenchman.
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