"
So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did
not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of
fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by
accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had
been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided
still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a
perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our
romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the
astute fancies of the old astronomers?
His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in
that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with
geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by
heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by
measuring its angles and diameters.
To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea,
was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with
a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the
southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space
of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 deg.
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