Hot jumps to cold, and cold jumps to hot. A moment after a
glacial midnight, it is a roasting noon. Without an instant's warning
the temperature falls from 212 deg. Fahrenheit to the icy winter of
interstellar space. The surface is all dazzling glare, or pitchy gloom.
Wherever the direct rays of the sun do not fall, darkness reigns
supreme. What we call diffused light on Earth, the grateful result of
refraction, the luminous matter held in suspension by the air, the
mother of our dawns and our dusks, of our blushing mornings and our dewy
eyes, of our shades, our penumbras, our tints and all the other magical
effects of _chiaro-oscuro_--this diffused light has absolutely no
existence on the surface of the Moon. Nothing is there to break the
inexorable contrast between intense white and intense black. At mid-day,
let a Selenite shade his eyes and look at the sky: it will appear to him
as black as pitch, while the stars still sparkle before him as vividly
as they do to us on the coldest and darkest night in winter.
From this you can judge of the impression made on our travellers by
those strange lunar landscapes. Even their decided novelty and very
strange character produced any thing but a pleasing effect on the organs
of sight.
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