That blaze, in
fact, seems to me to possess the intensity and the blinding glare of
objects burning in pure oxygen. Let us therefore be not over hasty in
jumping at the conclusion of the existence of a lunar atmosphere."
This fire mountain was situated, according to the most plausible
conjecture, somewhere in the neighborhood of the 45th degree, south
latitude, of the Moon's invisible side. For a little while the
travellers indulged the fond hope that they were directly approaching
it, but, to their great disappointment, the path described by the
Projectile lay in a different direction. Its nature therefore they had
no opportunity of ascertaining. It began to disappear behind the dark
horizon within less than half an hour after the time that M'Nicholl had
signalled it. Still, the fact of the uncontested existence of such a
phenomenon was a grand one, and of considerable importance in
selenographic investigations. It proved that heat had not altogether
disappeared from the lunar world; and the existence of heat once
settled, who can say positively that the vegetable kingdom and even the
animal kingdom have not likewise resisted so far every influence tending
to destroy them? If terrestrial astronomers could only be convinced, by
undoubted evidence, of the existence of this active volcano on the
Moon's surface, they would certainly admit of very considerable
modifications in the present doubts regarding her inhabitability.
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