One of these flashes
extended as far as _Neander_ on the 40th meridian; another, curving
around so as to furrow the _Mare Nectaris_, came to an end on the chain
of the _Pyrenees_, after a course of perhaps a little more than seven
hundred miles. On the east, some of them barred with luminous network
the _Mare Nubium_ and even the _Mare Humorum_.
The most puzzling feature of these glittering streaks was that they ran
their course directly onward, apparently neither obstructed by valley,
crater, or mountain ridge however high. They all started, as said
before, from one common focus, _Tycho's_ crater. From this they
certainly all seemed to emanate. Could they be rivers of lava once
vomited from that centre by resistless volcanic agency and afterwards
crystallized into glassy rock? This idea of Herschel's, Barbican had no
hesitation in qualifying as exceedingly absurd. Rivers running in
perfectly straight lines, across plains, and _up_ as well as _down_
mountains!
"Other astronomers," he continued, "have looked on these streaks as a
peculiar kind of _moraines_, that is, long lines of erratic blocks
belched forth with mighty power at the period of _Tycho's_ own
upheaval.
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