It was a regular cone having its base on the entire breadth of the mound that occupies the center of the crater long observed with ancient instruments, at the summit of the highest mountains of the Moon. The edifice tapers until it no longer presents a diameter of approximately three feet. It is terminated by the sentry-box described above. The walls of that strange construction presented to us a shiny and polished surface, divided with a great deal of artistry by ornate marble compartments of the brightest colors, which form exceedingly complicated regular designs after the fashion of Arab mosaics, to which I was all the more willing to compare them because we likewise never encountered in them the slightest intention of representing any depiction of plants, animals or humans. The design of those compartments is very complicated; in fact, two identical figures could not be found over the entire surface of the edifice, and we have been obliged to copy the ensemble every time we wanted to give a complete account of the decoration.
The walls of the edifice are pierced by eight openings or unsealed skylights. So far as we have been able to judge, those openings fulfill the function of doors rather than windows, for the mosaic presents at intervals crystal compartments of the greatest beauty and perfectly transparent, through which a very pure light must penetrate the interior of the habitations. They were not a great resource for us, however, to see what was happening inside because of the great obliquity of the plane from which they presented themselves to our gaze.
The openings just mentioned are disposed four by four in two planes rather distant from one another; those down below pierced about a third of the way up the edifice are noticeably larger than those higher up, but they did not appear to us to be much more elongated. All of them are decorated by two colonnettes, surmounted, for the lower ones, by a single flat stone built into the wall, and for the higher ones, by two stones similarly embedded, supported one on top of another, which form a kind of fronton.
The colonnettes repose on the exterior edge of the wall and rise up perpendicularly, departing sufficiently from the body of the edifice for the crown they sustain to offer a free space of a certain breadth, an area surmounted by a truncated cone that reproduces exactly the form of volcanic mountains; for one can observe a little crater at their summit, in the middle of which rises a very long projection. On either side of that steeple of sorts, at the corner left free, directly above the colonnettes, two very small steeples are placed, but with a form almost exactly similar to the one just described. Before each of the doors is a small platform similar to one of our balconies deprived of its balustrade. Those platforms can be raised at will and thus close nearly half the opening.
Numerous Selenians and Vespertilios, coming and going, landed on the platform and went in, or, if they were coming out, took flight from there; but the field of our vision had been so restricted by the powerful lenses that we were employing to study the details of the edifice, while Herbert Holms drew them, that we lost sight of those who drew away by a few feet.
Meanwhile, the Moon had declined so far toward the horizon that everything was soon blurred by the interposition of the moist vapor that the proximity of the sea almost always maintains in the atmosphere at a certain elevation. Finally, we lost sight completely of the objects that interested us so powerfully.
Then we began to communicate to one another the thoughts that had been suggested to us by such an unexpected observation. We raised the question of why beings endowed with the faculty of flight did not equip their habitations with entrances sufficiently spacious to go into them with wings extended, without being obliged to alight and fold them up.
Dr. Grant suggested that it was to protect them from the extreme heat that must reign in summer in that zone, and cited to support his opinion the low and narrow doors adopted on our globe in almost all hot countries; and perhaps that it was also to protect them from noxious insects, as in certain countries of southern Africa. But I made the observation that whatever the temperature might be in the depths of the valleys, it was scarcely possible to admit that the heat could ever be unbearable at the summit of such high mountains, and so isolated their they were exposed to all the air currents. As for insects of the mosquito family, supposing that a few species of them existed to the Moon, they would live in the depths of valleys where the heat and humidity ought to be entirely suitable to their multiplication in certain seasons of the year, rather than the summits of mountains, on which they would not find any of the conditions necessary to their existence. That, at least, was what it was necessary to conclude on the basis of what happens on our globe, where one is only inconvenienced by mosquitoes, gnats and midges in low-lying and humid regions, on the edges of marshes and pools, while one never encounters them above a certain elevation in the mountains. But all that did not explain the lack of width of the reserved openings of the Selenian castles, and we only discovered the true reason a long time afterwards.
Several weeks passed without our observing anything new regarding those matters, but finally, on 24 March, at about 10:45 at night. Ptolemy having entered our field of vision, we were studying the castle that crowned its summit. We were somewhat surprised to find that edifice crowned by a platform, in contrast to those we had remarked in three or four analogous monuments that had been previously submitted to our observations, and it was a new opportunity for us to be humiliated before the sovereign arbiter of things, to recognize how infirm and presumptuous our nature is, how subject we are to error and prompt to content ourselves with the first somewhat plausible solution that we are in haste to cause to prevail, in our vanity, because it is our own, whereas a more persistent and attentive examination would soon enable us to recognize our error.
The error into which we had just slipped was one reason more to mistrust ourselves and redouble our attention in our studies. In fact, it was quite frequent for us to find that we had taken for a general rule what was only an extremely rare particularity. This is how we succeeded in assuring ourselves of that.
We replaced the powerful lenses that we had been using in the preceding observations, and substituted the excellent lenses fabricated by S. J. Davy, and enlarged the field of vision as much as possible while conserving a sufficient dimension for objects not to confuse them; then, adding out reflectors in such a manner as to give the greatest possible clarity to the smallest objects that were about to pass before our eyes, I asked Dr. Grant to regulate the movement of the telescope so that we could observe successively all the parts of the Moon visible that day. By that means we recognized quickly the parts that ought to be the preferential objects of our detailed observation.
Thus, we recognized in the most formal fashion the existence of an immense city at 15 degrees 40 minutes of longitude and 57 degrees 53 minutes of north latitude, and we had soon observed all the systems of habitation adopted by the three intelligent races that inhabit the Moon. (We count degrees of longitude from the peak Arago, which we have recognized as having a slope much steeper that those of all the other mountains of the Moon; it has no crater and is terminated by an indefinitely prolonged spike. We have been glad to give that mark of deference to our honorable colleague and friend, the Director of the Paris Observatoire. In addition, the singular form of the peak that bears his name, and the place that it occupies, makes a very recognizable reference point for a terrestrial observer.)
The habitations of the Beavers are very badly constructed, uncomfortable and poorly sheltered from seasonal bad weather; they generally only have one opening giving entry to a single chamber, in which individuals of all ages and both sexes seem to us to live pell-mell, in scant accord with the prescriptions of hygiene and morality. The agglomeration of those dirty huts forms a disagreeable ensemble of an aspect similar enough to that of the majority of our European villages.
The form of the huts is conical, like those of all isolated edifices that we have observed on the Moon; they are constructed with tree-branches planted in the earth and linked together by a kind of mortar that, on drying, acquires a g
reat hardness; several observations gave us the certainty of that. In the upper part a fairly broad opening is contrived, the only one by which daylight can penetrate and smoke can escape. The hearth is always placed directly below that chimney of sorts, and we have had several opportunities to observe the inhabitants of the hut roasting some of the crustaceans we have previously described over an ardent fire.
In the vicinity of a Beaver village and in a more elevated place, to the extent that nature permits, we have always observed a vast granary, a kind of well-aerated drying-room into which crops are packed; they undergo several preparations there, and the portion reserved for the nourishment of the Selenians and Vespertilios is transported by the latter into vast storehouses designed to receive them.
Here, we are passing over a host of details curious in more than one regard, but of minor scientific importance, in order to arrive at descriptions of surveillance castles; the country houses of the Selenians in the upper part and, in the lower section, the habitual dwellings of the majority of the civilized Vespertilios, who, like farmers of a sort, remain masters of the house in the absence of the owner.
These isolated manors, built on the summits of all the summits of all the volcanic mountains, differ essentially from fortress-castles. First of all, they are devoid of the observation-boxes; secondly, they have the form of a truncated cone, like the mountains on which they are built, and not that of a regular cone; now, that latter form not being encountered in any natural objects observed on the Moon, cannot be the result of the imitative instinct recognized in the Lunarians, and can only have been shown to them by the revelatory necessity of great things.
These, so far as we have been able to understand them, are the circumstances that might have give rise to that necessity. The Selenians must have established a very long time ago, in the regions that they inhabit and which they have subjected to cultivation, lines of observation in order to watch for the invasions of the savage Vespertilios and oppose their ravages. In the beginning, probably, the places of observation did not differ in any respect from the houses of pleasure that dress all the lunar summits. Then the savage Vespertilios, noticing that the signal to attack had always come from the same place, must have turned all their efforts toward those places, and, in order to destroy them, they will have employed means in accordance with their primitive intelligence. They will have raised enormous stones up to a great height and, letting them fall in great number, crushing the castle and burying the boldest of its defenders under the ruins, thus destroying a large number of those observatories. They would then have been able to exercise their ravages and devastations at their ease over the civilized lands.
I offer that hypothesis for what it is worth; it is one of the probabilities that are present to my mind. I ought to add that we have twice been witness to attacks of the kind that we have just described; they were stubborn enough, but neither succeeded, and it was precisely the form of the edifice against which they were directed that we have been obliged to attribute their lack of success. In fact, the stones launched by the Vespertilios either broke on the metallic points of the superior sentry-box or, falling on the body of the edifice, following a very acute angle, slid away without producing any notable damage. Soon, Selenians and civilized Vespertilios arrived en masse to assist the attacked fortress, and the savages were forced to renounce their reckless enterprise.
These attacks seem to be rare, however, and no longer seem to be on the part of those undertaking them to be anything but a reminiscence of successes obtained in the past, conserved among them by tradition. Thus, most of the time, they are content to attempt surprise attacks and to ravage in all haste regions on which they fall unexpectedly, as the Northern hordes do; then, like them, they flee with their booty without waiting for anyone to set out in pursuit of them.
These attacks take place against rural areas in the epoch when the fruits have attained their maturity, and sometimes against the granaries placed at the head of villages when the crops have been stored therein, but never against the pleasure-house castles, probably because the savages, caring little about the objects of luxury that they contain, do not hope to find sufficient booty there to compensate them for the danger they would be running.
However, we have perceived them sometimes prowling around during the night; half-hidden in the vapors then condensed in the depths of all the valleys, they lie in wait in case some Selenian might imprudently venture outside the common dwelling; then they throw themselves in large numbers on the isolated individual, drag him away and disappear suddenly with their prey into the mist. Doubtless attracted by the cries of the victim, Vespertilios and Selenians emerge in force, launching themselves in a certain direction; and then, as if the cries had suddenly ceased, they abruptly renounce a pursuit that could only compromise them pointlessly.
The isolated edifices around which these surprises sometimes take place are composed of two divisions that do not appear to us to have any direct communications between them. As in the fortress, the domestic or civilized Vespertilios live in the inferior part, into which they penetrate via four openings orientated and disposed in the same fashion; but the upper part of the fortified castle differs in that it is terminated by a broad platform at the center of which a circular aperture has been excavated, closed by a strong metallic grille that is lowered inside in order to open it. That trap-door of sorts is the most important external issue that we have recognized in the edifice.
In front of that tower of sorts, and on the most elevated plateau of the mountain that serves as its base, there is sometimes an octagonal enclosure closed by walls of medium height. At each of the corners is constructed, depending on the location, an edifice of varying shape and size. The area enclosed by the octagon is usually planted with trees. I definitely recall, however, having seen several in which nothing was cultivated by a plant that rose to a height of two feet above the soil at the most.
We have also observed, in several places, an edifice quite similar to that one at first glance, but which nevertheless differs from it essentially. As it is not exactly a habitation, but more like a kind of religious monument, we shall describe it completely in the appropriate place.
In the pleasure-castles, the decoration of the principal edifice is quite similar to that of a fortress. One can assure oneself of that by comparing the different drawings that Herbert Holms has traced in the course of our observations. The platform that crowns them is ordinary formed by a monolith of extraordinary thickness; its surface, sometimes smooth and polished, is sometimes ornamented by capricious and bizarre mosaics, of which we give several examples in our atlas.
Our studies of the monuments of the Moon have been long and persevering. Interrupted several times by various accidents, they have always been resumed with a new ardor. We are proud to have brought to our European civilization these incontestable proofs of Selenian civilization. Several very keen debates have been engaged between us on the matter on matters of the most serious gravity, but we have succeeded in agreeing among ourselves on the most important things; discussion has reciprocally clarified us on many matters, and if some differences of opinion remain among us, they only relate now to objects of such secondary importance that we can regard ourselves as being in complete accord. That divergence of opinions and the discussions that have been its consequence have sometimes led us to important discoveries.
One singular remark by Lieutenant Drummond, which led us to results of that nature, was that while the castles built on the mountains of the central part of the hemisphere that we had before our eyes all have the axis of the conoid that envelops them converging on the center of the face of the Moon, it is not the same for those that are distant from that central region. On the contrary, the more distant they are from it, and draw closer to one of the poles or to regions subject to librations, the axis of the conical surface appears to converge less and less toward the center off the face of our satellite. We have also recognized that the difference in question increas
es in a perfectly regular proportion, and that it becomes very pronounced in the lands neighboring the libration and the polar regions.
The first time that the constructions of a great city of the circumpolar regions were submitted to our observation, the unexpected inclination of its tallest monuments astonished us so much that we were convinced by the sight of those numerable towers, spires, steeples and turrets, all equally inclined, that the architects who had built them had wanted to achieve a tour de force analogous to that of the leaning towers seen in Pisa and one or two other cities in Italy. But after having observed that the inclination is everywhere the same on each circumference described around the central point of the hemisphere facing us, and that it diminishes or increases as that circle shrinks or expands, it was evident that it could not be caused by the variable caprice of architects. It is impossible to account for the strangeness of those constructions unless one admits, as we do, that the center of gravity of the Moon does not coincide with the center of its apparent face, but that it is much closer to our planet than the latter.
In fact, the Moon having originally been liquid, as will doubtless be proven by the specific details that we shall subsequently devote to selenology, its form is necessarily modified by the attraction of the terrestrial spheroid. In the same way that our seas, obedient to the attraction of our satellite, rises and forms tides, the fluid elements that constituted the lunar mass during its liquefaction were accumulated toward the point closest to us. The face of the Moon is elongated, and as all the molecules, once arrived at their point of equilibrium have no longer been stirred by the same cause, in cooling that have conserved the position that they had attained, and their total mass has formed a solid somewhat elongated toward the Earth. Their general center of gravity is thus displaced in our direction.
The quantity by which it is displaced is easily calculable; it is between eighty-three and eighty-four miles. By virtue of that the inclination of the axis of a habitation twenty-five degrees from the pole ought to be eleven degrees. Now, observations made with the greatest care have always given us seventeen degrees for that inclination. How can that strange difficulty be explained?
The Humanisphere Page 6
