ower of my
telescope. Its mountains, lakes, seas, continents, and islands, were
faintly, though not indistinctly, traced; and every moment brought
forth something new to catch my eye, and awaken my curiosity. The
whole face of the moon was of a silvery hue, relieved and varied by the
softest and most delicate shades. No cloud nor speck of vapour intercepted
my view. One of my exclamations of delight awakened the Brahmin, who
quickly arose, and looking down on the resplendent orb below us, observed
that we must soon begin to slacken the rapidity of our course, by
throwing out ballast. The moon's dimensions now rapidly increased; the
separate mountains, which formed the ridges and chains on her surface,
began to be plainly visible through the telescope; whilst, on the shaded
side, several volcanoes appeared upon her disc, like the flashes of
our fire-fly, or rather like the twinkling of stars in a frosty night.
He remarked, that the extraordinary clearness and brightness of the
objects on the moon's surface, was owing to her having a less extensive
and more transparent atmosphere than the earth: adding--"The difference
is so great, that some of our astronomical observers have been induced
to think she has none. If that, however, had been the case, our voyage
would have been impracticable."

After gazing at the magnificent spectacle, with admiration and delight,
for half an hour, the Brahmin loosed one of the balls of the lunar metal,
for the purpose of checking our velocity. At this time he supposed we
were not more than four thousand miles, or about twice the moon's
diameter, from the nearest point of her surface. In about four hours
more, her apparent magnitude was so great, that we could see her by
looking out of either of the dark side-windows. Her disc had now lost
its former silvery appearance, and began to look more like that of the
earth, when seen at the same distance. It was a most gratifying spectacle
to behold the objects successively rising to our view, and steadily
enlarging in their dimensions. The rapidity with which we approached the
moon, impressed me, in spite of myself, with the alarming sensation of
falling; and I found myself alternately agitated with a sense of this
danger, and with impatience to take a nearer view of the new objects that
greeted my eyes. The Brahmin was wholly absorbed in calculations for the
purpose of adjusting our velocity to the distance we had to go, his
estimates of which, ho