before been reached by the most powerful telescopes, including
even Lord Rosse's and the great instrument on the Rocky Mountains.
Barbican was therefore in a condition singularly favorable to resolve
the great question concerning the Moon's inhabitableness. Nevertheless,
the solution still escaped him. He could discover nothing around him but
a dreary waste of immense plains, and towards the north, beneath him,
bare mountains of the aridest character.

Not the slightest vestige of man's work could be detected over the vast
expanse. Not the slightest sign of a ruin spoke of his ever having been
there. Nothing betrayed the slightest trace of the development of animal
life, even in an inferior degree. No movement. Not the least glimpse of
vegetation. Of the three great kingdoms that hold dominion on the
surface of the globe, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal, one
alone was represented on the lunar sphere: the mineral, the whole
mineral, and nothing but the mineral.

"Why!" exclaimed Ardan, with a disconcerted look, after a long and
searching examination, "I can't find anybody. Everything is as
motionless as a street in Pompeii at 4 o'clock in the morning!"

[Illustration: THE SOLUTION STILL ESCAPED HIM.]

"Good comparison, friend Ardan;" observed M'Nicholl. "Lava, slag,
volcanic eminences, vitreous matter glistening like ice, piles of
scoria, pitch black shadows, dazzling streaks, like rivers of light
breaking over jagged rocks--these are now beneath my eye--these alone I
can detect--not a man--not an animal--not a tree. The great American
Desert is a land of milk and honey in comparison with the joyless orb
over which we are now moving. However, even yet we can predicate
nothing positive. The atmosphere may have taken refuge in the depths of
the chasms, in the interior of the craters, or even on the opposite side
of the Moon, for all we know!"

"Still we must remember," observed Barbican, "that even the sharpest eye
cannot detect a man at a distance greater than four miles and a-half,
and our glasses have not yet brought us nearer than five."

"Which means to say," observed Ardan, "that though we can't see the
Selenites, they can see our Projectile!"

But matters had not improved much when, towards four o'clock in the
morning, the travellers found themselves on the 50th parallel, and at a
distance of only about 375 miles from the lunar surface. Still no trace
of the least movement, or even of the lowest for