f _chiaro-oscuro_--this diffused light has absolutely no
existence on the surface of the Moon. Nothing is there to break the
inexorable contrast between intense white and intense black. At mid-day,
let a Selenite shade his eyes and look at the sky: it will appear to him
as black as pitch, while the stars still sparkle before him as vividly
as they do to us on the coldest and darkest night in winter.

From this you can judge of the impression made on our travellers by
those strange lunar landscapes. Even their decided novelty and very
strange character produced any thing but a pleasing effect on the organs
of sight. With all their enthusiasm, the travellers felt their eyes "get
out of gear," as Ardan said, like those of a man blind from his birth
and suddenly restored to sight. They could not adjust them so as to be
able to realize the different plains of vision. All things seemed in a
heap. Foreground and background were indistinguishably commingled. No
painter could ever transfer a lunar landscape to his canvas.

"Landscape," Ardan said; "what do you mean by a landscape? Can you call
a bottle of ink intensely black, spilled over a sheet of paper intensely
white, a landscape?"

At the eightieth degree, when the Projectile was hardly 100 miles
distant from the Moon, the aspect of things underwent no improvement. On
the contrary, the nearer the travellers approached the lunar surface,
the drearier, the more inhospitable, and the more _unearthly_,
everything seem to look. Still when five o'clock in the morning brought
our travellers to within 50 miles of _Mount Gioja_--which their
spy-glasses rendered as visible as if it was only about half a mile off,
Ardan could not control himself.

"Why, we're there" he exclaimed; "we can touch her with our hands! Open
the windows and let me out! Don't mind letting me go by myself. It is
not very inviting quarters I admit. But as we are come to the jumping
off place, I want to see the whole thing through. Open the lower window
and let me out. I can take care of myself!"

"That's what's more than any other man can do," said M'Nicholl drily,
"who wants to take a jump of 50 miles!"

"Better not try it, friend Ardan," said Barbican grimly: "think of
Satellite! The Moon is no more attainable by your body than by our
Projectile. You are far more comfortable in here than when floating
about in empty space like a bolide."

Ardan, unwilling to quarrel with his companions, appeared to giv