clature of the different maps relating to the lunar
world. Barbicane possessed two, that of Messrs. Boeer and Moedler and
that of Messrs. Chapuis and Lecouturier. They were to make his work of
observer easier.

They had excellent marine glasses specially constructed for this
journey. They magnified objects a hundred times; they would therefore
have reduced the distance between the earth and the moon to less than
1,000 leagues. But then at a distance which towards 3 a.m. did not
exceed a hundred miles, and in a medium which no atmosphere obstructed,
these instruments brought the lunar level to less than fifteen hundred
metres.

CHAPTER XI.

IMAGINATION AND REALITY.

"Have you ever seen the moon?" a professor asked one of his pupils
ironically.

"No, sir," answered the pupil more ironically still, "but I have heard
it spoken of."

In one sense the jocose answer of the pupil might have been made by the
immense majority of sublunary beings. How many people there are who have
heard the moon spoken of and have never seen it--at least through a
telescope! How many even have never examined the map of their satellite!

Looking at a comprehensive selenographic map, one peculiarity strikes us
at once. In contrast to the geographical arrangements of the earth and
Mars, the continents occupy the more southern hemisphere of the lunar
globe. These continents have not such clear and regular boundary-lines
as those of South America, Africa, and the Indian Peninsula. Their
angular, capricious, and deeply-indented coasts are rich in gulfs and
peninsulas. They recall the confusion in the islands of the Sound, where
the earth is excessively cut up. If navigation has ever existed upon the
surface of the moon it must have been exceedingly difficult and
dangerous, and the Selenite mariners and hydrographers were greatly to
be pitied, the former when they came upon these perilous coasts, the
latter when they were marine surveying on the stormy banks.

It may also be noticed that upon the lunar spheroid the South Pole is
much more continental than the North Pole. On the latter there is only a
slight strip of land capping it, separated from the other continents by
vast seas. (When the word "seas" is used the vast plains probably
covered by the sea formerly must be understood.) On the south the land
covers nearly the whole hemisphere. It is, therefore, possible that the
Selenites have already planted their flag on one of their po