les, whilst
Franklin, Ross, Kane, Dumont d'Urville, and Lambert have been unable to
reach this unknown point on the terrestrial globe.

Islands are numerous on the surface of the moon. They are almost all
oblong or circular, as though traced with a compass, and seem to form a
vast archipelago, like that charming group lying between Greece and Asia
Minor which mythology formerly animated with its most graceful legends.
Involuntarily the names of Naxos, Tenedos, Milo, and Carpathos come into
the mind, and you seek the ship of Ulysses or the "clipper" of the
Argonauts. That was what it appeared to Michel Ardan; it was a Grecian
Archipelago that he saw on the map. In the eyes of his less imaginative
companions the aspect of these shores recalled rather the cut-up lands
of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and where the Frenchman looked for
traces of the heroes of fable, these Americans were noting favourable
points for the establishment of mercantile houses in the interest of
lunar commerce and industry.

Some remarks on the orographical disposition of the moon must conclude
the description of its continents, chains of mountains, isolated
mountains, amphitheatres, and watercourses. The moon is like an immense
Switzerland--a continual Norway, where Plutonic influence has done
everything. This surface, so profoundly rugged, is the result of the
successive contractions of the crust while the orb was being formed. The
lunar disc is propitious for the study of great geological phenomena.
According to the remarks of some astronomers, its surface, although more
ancient than the surface of the earth, has remained newer. There there
is no water to deteriorate the primitive relief, the continuous action
of which produces a sort of general levelling. No air, the decomposing
influence of which modifies orographical profiles. There Pluto's work,
unaltered by Neptune's, is in all its native purity. It is the earth as
she was before tides and currents covered her with layers of soil.

After having wandered over these vast continents the eye is attracted by
still vaster seas. Not only does their formation, situation, and aspect
recall the terrestrial oceans, but, as upon earth, these seas occupy the
largest part of the globe. And yet these are not liquid tracts, but
plains, the nature of which the travellers hoped soon to determine.

Astronomers, it must be owned, have decorated these pretended seas with
at least odd names which science ha