pe so fanciful, that his
observation cannot be relied upon. And yet who would affirm, who would
dare to say, that the amiable fellow had not really seen what his two
companions would not see?

The moments were too precious to be sacrificed to an idle discussion.
The Selenite city, whether real or pretended, had disappeared in the
distance. The projectile began to get farther away from the lunar disc,
and the details of the ground began to be lost in a confused jumble. The
reliefs, amphitheatres, craters, and plains alone remained, and still
showed their boundary-lines distinctly.

At that moment there stretched to the left one of the finest
amphitheatres in lunar orography. It was Newton, which Barbicane easily
recognised by referring to the _Mappa Selenographica_.

Newton is situated in exactly 77 deg. south lat. and 16 deg. east long. It forms
a circular crater, the ramparts of which, 7,264 metres high, seemed to
be inaccessible.

Barbicane made his companions notice that the height of that mountain
above the surrounding plain was far from being equal to the depth of its
crater. This enormous hole was beyond all measurement, and made a gloomy
abyss, the bottom of which the sun's rays could never reach. There,
according to Humboldt, utter darkness reigns, which the light of the sun
and the earth could not break. The mythologists would have made it with
justice hell's mouth.

"Newton," said Barbicane, "is the most perfect type of the circular
mountains, of which the earth possesses no specimen. They prove that the
formation of the moon by cooling was due to violent causes, for whilst
under the influence of interior fire the reliefs were thrown up to
considerable heights, the bottom dropped in, and became lower than the
lunar level."

"I do not say no," answered Michel Ardan.

A few minutes after having passed Newton the projectile stood directly
over the circular mountain of Moret. It also passed rather high above
the summits of Blancanus, and about 7.30 p.m. it reached the
amphitheatre of Clavius.

This circle, one of the most remarkable on the disc, is situated in
south lat. 58 deg. and east long. 15 deg.. Its height is estimated at 7,091
metres. The travellers at a distance of 200 miles, reduced to two by the
telescopes, could admire the arrangement of this vast crater.

"The terrestrial volcanoes," said Barbicane, "are only molehills
compared to the volcanoes of the moon. Measuring the ancient craters
fo