terior slopes rose in
stories like gigantic terraces. They appeared to be higher by 300 or 400
feet on the west than on the east. No system of terrestrial
castrametation could equal these natural fortifications. A town built at
the bottom of this circular cavity would have been utterly inaccessible.

Inaccessible and marvellously extended over this ground of picturesque
relief! Nature had not left the bottom of this crater flat and empty. It
possessed a special orography, a mountain system which made it a world
apart. The travellers clearly distinguished the cones, central hills,
remarkable movements of the ground, naturally disposed for the reception
of masterpieces of Selenite architecture. There was the place for a
temple, here for a forum, there the foundations of a palace, there the
plateau of a citadel, the whole overlooked by a central mountain 1,500
feet high--a vast circuit which would have held ancient Rome ten times
over.

"Ah!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, made enthusiastic by the sight, "what
grand towns could be built in this circle of mountains! A tranquil city,
a peaceful refuge, away from all human cares! How all misanthropes could
live there, all haters of humanity, all those disgusted with social
life!"

"All! It would be too small for them!" replied Barbicane simply.

CHAPTER XVIII.

GRAVE QUESTIONS.

In the meantime the projectile had passed the neighbourhood of Tycho.
Barbicane and his two friends then observed, with the most scrupulous
attention, those brilliant radii which the celebrated mountain disperses
so curiously on every horizon.

What was this radiating aureole? What geological phenomenon had caused
those ardent beams? This question justly occupied Barbicane. Under his
eyes, in every direction, ran luminous furrows, with raised banks and
concave middle, some ten miles, others more than twenty miles wide.
These shining trails ran in certain places at least 300 leagues from
Tycho, and seemed to cover, especially towards the east, north-east, and
north, half the southern hemisphere. One of these furrows stretched as
far as the amphitheatre of Neander, situated on the 40th meridian.
Another went rounding off through the Sea of Nectar and broke against
the chain of the Pyrenees after a run of 400 leagues; others towards the
west covered with a luminous network the Sea of Clouds and the Sea of
Humours.

What was the origin of these shining rays running equally over plains
and reli