On some of their exploring expeditions they have gone far from home. In
this way they have learned more of other places and other people than
the whites.
Through the interpreters we tried to find out how much farther we would
have to go to find a good sized city and in what direction.
The chieftain tells us there is a city about a thousand miles to the
northeast from their village.
Bob asked if he was talking about the one we had seen from the air.
He answered, "No, that isn't the one." Then he added that if we wanted
to fly there in our ship, he would be glad to go with us to show us the
way. He seemed to enjoy flying. It was something different than he had
ever done before.
We told him we would like to have him go with us and the date was set
for two days later.
Now we have returned to our ship. The dark chieftain also sent six
of his men back with us to serve us for the time we are staying on
the Moon. After arriving at the ship, having this trip two days later
to prepare for, we had these native boys help us remove some of the
supplies we had brought with us from Earth and which we wouldn't need
on the trip, thereby lessening the weight of the ship.
The two days of waiting were spent exploring more of the light side.
The darkies acted as our guides while the whites remained at the ship.
We went to some of the larger craters acting as valleys. Here there was
no lack of material for building many homes, if anyone wanted to use
that type of material, for there was an abundance of beautiful volcanic
rock. It seemed that the whole Moon on the light side was of volcanic
nature. Yet we have found some granite, like that on Earth, brown or
red sand which could easily have been soil at one time, dehydrated
now. Also we came across a large territory that on Earth we would call
desert, which on examination showed that it could have been the bottom
of a river or sea, with quite a lot of vegetation of moss-like nature
like we saw first in the crevices, and a certain amount of moisture.
At nightfall the moisture increased in surprising abundance. In places
some of these flat spots looked a little like our Salton Sea territory.
There was a variety of small creatures. One especially could easily
have been related to our horned toad, except that its body was long
instead of being broad.
All this time we had no need for oxygen masks. We could not walk as
far without rest, due to the light air and the heat, but it was fairly
comfortable at that. Of course we did strike out exploring in the early
morning when it was not yet too hot. In fact, we believe that this
desert region surrounded with volcanic craters and mountains could be
very fertile, once water was brought to it. It seems that if trees and
vegetation were planted here, they soon would cool off the desert. And
there is plenty of water on the dark side. This could be piped here for
irrigation purposes without too much trouble, we believe.
Chapter V
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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