“Among the most remarkable and beautiful features of this photograph are the winding ridges like half-submerged mountain ranges that appear on the sea bottom in various places. Notice particularly the long twisted chain that lies across the western part. Between this and a shorter range, close to the west shore, runs a broad, dark valley, with the crater Dawes lying in the middle of it at the upper end. Some of these winding ridges suggest by their shape and modulation the action of water. Finally, let us return to the strait through which we recently passed. Notice that the Apennines and the Caucasus look as though they had once formed a continuous line of mountains, which has been broken through in its center, leaving huge buttresses on each side, like the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar?” “That place has an irresistible attraction for me,” said my companion. “I cannot withhold my imagination from picturing the scene there when the waters rolled deep over those great bottoms, and when white-sailed ships were passing and repassing between the towering capes, carrying the commerce of opulent cities situated along those marvelously picturesque shores.” “Perhaps,” I suggested, “the lunarians, whom you have reconstructed in your fancy, reached, before the catastrophe came that ended their existence, a higher state of civilization than ours, and learned to substitute electrically driven vessels for white-winged ships.” “That would be like the introduction of vulgar steamboats on the canals of Venice,” she replied. “Well,” I said, “this ends our survey and one month of photographic journeying on the moon, and I am glad that you have finished it with so pleasing a vision.” * * * * * Upon parting from my friend I left the photographs in her possession. A few weeks later I received a letter from her in which she said: “I have been studying and restudying those wonderful pictures of the moon. I have ordered a telescope to be set up in my park near the elm, and when it is ready I wish you to come and instruct me how to view the moon for myself. I believe that I am becoming a learned and enthusiastic selenographer, and those strange names—Gemma Frisius, Bullialdus, Abulfeda, Abenezra, Rabbi Levi, Maurolycus, Fra Mauro, Sacrobosco, Zagut, Cichus, Sulpicius Gallus—have established their fascination over my mind. Theophilus no longer terrifies me with its formidable aspect, and I spend hours poring over the _Mare Serenitatis_. But my fancy remains faithful to the ‘Marsh of a Dream,’ which still represents for me the culmination of lunar ideality.