“Let me tell you about this bay or gulf,” I said, tapping the photograph to recall her from her reverie. “You observe that it terminates at each end with a promontory. That at the western end is named Laplace, and the other Heraclides. The latter is the more picturesque. If ever you have an opportunity to see the moon with a good telescope do not fail to look at the promontory of Heraclides, for if you are fortunate in the choice of the time of observation when the setting sun is throwing its shadow over the adjoining ‘bay,’ you will find that the serrated outlines of the promontory represent, in a very striking manner, the profile of a woman, more sharply defined than the face of our familiar Moon Maiden, but a mere miniature in relative size. The shores of the _Sinus Iridum_ are bordered with high cliffs, behind which rise the peaks of a mighty mountain mass. Just back of the center of the great bowed shore of the ‘bay’ appears, in the photograph, a small, bright crater ring. This bears the name of Bianchini. It is a lunar volcano, 18 miles in diameter, rising out of the midst of many ranges of nearly parallel hills and mountains, the general direction of which corresponds with that of the shore of the ‘bay.’ If there is any place on the moon where one is tempted to think that the scenes of a living world might once have been witnessed it is the _Sinus Iridum_ and its neighborhood. Its latitude is between 40° and 50° north, corresponding with the most thickly populated zone of our own globe. The surface of the ‘bay’—once its bottom, if we admit that it was ever filled with water—is gently undulating, with winding ridges that suggest the action of tides and currents in sweeping to and fro deposits of sand and gravel, and piling them in long rows of bars and shallows. One can hardly help picturing in the mind’s eye waves breaking on the curving beach and dashing against the projecting rocks of the promontories; a white city seated just at the center of the shore of the ‘bay,’ near Bianchini, like Naples at the feet of Vesuvius; a rich vegetation covering the slopes of the mountain valleys, and romantic sails dotting the ‘bay’ and the neighboring ‘sea.’” “I am very glad to observe,” interrupted my friend, “that you are not hopelessly prejudiced against my opinion that the moon has not always been ‘dead,’ as you call it.”