The moon, like the other planets, turns upon her axis. She does this very slowly, however; and most singularly she takes exactly the same time to turn once upon her axis that she does to travel once round the earth. The result of this is, that we only see one face of the moon. If she turned upon her axis, and journeyed round the earth in two different lengths of time, or if she journeyed round us and did not turn upon her axis at all, we should have views of her on all sides, as of other planets. But as her two movements so curiously agree, it happens that we always have one side of the moon towards us, and never catch a glimpse of the other side. And now we are ready to start on our journey of two hundred and forty thousand miles. An express train, moving ceaselessly onward night and day, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, would take us there in about five months and a half. But no line of rails has ever yet been laid from the earth to the moon, and no “Flying Dutchman” has ever yet plied its way to and fro on that path through the heavens. Not on the wings of steam, but on the wings of imagination, we must rise aloft. Come--it will not take us long. We shall pass no planets or stars on the road, for the moon lies nearer to us than any other of the larger heavenly bodies. Far, far behind us lies the earth, and beneath our feet, as we descend, stretch the broad tracts of moonland. For “downward” now means towards the moon, and away from the distant earth. What a strange place we have reached! The weird, ghastly stillness of all around, and the glaring, dazzling, cloudless heat, strike us first and most forcibly. Nothing like this heat have we ever felt on earth. For the close of the moon’s long day--on this side of its globe--is approaching, and during a whole fortnight past the sun’s fierce rays have been beating down on these shelterless plains. Talk of sweltering tropics on earth! What do you call _this_ heat? Look at the thermometer: how the quicksilver is rising! Well, that is not a common thermometer which we have brought with us. The mercury has stopped--three hundred degrees above boiling water! Not a cloud to be seen overhead; only a sky of inky blackness, with a blazing sun, and thousands of brilliant stars, and the dark body of our own earth, large and motionless, and rimmed with light. Seen from earth, sun and moon look much the same size; but seen from the moon, the earth looks thirteen times as large as our full moon. Not even a little mistiness in the air to soften this fearful glare! Air! why, there is no air; at least not enough for any human being to breathe or feel. If there were air, the sky would be blue, not black, and the stars would be invisible in the daytime. It looks strange to see them now shining beside the sun.