The moon hoax : $b or, A discovery that the moon has a vast population of human beings — John Locke — John Shaqi
The moon hoax : $b or, A discovery that the moon has a vast population of human beings
John Locke · en
all the shore of the main land was battlemented and spired with these
unobtainable jewels of nature; and as we brought our field of view to
include the utmost rim of the illuminated boundary of the planet, we
could still see them blazing in crowded battalions as it were, through
a region of hundreds of miles. In fact we could not conjecture where
this gorgeous land of enchantment terminated; for as the rotary motion
of the planet bore these mountain summits from our view, we became
further remote from their western boundary.
"We were admonished by this to lose no time in seeking the next
proposed object of our search, the Langrenus, or No. 26, which is
almost within the verge of the libration in longitude, and of which,
for this reason, Dr. Herschel entertained some singular expectations.
"After a short delay in advancing the observatory upon the levers, and
in regulating the lens, we found our object and surveyed it. It was
a dark narrow lake seventy miles long, bounded, on the east, north,
and west, by red mountains of the same character as those surrounding
the Valley of the Unicorn, from which it is distant to the south-west
about 160 miles. This lake, like that valley, opens to the south upon
a plain not more than ten miles wide, which is here encircled by a
truly magnificent amphitheatre of the loftiest order of lunar hills.
For a semicircle of six miles these hills are riven, from their brow
to their base, as perpendicularly as the outer walls of the Colosseum
at Rome; but here exhibiting the sublime altitude of at least two
thousand feet, in one smooth unbroken surface. How nature disposed of
the huge mass which she thus prodigally carved out, I know not; but
certain it is that there are no fragments of it left upon the plain,
which is a declivity without a single prominence except a billowy tract
of woodland that runs in many a wild vagary of breadth and course to
the margin of the lake. The tremendous height and expansion of this
perpendicular mountain, with its bright crimson front contrasted with
the fringe of forest on its brow, and the verdure of the open plain
beneath, filled our canvass with a landscape unsurpassed in unique
grandeur by any we had beheld. Our twenty-five miles perspective
included this remarkable mountain, the plain, a part of the lake, and
the last graduated summits of the range of hills by which the latter
is nearly surrounded. We ardently wished that all the world could
view a scene so strangely grand, and our pulse beat high with the
hope of one day exhibiting it to our countrymen in some part of our
native land. But we were at length compelled to destroy our picture,
as a whole, for the purpose of magnifying its parts for scientific
inspection. Our plain was of course immediately covered with the ruby
front of this mighty amphitheatre, its tall figures, leaping cascades,
and rugged caverns. As its almost interminable sweep was measured off
upon the canvass, we frequently saw long lines of some yellow metal