e lunar disc is therefore highly favorable for the study of the great
geological phenomena of our own globe. As certain astronomers have
remarked, the Moon's surface, though older than the Earth's, has
remained younger. That is, it has undergone less change. No water has
broken through its rugged elevations, filled up its scowling cavities,
and by incessant action tended continuously to the production of a
general level. No atmosphere, by its disintegrating, decomposing
influence has softened off the rugged features of the plutonic
mountains. Volcanic action alone, unaffected by either aqueous or
atmospheric forces, can here be seen in all its glory. In other words
the Moon looks now as our Earth did endless ages ago, when "she was void
and empty and when darkness sat upon the face of the deep;" eons of ages
ago, long before the tides of the ocean and the winds of the atmosphere
had begun to strew her rough surface with sand and clay, rock and coal,
forest and meadow, gradually preparing it, according to the laws of our
beneficent Creator, to be at last the pleasant though the temporary
abode of Man!

Having wandered over vast continents, your eye is attracted by the
"seas" of dimensions still vaster. Not only their shape, situation, and
look, remind us of our own oceans, but, again like them, they occupy
the greater part of the Moon's surface. The "seas," or, more correctly,
plains, excited our travellers' curiosity to a very high degree, and
they set themselves at once to examine their nature.

The astronomer who first gave names to those "seas" in all probability
was a Frenchman. Hevelius, however, respected them, even Riccioli did
not disturb them, and so they have come down to us. Ardan laughed
heartily at the fancies which they called up, and said the whole thing
reminded him of one of those "maps of matrimony" that he had once seen
or read of in the works of Scudery or Cyrano de Bergerac.

"However," he added, "I must say that this map has much more reality in
it than could be found in the sentimental maps of the 17th century. In
fact, I have no difficulty whatever in calling it the _Map of Life!_
very neatly divided into two parts, the east and the west, the masculine
and the feminine. The women on the right, and the men on the left!"

At such observations, Ardan's companions only shrugged their shoulders.
A map of the Moon in their eyes was a map of the Moon, no more, no less;
their romantic friend might vie