ustralia to see her!" cried Ardan.

"Yes," said M'Nicholl sententiously; "for a visit to the South Sea a
Turk would willingly forego Mecca; and a Bostonian would prefer Sidney
even to Paris."

"Well," resumed Barbican, "this interesting marvel is reserved for the
Selenite that inhabits the side of the Moon which is always turned away
from our globe."

"And which," added the Captain, "we should have had the unspeakable
satisfaction of contemplating if we had only arrived at the period when
the Sun and the Earth are not at the same side of the Moon--that is, 15
days sooner or later than now."

"For my part, however," continued Barbican, not heeding these
interruptions, "I must confess that, notwithstanding the magnificent
splendor of the spectacle when viewed for the first time by the Selenite
who inhabits the dark side of the Moon, I should prefer to be a resident
on the illuminated side. The former, when his long, blazing, roasting,
dazzling day is over, has a night 354 hours long, whose darkness, like
that, just now surrounding us, is ever unrelieved save by the cold
cheerless rays of the stars. But the latter has hardly seen his fiery
sun sinking on one horizon when he beholds rising on the opposite one an
orb, milder, paler, and colder indeed than the Sun, but fully as large
as thirteen of our full Moons, and therefore shedding thirteen times as
much light. This would be our Earth. It would pass through all its
phases too, exactly like our Satellite. The Selenites would have their
New Earth, Full Earth, and Last Quarter. At midnight, grandly
illuminated, it would shine with the greatest glory. But that is almost
as much as can be said for it. Its futile heat would but poorly
compensate for its superior radiance. All the calorie accumulated in the
lunar soil during the 354 hours day would have by this time radiated
completely into space. An intensity of cold would prevail, in comparison
to which a Greenland winter is tropical. The temperature of interstellar
space, 250 deg. below zero, would be reached. Our Selenite, heartily tired
of the cold pale Earth, would gladly see her sink towards the horizon,
waning as she sank, till at last she appeared no more than half full.
Then suddenly a faint rim of the solar orb reveals itself on the edge of
the opposite sky. Slowly, more than 14 times more slowly than with us,
does the Sun lift himself above the lunar horizon. In half an hour, only
half his disc is revealed, but