dless space.

CHAPTER III

THE SHINING MOON

'Once upon a time,' long, long ago, the earth was not a compact, round,
hard body such as she is now, but much larger and softer, and as she
rotated a fragment broke off from her; it did not go right away from
her, but still went on circling round with the motion it had inherited
from her. As the ages passed on both the earth and this fragment, which
had been very hot, cooled down, and in cooling became smaller, so that
the distance between them was greater than it had been before they
shrank. And there were other causes also that tended to thrust the two
further from each other. Yet, compared with the other heavenly bodies,
they are still near, and by looking up into the sky at night you can
generally see this mighty fragment, which is a quarter the diameter of
the earth--that is to say, a quarter the width of the earth measured
from side to side through the middle. It is--as, of course, you have
guessed--the moon. The moon is the nearest body to us in all space, and
so vast is the distance that separates us from the stars that we speak
as if she were not very far off, yet compared with the size of the earth
the space lying between us and her is very great. If you went right
round the world at the thickest part--that is to say, in the region of
the Equator--and when you arrived at your starting-point went off once
again, and so on until you had been round ten times, you would only then
have travelled about as far as from the earth to the moon!

The earth is not the only planet which has a moon, or as it is called, a
satellite, in attendance. Some of the larger planets have several, but
there is not one to compare with our moon. Which would you prefer if you
had the choice, three or four small moons, some of them not much larger
than a very big bright star, or an interesting large body like our own
moon? I know which I should say.

'You say that the moon broke off from the earth, so perhaps there may be
some people living on her,' I hear someone exclaim.

If there is one thing we have found out certainly about the moon, it is
that no life, as we know it, could exist there, for there is neither air
nor water. Whether she ever had any air or water, and if so, why they
disappeared, are questions we cannot answer. We only know that now she
is a dead world. Bright and beautiful as she is, shedding on us a pale,
pure light, in vivid contrast with the fiery yellow rays