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After Tycho, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, Copernicus forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating Mare Nubium from Oceanus Procellarum on one side and from Mare Imbrium on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time.
Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Rains here revealed itself in all its vastness to the eyes of the travellers, though it must be acknowledged that the immense depression so called, did not afford them a very clear idea regarding its exact boundaries.
LEVERRIER. The more westerly of a pair of little ring-plains on the N. side of the Mare Imbrium, and S.W. of the Laplace promontory. It is about 10 miles in diameter, with walls rising some 1500 feet above the Mare, and more than 6000 feet above the interior, which seems to be without a central mountain or other features.
On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: Sinus Aestuum, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; Sinus Iridium, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the Mare Imbrium; and Sinus Roris, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains.
The valley, or gorge, above mentioned, appears to cut through the loftiest mountains and to reach the "coast," although it is so narrowed and broken among the greater peaks that its southern portion is almost lost before it actually reaches the Mare Imbrium. Opening wider again as it enters the Mare, it forms a deep bay among precipitous mountains.
Mare Imbrium is of great depth, and from its floor rise several conical mountains with circular craters, the largest of which, Archimedes, is fifty miles in diameter; its vast smooth interior being divided into seven distinct zones running east and west.
In tumbled mass of rock, honeycombed everywhere with caves and passages leading into impenetrable darkness, there were pits into which we might so easily have fallen; ravines to span, sometimes with a leap, sometimes by a long and arduous detour. Endless climb. We came to the ledge with the plains of the Mare Imbrium stretching out beneath us.
The finest example is, perhaps, the dark-gray Plato, situated in 50° of north latitude, near an immense mountain uplift named the Lunar Alps, and on the northern shore of the Mare Imbrium, or "Sea of Showers."
The Carpathians, forming in part the southern border of the Mare Imbrium, extend for a length of more than 180 miles eastward of E., long. 16 deg., and, embracing the ring-plain Gay- Lussac, terminate west of Mayer.
PIAZZI SMYTH. A conspicuous little ring-plain, 5 or 6 miles in diameter, depressed about 1500 feet below the Mare Imbrium, with a border rising about 2000 feet above it. With the curious arrangement of ridges, of which it is the apparent centre, it is a striking object under a low sun. KIRCH. A rather smaller object of the same class on the S.E.
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