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"Stop, you crazy fellows! you ninnyhammers! you overgrown babies!" he exclaimed, seizing his companions by the collar, and violently swinging them around with his vast strength until they stood back to back; "what are you going to fight about? Suppose there are Lunarians in the Moon! Is that a reason why there should be Lunatics in the Projectile! But, Ardan, why do you insist on Lunarians?
In the lower part of their dress, the Lunarians chiefly resemble the Europeans; but in the upper part, the Asiatics for they shave the head, and wear turbans; from which fact the Brahmin drew another argument in favour of the hypothesis, that the moon was originally a part of the earth. Some of the female fashions were so extremely singular and fanciful, as to deserve particular mention.
A large number of lunarians, it seems, are born without any intellectual vigour, and wander about like so many automatons, under the care of the government, until illumined by the mental ray, from some terrestrial brain, through the mysterious influence which the moon is known to exercise on our planet.
The lunarians do not, as Butler has it "When the sun shines hot at noon, Inhabit cellars under ground, Of eight miles deep and eighty round." But, one half of their houses is beneath the surface, partly for the purpose of screening them from the continued action of the sun's rays, and partly on account of the earthquakes caused by volcanoes.
Night and day on the moon are each two weeks in length; how interesting it would be to watch the manner in which the lunarians dealt with such a situation as that. Lunar and terrestrial history would keep step with each other, and we should record them both. Truly one might well wish to have a neighbor world to study; one would feel so much the less alone in space.
Their heads are placed under their right arm, and when are going to travel, or about any violent exercise, they generally leave them at home, for they can consult them at any distance; this is a very common practice; and when those of rank or quality among the Lunarians have an inclination to see what's going forward among the common people, they stay at home, i.e., the body stays at home, and sends the head only, which is suffered to be present incog., and return at pleasure with an account of what has passed.
The outlines of its walls and the foundation marks of some of its immense buildings were plainly made out, and elaborate plans of this vanished capitol of the moon were prepared by several members of the party. One of them was fortunate enough to discover an even more precious relic of the ancient lunarians.
No system of castrametation ever devised by Polybius or Vauban could bear the slightest comparison with such vast fortifications, A city built on the floor of the circular cavity could be no more reached by the outside Lunarians than if it had been built in the planet Mars. This idea set Ardan off again.
Eclipses of the sun are as common with the Lunarians as those of the moon are with us the same relative position of the three bodies producing this phenomenon; but an eclipse of the earth never takes place, as the shadow of the moon passes over the broad disc of our planet, merely as a dark spot.
But our planet presents to the Lunarians the same changes as the moon does to us, according to its position in relation to the sun.
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