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As the same part of the moon is always turned to the earth, one half of her surface is perpetually illuminated by a moon ten times as large to the eye as the sun; the other hemisphere is without a moon. The favoured part, therefore, never experiences total darkness, the earth reflecting to the Lunarians as much light as we terrestrials have a little before sunrise, or after sunset.

Are we so shiftless that we can't do without them when we get to the Moon?" "I don't insist on them!" cried Ardan, who submitted to Barbican like a child. "Hang the Lunarians! Certainly, we can do without them! What do I care for them? Down with them!" "Yes, down with the Lunarians!" cried M'Nicholl as spitefully as if he had even the slightest belief in their existence.

"I suppose that's what the last remnants of the Lunarians have come to. Evidently once men and women, something like ourselves. I daresay the ancestors of that thing have lived here in coldness and darkness for hundreds of generations. It shows how tremendously tenacious Nature is of life.

"We shall take possession of the Moon ourselves!" cried Ardan. "Lunarians or no Lunarians!" "We three shall constitute a Republic!" cried M'Nicholl. "I shall be the House!" cried Ardan. "And I the Senate!" answered the Captain. "And Barbican our first President!" shrieked the Frenchman. "Our first and last!" roared M'Nicholl. "No objections to a third term!" yelled Ardan.

We would look for them in the deposits on the sea bottoms; we would examine the shores wherever the configuration seemed favorable for harbors and the sites of maritime cities forgetting that it may be a little ridiculous to ascribe to the ancient lunarians the same ideas that have governed the development of our race; we would search through the valleys and along the seeming courses of vanished streams; we would explore the mountains, not the terrible craters, but the pinnacled chains that recall our own Alps and Rockies; seeking everywhere some vestige of the transforming presence of intelligent life.

At last, upon some publick Occasion, the publick Treasurers of the Land sent to the capital City, to borrow 500000 Lunarians upon very good Security of establisht Funds; truly no Body would lend any Mony, or at least they could not raise above a 5th part of that Sum, enquiring at the Bank, at their general Societies Cash, and other Places, all was languid and dull, and no Mony to be had; but being inform'd that the Crolians had erected a Bank of their own, they sent thither, and were answered readily, that whatever Sum the Government wanted, was at their Service, only it was to be lent not by particular Persons, but such a Grandee being one of the prime Nobility, and who the Crolians now call'd their Protector, was to be Treated with about it.

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 capital of the moon were prepared by several members of the party. More Evidences of Habitation. One of them was fortunate enough to discover an even more precious relic of the ancient lunarians.

But there is nothing that I have brought which I prize so highly as a few of their manuscripts. The Lunarians write as we do, from left to right; but when their words consist of more than one syllable, all the subsequent syllables are put over the first, so that what we call long words, they call high ones: which mode of writing makes them more striking to the eye.

The belief of the influence of the moon on the human intellect, the Brahmin remarks, may be perceived in the opinions of the vulgar, and in many of the ordinary forms of expression; and he takes occasion to remark, that these very opinions, as well as some obscure hints in the Sanscrit, give countenance to the idea, that they were not the only voyagers to the moon; but that, on the contrary, the voyage had been performed in remote antiquity; and the Lunarians, we are told, have a similar tradition.

A more minute description follows, of the dress of the male and female lunarians, especially of that of the latter, to which we can merely refer the reader. There is one portion, however, of the inhabitants, with whom the reader must be made acquainted, inasmuch as they form some of the author's most prominent characters.