Tri-weekly journal. (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1847-188?, 1847-06-26

The GREAT CRATER IN THE MooN.-Modem
improvements ofthe telescope seem to have
given a new impulse and interest everywhere to
astronomical research. We have a remarkable
description of one of those vast caverns of era
tiers in the moon, from fifty to sixty miles in
diameter, to which the telescope of Lord Rose
has introduced the inhabitants of our EARTH
To this crater the name of Tycho has been Civ
en-, and the following highly graphic, though
somewhat indistinct, account of it is taken
from DR.. Nicholas "Contemplations on the So
lar System
Wandering through district perhaps the
most chaotic in the moon, where ranges, peaks,
round mountains with fiat tops, are intermin-
gled in apparently inextncable confusion;
where there is no plain larger than a common
field, and that rent by assures and strewn with
blocks that have fallen from the overhanging
precipices, we descry in the horizon what
seems an immense ridge stretching further than
the eye can carry US, and rejecting the suns
rays with dazzling lustre. On approaching this
wall, through country still as toilsome, It APP
pears not Sc steep, but to have an outward slop-
ing, which, however rough, is yet practicable
to the strong of head and firm in knee. Ascend,
then, Oh traveller! Averting your eyes from the
burning sun, and having gained the summit, ex-
anime the landscape beyond Landscape? 1t is
type for the most horrible dream-a thing to
be thought of only with shudder.
We are on the topa circular precipice, which
seems to have enclosed space Of fifty-fve
miles in diameter from all the living world for
ever and ever. Below, where the wall casts
its shadow, it is black as 0rcus; no eye can pen
citrate its utter gloom; but where daylight has
touched the base chasm, its character isdisclos-
ed. Giddy it must be to stand on the summit
of Mont Blanc, or the Jungfrau, or Teneriffe;
but suppose Jacques Balmat, when he set the
first foot on that loftiest Alpine peak, and found
on the other sice, not the natural mountain he
had assembled, but one unbroken precipice thir-
teen thousand feet deep, below witch few ter
races disturbed the uniformity, and at some ten
miles distance from the base a chasm deeper,
from where he looked, by two thousand feet
than Mont Blanc, is elevated above the levei of
the sea-would even the stout Swiss have
brought home his senses? or rather, would he
have returned at all, and not lain their to this
hour, fascinated as by ten thousand rattle
snakes?
But EDWARDS, and to the bottom of this mys-
FERROUS place. No foot of man can take us there,
so that we must borrow wing from the condor.
OH, then-down, down, and arrivel 1t is, in
deed, terrible place. There are mountains in
1t, especially central one, 1000 feet high, and
five or six concentric ridges ofneariy the same
height, encircling the chasm; but the eye can
rest on nothing except that impossible wall,
without breach, only with few pinnacles on
its top, towering 1900 feet aloft on every
side, at the short distance of 81 miles, and baf-
fling our escape into the larger world. Moth
ing here but the scorching sun and burning sky;
no rain ever refreshes it, no cloud ever shelters
it; only benign night, with its stars, and the
mild face of the earth. But we tarry no longer;
so off again, and rest fora moment on the top
of the highest pinnacle. Look around now,
and away from Tycho. What sceneI Those
round hills with flat tops and craters, and the
whole visible surface is studded with them;
all of less diameter than Tycho, but probably as
deep.
Look yet further. What are those dazzling
beams like liquid silver, passing in countless
multitudes away from us along the whole sur
face of the moon? Favorites they are of the
sun; for he Eliminates them more than all else
besides, and assimilates them to his own burn
ing glory. And see! they go on every side from
Tycho. In his very centre, overspreading the
very chasm we have left, there is, now that the
sun has further assembled, plain of brilliant
light; and outside the wall, at this place at
least, a large space of similar splendor, from
which these rays depart. What they are we
know not, but they spread over at least one
third of the moons whole surface. And so this
chasm which, in first rashness, we termed hid
eous dream, is bound indissolubly to that orb,
on which, when the heart is panied, one longs
to look and be consoled and through her to the
benefcent universe, even by those silver though
mystic cords.