Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1847-07-01
HE GREAT CRATER IN THE MooN.-

HE GREAT CRATER IN THE Moon
Modern Improvements of the Telescope
seem to have given new impulse and in
terest every where to astron omical research
We have remarkable description Of one o
those vast caverns or craters in the Moon
some sixty miles in diameter, which tn,
| telescope of Lord Rose has introduced te
the inhabitants of our earth To this era
ter the name Tycho has been given, ane
the following highly graphic, though some
what indistinct, account of it is taken from
DR.. Nichols "Contemplations on the Solar
System -
"Wandering through a district perhaps
the most chaotic in the moon, where ranges
peaks, round mountains with flat tops, are
intermingled in apparently inextrcable con-
fusion; where there is no plain larger than
a common field and that rent by fshures
and slrewn 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
lus,re. On approaching this wall, through
a country still as toilsome, it appears not so
steep, but to have an outward sloping, which,
however rough, is yet practicable sto the
strong of head and firm of knee Ascend,
then, oh traveller! Adverting your eyes
from the burning sun, and having gained
the summit, examine the landscape beyond.
Landscape? 1t is a type for the most hor-
rible dream-a thing to be thought of only
with shudder.
eve are on the top Of a circular preci-
plce, 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 Orcus; no eye can penetrate its utter
gloom; but where daylight has touched
the base chasm its character is disclosed
Giddy it must be to stand on the summit of
Mount Blanc, or the Jungfrau, or Tenerfle !;
but suppose Juacques Balmat, when he Sc,
the first foot on that lofliest Alpine peak,
had found on the other side, not the natural
mountain he had assembled, but one unbrok-
en- precipice thirteen thousand feet deep, be-
low which few terraces. disturbed the uni
formity, and at some ten miles distance from
its base, chasm deeper from where he
looked by two thousand feet than Mount
Blanc is elevated above the level of the sea
would even the stout Swiss have brought
home his senses or rather would he have
returned at all, and not lain there to this
hour fascinated as by ten thousand rattle
snakes?
"But onwards, and to the bottom of this
mysterious place! No foot of man can
take US there, so that we must borrow a
wing from the condor. Off, then-down,
down, arrive! tits, indeed, a terrible place!
There are mountains in it, especially GEN.
trail one, four thousand feet high, and five
or six concentric ridges of nearly the same
height, encircling the chasm; but the eye
can rest on nothing except that impossible
wall, without breach: only with a few pin
nacles on its top, towering seventeen thou
sand feet aloft on every side, at the short
distance of twenty-seven miles, and battling
our escape into the larger world. Nothing
here but the scorching sun and burning sky;
no rain ever refreshes it, no cloud ever shell
tiers it; only by benign night with its stars,
and the mild face Of the earth. But we tar
ry no longer; SO off again, and rest for a
moment on the top of the highest pinnacle.
Look around now, and away from Tycho.
What scene! Those round hills with fiat
tops are craters, and the whole visible sur
face is studded with them; all of less diam
eter than Tycho, but probably as deep.
':Look yet further. What are those daz-
zling beams, like liquid silver, passing in
countless mul.itudes away from US along
the surface Of the moon? Favorites they
are of the sun; for he illumines them more
than all else besides and assmulates them
to his own burning glory. And see! they
60 on every side from Tycho. In his very
centre, overspreading the very chasm we
further assembled, plain of brilliant light
and outside the wall, at this place at least
large space of similar splendor, from
which these rays depart. What they are
we know not, but they spread over at leas
one-third of the moons whole surface
And so this chasm which, in first rashness
we termed hideous dream, is bound in
dissolubly to that orb, on which, when the
heart is panied, one longs TO look and be
consoled, and through her to the beniicen
universe, even by those sylver though mys.
tic cords"
PREJUDICE AGIN CoLoR.-One of the
niger orators at the late Abolition gable.
ment in Boston, after enlightenin his audi.