Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-03-31
PROFESSOR roRros,s LECTURE.
A Highly Interesting Presentation Of the
"History Of Dead World

PROFESSOR N0RfoNs LECTURE.
A Highly Interesting Presentation Of the
"History Of Dead World"
A very large and appreciativs audience
greeted Professor Norton at the Sixth-street
NJ E. Church last evening. when he gave.
under the auspices of the Chautauqua Literary
and Social Circle, his lecture upon "The
History of Dead World" This is one of
Mr.. Norton's best lectures. and is filed with
most intense interest from the beginning to
its close. The method Of treatment of his
subject as to the present condition of the
moon, with its past, future, ETC., is pecu.
liarly his own, and most successful.
The lecture was a study and illustration of
those phenomena which seem to teach the
nebular hypothesis of creation. All the sue
cessive phases of this development, including
the nebu'@. stars and sun, planets, and finally
the moon, the "dead world, (" were illustrated
and described. 1t is impossible to report in
full lecture 80 extended, but we append
description of one lunar day, which occurred
near the close Of the discourse
ONE LUNAR DAY.
Let us, in fancy, take such journey as per.
haps the emsncipated soulmsy take. across the
abysses of space. We must leave our bodies
behind us, and go forth on the voyage as I'm.
clothed spirits go. We swiftly traverse the
void and take our place in the center of the
moons visible hemisphere in the depth of the
lunar midnight. We are not wrapped in
complete darkness q silvery earth-light il
Eliminates such landscape as Dante might
have added to his pictures of the In
ferno. We are camped upon rugged
plain of CLASSY basalt and scoria
To the westward, the prodigious vol
csnic mass of Copernicus rises twelve
thousand feet above us, and to the northwsrd
the view is bounded by the great wall of the
Apernines, rising to Andean nights. They are
not forest-clothed or snow-crowned. We see
only basaltic needles and columns, and
enormous vertical precipices of CLASSY ohsi-
dian, standing unchanged and immovable
from age to sge-for here is no wind nor rain,
nor any active agency capable of disturbing
the deathly stiffness and repose. No stream
gnaws at the base of the tremendous preci-
pices no cloud rests upon their SUBMITS
NO SOUND EVER INVERTEBRATES
From mountain to mountain. Under our
feet the floor of lava seems to rest upon in
secure foundations. Vast chasms and crew
ices, Of inconceivable depth and filled with
mysterious darkness, traverse the plain. We
seem to be lost spirits-sole survivors of some
awful doom, dwelling upon the burnt-out
cinders of a floating planetary hell, now
dead and frozen to its heart.
We look upward and see a fairer vision
one Of planetary life. In the center of thu
black dome above UP. unchanging in its place
except as it sways imperceptibly northward
md orf hua I'd in O sliUhf viii
vast and bright as fifteen full moons, our
familiar earth. Around its equator the great
cloud-ring is revealed as a zone Of dazzling
wilderness; and cloud-masses are floating
everywhere, yet not wholly concealing the
well-known outlines of the continents. The
earth has no secret to hide from us, as the
moon hides one of its hem;spheres from the
earth. As we look upward we perceive a
steady rotation, the continents marching
past in panoramic succession. AS Asia van
ishes upon the eastern rim, America rises
upon the western the polar ice.caps shine
with a splendid white light. The earth re-
mains fixed in our zenith, but the stars march
past it in an endless flow. The milky way,
the consultations of the zodiac, the planets
in their order, all sweep by or are hidden for
a little while behind the great white orb,
which seems to take no part in the endless
procession of the universe; it whirls swiftly
and visibly on its axis, but never changes its
place. But for its slight pendulum swing,
1t is
FIXED IMMovABLY IN MID-HEAvEN.
1t was well that we left our bodies hidden
under the warm, white atmosphere Of the
earth; the great planet above us has COM
pleted more than seven revolutions since the
sunlight shone upon our resting place, and
around US is deadly, terrible cold, almost the
inconceivahle, absolute zero OF the inter-
planetary spaces.
The long night slowly wanes as we keep
our strange watch. 1t was lightest at the
lunar midnight, for black shadow is slowly
creeping across the esrth's splendid white
disk. 1t was perfect sphere when we first
looked upon it, but now it has completed
seven revolutions, and is but a hemisphere
half of it has been swallowed by blackness
1t is darkest just before the dawn but now
change is coming. There is no dawn
light in the sky, but the tremendous spires Of
the Apennines begin to glitter with an intense
bluish-white splendor. The moons morning
is at hand. There is no pomp of preparation,
such as we saw on earth no chariot Of Apollo
wrapped in gold and crimson clouds, no Au-
rora opening the gates of day; the glaring
blue light is strangely contrssted with the
utter blackness of the shadow. Slowly the
day gains upon the night, as the illumination
creeps downward toward the mountain bases.
Suddenly the rim of the sun rises above the
eastern horizon without moments prepar-
alton, or any gradual transition, we pass from
the depths of midnight to the light of the
lunar day. The deadly desolatiun of the
landscape is now fully revealed. We see only
volcanic ruins. ashes. scoris, hardened lava
flows, the chimneys Of burnt out craters. Not
a cloud floats in the heavens; not water
drop or blade of grass exists upon the plain.
There is no atmospheric persps ctive, no blue
veil of air hiding and softeuing the distant
outlines the hollow cones upon the fsrthest
horizon reveal features as sharp and clear as
those of the great mountain at whose feet we
stand. The sun shines with a destroying
brightness, and the rocks beneath us begin to
feel its power, and
GLOW WITH FERvENT HEAT.
We look upward, not upon vault of ten
der blue, but upon black abyss, crowded
with stars, as in the lunar midnight. The
earth still hangs from the center of the black
dome, but it has wsned to hollow cadent,
and as the sun glides past its light for little
while utterly goes out, but soon begins to
kindle again and grow, as the sun sinks
toward the west. The earth has made four
teen revolutions since the long day began,
and DOW the sun seems to rest upon the
southern slope of Copernicus. The valley is
o furnace, seven times heated the rocks are
luminous with dull red glow. But now the
sun goes down suddenly, without twilight;