Owing partly to roughness of the surface and partly to more
brilliant reflective power, the mountainous regions of the moon appear
bright in comparison with the dull-colored plains.
Some of the lunar mountains lie in long, massive chains, with towering
peaks, profound gorges, narrow valleys, vast amphitheaters, and beetling
precipices. Looking at them with a powerful telescope, the observer
might well fancy himself to be gazing down from an immense height into
the heart of the untraveled Himalayas. But these, imposing though they
are, do not constitute the most wonderful feature of the mountain
scenery of the moon.
Appearing sometimes on the shores of the "seas," sometimes in the midst
of broad plains, sometimes along the course of mountain chains, and
sometimes in magnificent rows, following for hundreds of miles the
meridians of the lunar globe, are tremendous, mountain-walled, circular
chasms, called craters. Frequently they have in the middle of their
depressed interior floors a peak, or a cluster of peaks. Their inner and
outer walls are seamed with ridges, and what look like gigantic streams
of frozen lava surround them. The resemblance that they bear to the
craters of volcanoes is, at first sight, so striking that probably
nobody would ever have thought of questioning the truth of the statement
that they are such craters but for their incredible magnitude. Many of
them exceed fifty miles in diameter, and some of them sink two, three,
four, and more miles below the loftiest points upon their walls! There
is a chasm, 140 miles long and 70 broad, named Newton, situated about
200 miles from the south pole of the moon, whose floor lies 24,000 feet
below the summit of a peak that towers just above it on the east! This
abyss is so profound that the shadows of its enclosing precipices never
entirely quit it, and the larger part of its bottom is buried in endless
night.
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