Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/327

 stained and smoked glass department of their narrow quarters. The blazing sun could not be looked at by the unprotected eye, through the clear diamond window-frames of the other part of the cabin. But when the fierce direct solar rays were screened off from the eye, all space was in the funereal darkness alluded to, with the striking variety of countless stars, above, around, and underneath, shining like brilliant points out upon the great jet-black buckler.

The look back upon the earth, after twenty or fifty thousand miles' distance, was indeed grand and interesting in its entire novelty. The best observations of that kind were made, however, on the return voyage, when the passengers' minds had become more used to the situation, and were, therefore, better composed. Meanwhile the keenest excitement arose, as the party approached the moon. Our colour-photography had long ago perfectly realized to us the moon's surface aspects; but still many questions awaited that critical solution, which only personal observation could give. No difficulty was met with in landing. Of course the party took to the area that was sun-lighted for the time; but they were careful to land at first upon the margin of the heated expanse, until, with their as yet unpractised hands, they could adjust themselves, and their protective apparatus, to the sun's scorching rays, untempered by intervening atmosphere, and to the sun-heated lunar ground. Each being duly arrayed in his independent breathing apparatus, and other panoply, the vessel was brought to anchor on the ragged projection of a small crater, and the whole party at once landed, and with eager curiosity commenced observations.