Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/328



Of course we now know a great deal in that way about the moon, to which we are ever excursioning nowadays, much as our ancestors of a thousand years ago were wont to do to Brighton; but on that first visit everything aroused interest and wonder. The great shrinkings and deep and lengthened cracks of the lunar surface enabled the more adventurous of the party to make successful subterranean exploration, and bring up from the depths no small lunar information, geological and even historical. Already, even from this first visit, could science conclude, in confirmation of previous theory, that the moon, millions of years ago, had been fully peopled, having possessed then an atmosphere and seas like our earth; but that air and water having been both nearly all absorbed since, all the higher-structure animals and plants had died off, leaving only a few dwarfed and stunted animal forms, which hybernated with the cold of the long lunar nights, and crept out into the light and warmth of the long day. The lunar world was thus found to be nearly cold as well as nearly dead. At the bottom of the cracks and fissures lay the contracted remnants of the lunar waters, now possessed by only a few surviving small fish, mostly blind. A remnant of thin atmosphere rested upon these waters, and gave breath to certain low-class, slug-like animals, clustering in the fissure sides. During the long lunar day, the heated and expanded air overflows from the fissures in a thin and all but impalpable layer. And thus we had been unable, from the earth's, standpoint, to detect previously either air or water.