Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/330

 Many a gourmet amongst us, as he turned from what he, perhaps rather fastidiously, is pleased to call common laboratorial fare, to the naturally grown kippered lunite, exclaimed with a slight alteration of ancient Shakespeare, that "one taste of nature made all stomachs kin."

Our pioneering party spent a week upon the moon, and being mostly men of high scientific attainment, the week was a busy one, the moon traversing one of her quarters meanwhile, and bringing the party into the full glare of the fierce sunshine. All were, however, prepared for every trial; and some of the more youthful of the party, by way of practically showing their complete and easy adaptation, became quite frolicsome, as they exercised their limbs by jumping up to fifty or sixty feet from the ground, in illustration of the comparatively small gravitation upon the lunar surface. But at length they all pack up, re-embark, and start back for home.

That home had been, indeed, during all this interval, a grand object before them—so huge, with all its land and water markings, and snow-white poles, varied by the light but ever-passing clouds, that they could hardly realize the said home to be nearly a quarter of a million of miles away. Returning at a comparatively swift pace, the chief interest now centred in the rapidly enlarging form of the earth. No less than fifteen hours had been precautionarily occupied in the outward voyage—a voyage we to-day easily make in an hour, inclusive of slacks! But the