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Rh CHAPTER II.

COPERNICUS.

ROM Ptolomæus I directed my car to the great ring of Copernicus, the rival of mighty Tycho. It was a vast plain of 56 miles diameter, walled in by ramparts, in rising terraces up to 12,000 feet. The peaks in succession glistened in the sunlight.

Then I turned westward from Copernicus to the huge chains of the lunar Apennines, which recalled to my mind, more than anything else I had seen since I had left Trehyndra, the memory of the mountains of the earth. Long lines of peaks with narrow gorges, with lines of awful precipices, such as you cannot imagine. Some of the peaks were as lofty as Mont Blanc. The scenery was magnificent and terrible.

From these peaks (on which I rested) I looked over the vast plains—those waterless seas of the moon—like what your Atlantic, or Pacific, or even North Sea, would be if the