Page:The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (IA TheGreatMoonHoaxOf18351859).pdf/57

54 incandescent and inchoate planet-if so daring a figure may be ventured —felt the necessity of unusually strenuous measures. It gathered all its fiery energies, and mustered all its fearful strength. The effect was universal, not local. With such bodies distances of 25,000 miles must be trifling, and the earth's meridian—a paltry 8000 miles—not worth men. tioning. One can imagine the purpose and effort being common to the entire molter and raging mass.

It came at last. After throes of inconceivable agony, with a roar and & convulsion which must have destroyed every living thing then existent upon the face of the planet, in the midst of general chaos, confusion, and desolation, the earth relieved itself. It tore from its half-cooled surface immense masses, and projected them with monstrous force into space; not on one side alone, but on all. Lumps of earth four and five miles in thickness, and thousands of miles long and wide, were in an instant forced upwards with such force as to pass beyond the circle of the earth's attraction. These various masses, thus launched into space, soon felt the attraction of each other, and assembled together. They met, and, agreeably to the sublime law of celestial bodies, remained suspended in space at the point where the attraction of the earth meets that of the sun. That other celestial law which forbids the torpidity of any atom of matter compelled the aggregated mass to revolve, and the revolution forced the mass into a spherical shape.

Thus the moon came into being. An offshoot from the earth, it pays homage to its parent by revolving round it, and reflecting back to it a part of the sun's light during the period when that luminary is obscured to us. Had the force with which its substance was expelled from the body of the earth been less, it would have returned to our surface, just as those fragments of matter called aerolites do at regular intervals; had that force been greater, it would have entered upon the vast area which is the domain of the sun, and would have been attracted to that great cosmical body, and been fused by its intense heat. It was sent abroad with precisely the force necessary to sustain it in equilibrio between the earth and the sun, and hence it is "the lesser light which rules the night."

This is not the only service which it renders us. By its creation it caused great hollows in the surface of the earth. Into these hollows the Waters which lay on the face of the deep naturally gathered, and became oceans, lakes, seas, and rivers. The cavities drained the earth of the moisture which had rendered it unfit for the habitation of the higher order of vertebrated creatures. Thus by degrees were formed the great