Sure enough, the darkies were at the ship watching over our things when we reached there, and mighty glad to see us. They made us understand they also would like to have us visit their village.
We promised them we would the following day.
In the meantime we want to do something for ourselves. When night came on the light side where our ship is, we thought we would like to investigate a little more in reference to our Earth from which we had come. So we focused the six inch telescope upon the Earth and to our amazement, what we saw made us ashamed of ourselves. For we were like most of the people on Earth, thinking our planet was the finest in the vastness of the heavens and the only one capable of maintaining human beings like us. But had we not come from there, and looked at the Earth through a telescope as we are now doing, we would never have believed that there could be even as much as a fly living upon it, for it looked so very bleak. It did not even have one percent of the markings which the Moon shows from the Earth. We could not believe our own eyes. But the old saying is that seeing is believing.
Some of the markings that we did see were very, very small dark patches here and there, which we figured must have been forests or vegetation. They were so small that they were hardly noticeable. For the most part, all that we could see was that it was rough in some spots. Mountains on Earth showed up like little pebbles do in the craters on the Moon, just enough to be rough. As for the oceans, we could not tell whether it was water or not. We assumed that it was the oceans, knowing just about where they were, but they looked more like a desert area.
"You know, fellows," commented Johnny, "if I didn't see it, I wouldn't believe it. Now I can understand the surprised expressions on the faces of these natives when we showed them where we had come from. It wasn't at all what I thought at the time."
And he was right, for really it was almost unbelievable to us that we could have come from any place like that to the Moon, or that there could be any people living there.
Right then and there we figured if that is all the showing of decent markings observable of the Earth from the Moon, we get better showings than that of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn through the telescopes on Earth. At least there is something to look at and not just a ball of light.
As we sit through the long Moon night, observing the Earth pass through her phases as seen from here, an amazing fact reveals itself to us and unfolds as we think about it. Through our little telescope the appearance of the Earth is as distinct as the Moon appears when observed through telescopes on Earth.
Coming here we verified the fact that the Moon has an atmospheric belt of three hundred miles in width surrounding her. We know now that although this atmosphere is lighter than the Earth's, we can easily live here comfortably, with the most noticeable difference being that we do not tire so easily and our minds are quicker in receptivity.
The Earth has an atmospheric belt of five hundred miles width surrounding her, with the heaviest atmosphere being closest to the Earth.