Their mode of living is very much like that of the white villagers and they too possess much precious stones and minerals. Because of the nature of the mountains in which these people live they do not produce their own food but receive their vegetables and grain from the white tribespeople in the valley. Being explorers by nature, as they are, they provide many of the gems the white ones possess. Their exchange system is not based on value of articles exchanged but rather on the needs and desires of the people.
On some of their exploring expeditions they have gone far from home. In this way they have learned more of other places and other people than the whites.
Through the interpreters we tried to find out how much farther we would have to go to find a good sized city and in what direction.
The chieftain tells us there is a city about a thousand miles to the northeast from their village.
Bob asked if he was talking about the one we had seen from the air.
He answered, "No, that isn't the one." Then he added that if we wanted to fly there in our ship, he would be glad to go with us to show us the way. He seemed to enjoy flying. It was something different than he had ever done before.
We told him we would like to have him go with us and the date was set for two days later.
Now we have returned to our ship. The dark chieftain also sent six of his men back with us to serve us for the time we are staying on the Moon. After arriving at the ship, having this trip two days later to prepare for, we had these native boys help us remove some of the supplies we had brought with us from Earth and which we wouldn't need on the trip, thereby lessening the weight of the ship.
The two days of waiting were spent exploring more of the light side. The darkies acted as our guides while the whites remained at the ship. We went to some of the larger craters acting as valleys. Here there was no lack of material for building many homes, if anyone wanted to use that type of material, for there was an abundance of beautiful volcanic rock. It seemed that the whole Moon on the light side was of volcanic nature. Yet we have found some granite, like that on Earth, brown or red sand which could easily have been soil at one time, dehydrated now. Also we came across a large territory that on Earth we would call desert, which on examination showed that it could have been the bottom of a river or sea, with quite a lot of vegetation of moss-like nature like we saw first in the crevices, and a certain amount of moisture. At nightfall the moisture increased in surprising abundance. In places some of these flat spots looked a little like our Salton Sea territory. There was a variety of small creatures. One especially could easily have been related to our horned toad, except that its body was long instead of being broad.
All this time we had no need for oxygen masks. We could not walk as far without rest, due to the light air and the heat, but it was fairly comfortable at that. Of course we did strike out exploring in the early morning when it was not yet too hot. In fact, we believe that this desert region surrounded with volcanic craters and mountains could be very fertile, once water was brought to it. It seems that if trees and vegetation were planted here, they soon would cool off the desert. And there is plenty of water on the dark side. This could be piped here for irrigation purposes without too much trouble, we believe.