(Left for the Editor at the Railway Station)
[Reprinted from the Exe Valley Magazine]
Dear Cousin,—
Knowing how exceedingly anxious you must be to find out all you can respecting this little planet on which I live, I take this opportunity to send you a few lines to give you some little account of it.
The moon, in many particulars, is like the earth on which you dwell; and perhaps there is no better way to give you a little more information about this planet than by instituting a comparison between it and the earth.
I must presume you are aware that the earth is a globe, nearly round, like an orange; its circumference is about 24,000 miles, and its diameter 8,000. The moon in this respect is like the earth, being also a globe, but it is only 2,160 miles in diameter, and about 7,000 miles in circumference. It would therefore take forty-nine moons to compose a globe the size of the earth. If you will take two threads and suspend an orange and a small cherry at six feet apart, you will then have a fair representation of the relative size and distance from each other of the earth and the moon. But the earth and the moon are not suspended by any visible or tangible object, but were launched forth in the beginning, and are kept in their places by the balance of attraction, constantly revolving, and travelling onward by the direction of Him who also created the insignificant worm, and whose tender care is over all His works.
You know, dear cousin, that the surface of the earth is diversified with large continents, which are dotted with chains of mountains and high hills, some of which are in a state of volcanic eruption. You have also great oceans of water lying in the hollows of your world. In the moon, too, we have mountains and hills, some of them very high and steep, thrown up ages ago by volcanic agency, though at present there is not a trace of existing fire or volcanic action, and you may safely consider the whole mass of the moon to be a huge, exhausted, burnt-out cinder. Your mountains and hills are denuded—worn down—their sharp points and angles are worn away by frost, rain, and snow, and other atmospheric influences which have been constantly acting upon them for ages; but here in the moon we have no such thing as an atmosphere: we therefore have neither clouds nor rain, nor frost nor snow; and in the words of the poet—
Here are no storms, no noise,
But silence and eternal sleep.
All here is as quiet and silent as the grave. Sometimes, from the great heat of the sun, great masses of rock will split and crack, and come tumbling down from the sides of the cliffs; yet if you were close on the spot you would not hear the slightest sound, because there is no atmosphere by which sound can be propagated and conveyed. Your fields are clad with verdure, and your pastures with flocks, so that as one of your inspired poets has sung—
The valley stands so thick with corn
That they do laugh and sing,