chasms were the dried-up beds of ancient rivers or not they were unable thoroughly to ascertain. 

 The Americans, among others, hoped one day or other to determine this geological question. They also undertook to examine the true nature of that system of parallel ramparts discovered on the moon’s surface by Gruithuysen, a learned professor of Munich, who considered them to be “a system of fortifications thrown up by the Selenitic engineers.” These two points, yet obscure, as well as others, no doubt, could not be definitely settled except by direct communication with the moon. 

 Regarding the degree of intensity of its light, there was nothing more to learn on this point. It was known that it is 300,000 times weaker than that of the sun, and that its heat has no appreciable effect upon the thermometer. As to the phenomenon known as the “ashy light,” it is explained naturally by the effect of the transmission of the solar rays from the earth to the moon, which give the appearance of completeness to the lunar disc, while it presents itself under the crescent form during its first and last phases. 

 Such was the state of knowledge acquired regarding the earth’s satellite, which the Gun Club undertook to perfect in all its aspects, cosmographic, geological, political, and moral. 

 

CHAPTER VI. PERMISSIVE LIMITS OF IGNORANCE AND BELIEF IN THE UNITED STATES

 The immediate result of Barbicane’s proposition was to place upon the orders of the day all the astronomical facts relative to the Queen of the Night. Everybody set to work to study assiduously. One would have thought that the moon had just appeared for the first time, and that no one had ever before caught a glimpse of her in the heavens. The papers revived all the old anecdotes in which the “sun of the wolves” played a part; they recalled the influences which the ignorance of past ages ascribed to her; in short, all America was seized with selenomania, or had become moon-mad. 

 The scientific journals, for their part, dealt more especially with the questions which touched upon the enterprise of the Gun Club. The letter of the Observatory of Cambridge was published by them, and commented upon with unreserved approval. 

 Until that time most people had been ignorant of the mode in which the distance which separates the moon from the earth is calculated. They took advantage of this fact to explain to them that this 

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