“I confess,” said I, “that you have demonstrated the possibility of a development among the articulates quite equal at least to that of mammals. You must have animals of some sort in your seas and lakes; what do you do with them?”
[52]
“We have some large soft bodied animals, something akin to your large mollusks and others having a cartilaginous frame, but we have no bony fishes. These animals are sometimes caught and turned into food products, the same as other organic refuse, but never eaten directly, as we are vegetarians. The amount of water surface on our planet is quite small compared with yours. The seas are narrow, but of immense depth. Indeed, some of them are known to have passages communicating directly through the planet and connecting the waters of the exterior continent, with those of the “Pocket”. The fluctuation of the tides takes place bi-monthly, with enormous force through these “bores.” When the moon is between the earth and sun the tide rises on the exterior continent, and when on the opposite side, it rises in the interior continent, the amount of the rise being very great in the neighborhood of these “bores,” but inconsiderable elsewhere.”
“Your climate I suppose is very different from ours—of course it must be.”
“Yes certainly, and the climate of the interior continent differs greatly from that of the exterior. On the polar regions of the exterior continent, we experience the extreme change of seasons, that occur on earth, from a very cold winter to a very hot summer—all in the space of about 29? of your days or 709 hours. In the equatorial regions, however, the extremes are greatly tempered by the winds, which always blow toward the position of the sun, by the great evaporation that takes place during the day, and by the fact that the air of the equatorial belt is both higher and denser than that in the polar regions.[53] In many cases, the upper air is charged with heavy clouds, that remain suspended all night or all winter, as you choose, and these prevent the land from becoming very cold.”
“Vegetation must come on very rapidly during your little summers,” I observed.
“Yes, it does. We have grasses that grow from the sown seed and mature their grains in eight days. But, we have others, whose habit requires that they be sown about midwinter, and they are harvested in midsummer. Other plants are annual, dropping their leaves soon after darkness sets in and putting forth new ones again as soon as daylight returns. Our food plants are, however, chiefly raised artificially in both the exterior and the interior continents. The farms are often immense buildings covering several acres and consisting of from ten to twenty stories, each story comprising a farm. As our space can thus be multiplied indefinitely, and as we can raise twelve or more crops a year in the same space, you see a single acre can be made to be equal to one or two hundred. It is not necessary to use this degree of economy of room in all cases, and so, many farms consist of but a single story on the ground, and often on the exterior continent only the suns rays are employed instead of electricity to furnish energy for the growth of the crop. Even this method gives us about 13 crops a year. The artificial methods are generally preferred, however, as they are far more certain and reliable. In the interior continent of course these methods prevail exclusively.”
“It seems strange,” said I, “that the spaces in[54] the interior continent, should be great enough to hold any considerable population. We have on earth some large caves, but put them all together and they would not afford shelter for the inhabitants of a small city.”
“The caves that are at present accessible to you, are small and due to the action of water. All springs, by carrying out mineral matter in solution from below the surface, are constructing caves, and much more extensive ones than might be supposed. But those formed by the action of volcanoes, your explorers have had little opportunity to study, and, but few probably have any adequate idea of the sizes of the holes left under the surface, by the ejection of materials by volcanoes.
“Some of your scientists estimated that the volcano Krakatoa, in the East Indies, during a couple of days in August, 1883, discharged a cubic mile of materials. The volcano has had a great many eruptions in times past, and has thrown out a great many cubic miles. The materials composing the mountain itself, have all been thrown from its crater, and the same thing has happened in the case of all the volcanoes on earth, of which there are thousands. The spaces left in the crust of the earth by this process, have amounted in the aggregate to hundreds of thousands of cubic miles. Many spaces thus formed, have been filled again by melted materials pressed up from below, by the pressure of the crust upon the melted interior. But a vast amount of empty space yet remains and will continue to be added to for millions of years to come. As the earth grows older and colder, internally, the crust will become thicker[55] and more unyielding, so that as new subterranean spaces are formed by volcanic activity, fewer of these will be filled up again and the final aggregate of them will doubtless in time reach millions of cubic miles. The spaces comprising the “Pocket” continent of the moon, above the sea level, are estimated by us to amount to about 1,500,000 cubic miles.”
“This then,” I observed, “must give you a continent in there of something like 1,500,000 cubic miles, supposing the space to be a mile high.”
“Yes, but that is not the shape of the interior. The ground floor of our continent at or near the sea level is only about 800,000 square miles, and it consists of thousands of separated chambers, varying from a few rods to many miles in extent, and of every conceivable shape, some being circular or oval, some long and narrow, and straight or crooked. There are a great many of the long narrow sort, extending in some cases as much as 400 miles, widening in some places to as much as ten miles and again narrowing down to half a mile. These are nothing less than cracks in our planet. They run in many directions, often intersecting each other, and they extend far down toward the center and upward in some places eight or ten miles before the sides arch together in a mighty dome. There are water marks high up the sides of these great chambers showing the sea level to have been much higher in ancient times than at present, and the action of the water on the sides has greatly widened the spaces, the materials being washed into the bottomless fissures, that extend toward the center of the planet.”
[56]
“How do you account for the changes in the sea-level?” I inquired.
“As the moon cooled off, a great deal of water was taken up by the rocks, while crystallizing and thus chemically united with them, a great deal more was absorbed by them mechanically, by their pores, while a still greater quantity occupies large fissures and chambers, penetrating in all directions through the planet communicating with each other and connecting the interior waters with those of the exterior continent. The action of the water has greatly contributed, not only to the enlargement of the spaces in the interior continent, but to the creation of a pulverized soil and pleasing landscapes. The chambers that are inhabited, are of course all connected with each other, but besides these, it is quite certain there are great numbers of very extensive ones in the masses of materials that bound the inhabited chambers. Artificial tunnels are constantly being cut into these walls and so new countries are often discovered and connected with the rest and opened for settlement. In addition to those chambers that come down to the sea level the aggregate of the area of which I told you is about 800,000 square miles, there are vast areas situated at higher levels in the material, that bounds the sea-level chambers. These elevated areas are at all heights from one-fourth of a mile to four or five miles above the sea-level. There are known to be many above these, but they are not habitable, on account of lightness of the air. The elevated chambers are connected with each other, and with the lower ones, by means of sloping passages at all grades. In some cases[57] chambers are located directly on top of the thick roof of others and are reached by long and circuitous routes. In a number of cases, the walls of sea-level chambers, after closing in almost together to form an arch over them, widen out again above and thus form other chambers above, and sometimes these stories continue one above another until the surface of the hump is reached, where the openings appear sometimes as channels, and at others, as circular craters.”
“No doubt,” said I, “the craters that our astronomers see in such vast numbers on this side of the moon communicate with your interior continent.”
“Yes they do.”
“Then is it possible, that they sometimes see down to your interior habitations? They report some of these craters, as appearing to be many miles deep.”
“They cannot see down to our habitations, for two reasons. In the first place, although the craters connect with the vast labyrinth of passages and chambers below, with few exceptions they bend and subdivide into numerous dividing branches long before they get down to a habitable level. In the second place there are perpetual clouds standing in all those passages, that lead to the surface of the hump, at various elevations of from two or three to eight or ten miles above the sea level. Of course it is not possible to see down through these—nor up through them either—except when they are cleared away for a special purpose, as is done sometimes for the benefit of our astronomers.”
“They sometimes look out through these craters[58] then, do they? How do they get rid of the clouds?”
“I will describe one of the craters used by the astronomers for an observatory. It is the shape of a funnel with a diameter at the surface of the hump of twenty-five miles. From there it tapers rapidly inwards till at a distance of about 29 miles below the surface, it has narrowed down to a mile in diameter. This is the entrance, down to what was originally a vast dome shaped chamber. This chamber is now filled to the roof on one side, by material poured down through the funnel, while on the other side the material consisting of volcanic ashes, scoria, rocks etc., slopes down for three miles, the over-arching dome finally closing down to it leaving only a few narrow passages through into other chambers. Well up on this slope and nearly under the center of the great funnel, our astronomers established their observatory. This is for the special purpose of examining the earth, which is always in sight from this point, and as it rolls itself over every twenty-four hours, without apparently moving out of its tracks, it is seemingly on exhibition for our sole benefit. As we revolve around it every month we are enabled to see both poles alternately, while the whole of the equatorial parts can be seen every twenty-four hours.
“We are thus enabled to make far more complete and perfect maps of the earth, than you have yourselves. We have powerful telescopes. The one at the funnel observatory I am telling you of, can bring the earth within forty miles.”
“If it brought it eleven miles further it would[59] stop up the funnel and become invisible, wouldn’t it?” said I.
His eyes expressed a slight gleam of humor, which I fancied was tinged by a shade of compassion, as he recognized this for a joke, and then he went on:
“As to the clouds—they are cleared away whenever we wish, by means of artificial thunder storms. Metallic conductors have been put in place up the sides of the lofty chambers, and at the proper heights are fixed with their poles pointing across the space, the positive on one side and the negative on the opposite. Heavy electric discharges are then made, the spark which is often one-fourth of a mile long traversing the cloud and speedily condensing it into rain. The observatory, I have spoken of, is too high to be often affected by clouds, but when the funnel is hazy, it can soon be cleared out. There are several observatories on this side of the moon situated like this one, and their chief business is the examination of the earth, which is our most interesting celestial object, and which can never be seen from the external continent, except at its extreme east and west ends, from which position it is seen low down on the horizon.”
“It must be extremely handy,” said I, “to be able to produce a shower whenever you wish. The formation of these clouds however presupposes great evaporation.”
“Yes, evaporation takes, place from the numerous sheets of sea water in the various chambers, the aggregate of which is estimated at about 120,000 square miles. There is more or less of this sea water in almost every one of the sea-level chambers. Besides[60] the evaporation from these bodies of water, more or less evaporation occurs from every one of the industries in which water is used, and so the aggregate is very considerable. But it is always nearly uniform in quantity, in the interior continent. As the suspended moisture comes into contact with the upper walls and roofs of the lofty chambers, it is being constantly condensed, and the fresh water thus formed trickles down the walls and slopes in drops, rills and brooks, and finds its way through the ground and porous rocks. Many underground streams are formed that find their way into the high-level chambers, which are thus supplied with pure water. The inhabitants of others have supplied themselves by tunnelling through into the upper parts of lofty chambers, that have their floors at the sea-level, and thus they tap the clouds themselves.”
“Our astronomers tell us that some of the Lunar craters are 60 or 80 miles in diameter or even more, which indicates that an enormously greater amount of volcanic action has taken place on the moon than on the earth. How is that?”
He replied, “Our opinion is this: The volcanic action in the moon toward its close and final cessation, was enormous. The planet had already been completely honeycombed by former convulsions and the seas had poured themselves into the underground openings, until there was almost as much water below the surface as above. This water kept up a continual contention with the melted interior, resulting in still greater explosions, sending out enormous quantities of volcanic matter, forming cones in some cases twenty-five miles high and over 100 miles[61] in diameter. The enormous weight of these volcanic cones in many cases proved too great to be supported by the crust, that separated them from the interior cavities their materials had been blown out of, and so they broke through—that is the central part of the cones broke through, leaving a margin of their bases all around, standing like the walls of a crater. But these are not the original craters, as you can see. If they were, they would be on top of elevated cones of enormous height, which they are not.”
“This view appears to me very plausible and I feel the more interested in the subject, because the idea constantly impresses itself upon me, that the earth is repeating the history of the moon. According to our theories of evolution the two bodies separated from each other, when they were in the condition of hot expanded gases, and as the moon contained only 1/81 part as much matter as the earth, it cooled down and became a habitable world, many millions of years before the earth. Since you have been talking to me, the impression has constantly grown upon me, that your moon history is really an anticipation of our own, and it becomes the more interesting on that account.”
His eyes expressed extreme satisfaction, as he replied that he was glad that I had seen that point.
“We have in one of the provinces of the interior continent, an immense university, devoted to the study of mundane affairs, past, present and future. The duty is assigned me of holding a professorship in this university, in the college of ‘Mundane Prognostication’. As this college has been in operation for[62] over 100,000 years, we have had abundant opportunity to verify our system of prognostication, and you would be surprised at the accuracy with which our predictions have been realized in your history. Of course, we could have done nothing, but for the basis our own history gave us to work on.”
“Well,” said I, “I can’t say that I am sorry to know that my time will be out long before the earth reaches the conditions that makes it necessary for the inhabitants to retreat underground. These spaces below must indeed be queer places to live in, for it don’t seem like they would be exposed to storms, as if out of doors, and yet not cosy and homelike, as if in a house, and I don’t see how they can be otherwise than cold damp and gloomy—that is, viewed from the stand point of earth. Am I right?”
“No,” he replied, “you are not. Those abodes, as we have them fixed up on the moon, you would regard as more delightful than anything you have on earth, and as equalling your dreams of paradise. There are as you suppose no storms and no extremes of temperature. There is always a very light breeze blowing, half the time in one direction, and half in the other. This is caused by the action of the sun on the external continent, as it progressively passes over it from east to west. There is always fog and cloud at all the entrances to the interior continent that prevent the radiation of heat and help preserve an even temperature within. All the inhabited chambers are made as bright as sunlight by immense and numerous electric lights, which are placed with reference to the best, effects both from a utilitarian and an artistic point of view. They are generally[63] placed at great elevations, and are often arranged to imitate the constellations of the heavens, so that looking up, one may see a portion of the sky as he would see it from the external continent, and by traveling about among the various interior provinces, he can see the whole of it. In some of the chambers, the lights are made to represent the members of the solar system and each one is caused to make the movements properly, belonging to it, the whole constituting a planetarium on an immense scale—in some instances—several miles in diameter and three miles above the floor.”
“I can well imagine the glory of such scenery and such possibilities,” said I, “but I do not see by what mechanism you can accomplish such results.”
“You must remember,” he replied, “that we have resources, that your race does not possess. With you a great many things would be practically out of the question that with us are very easy. In the first place, we are a flying race as you see, and this means a great deal on the moon’s external continent, and still more in the internal continent, where on account of the attraction of the earth and the hump, our weight is much reduced without a corresponding reduction of strength. The fluttering and flying about of crowds overhead is one of the pleasing features of our life.
“In the second place, the power of neutralizing the gravity of metals, as I have explained to you, enables us to erect works miles above the ground more easily than you do at the surface. In fact the works erect themselves and the most we do is to tether them at the proper height to keep them from[64] going too far. When motion is required to be given them, the globes of light are sometimes attached to a car that is made to run on a single rail elliptical track, which may be suspended at any elevation and reduced to a minimum weight by proper adjustments of its gravitation, the light globe being either suspended from the car or floating above it. The elliptical orbit is inclined enough to enable gravity to propel the car. An automatic shunt turns on repulsion when the car reaches the lowest part of the orbit and it is then forwarded on the up grade portion, shunted again at the top and so on perpetually. Another machine often used is a hollow cylindrical stem suspended from the dome, having a series of wheels, concentric with the cylinder, one above another and caused to revolve horizontally at different rates, by clockwork inside the cylinder. Globes of light are suspended by long wires to these wheels, which by their revolution, at varying rates, cause the globes by centrifugal motion to describe large or small orbits as desired. All sorts of eccentric and peculiar motions are imparted to the globes by variations in the regularity of the revolutions of the wheels, the spheres falling toward the center when the motion is slow and flying outward when it is fast. The mazes of a cotillion are often imitated, and the performance is called the ‘dancing of the spheres’. This is also accompanied by music, sometimes by local bands situated on the ground playing in concert with the movement, at other times by immense instruments operated by the same machinery that drives the spheres.
“It is not difficult for you to imagine the beauty[65] and grandeur of some of these overhead scenes. Of course the power used is electricity, and it is used liberally and freely since its cost is merely nominal. Heat as well as light is supplied through the same means and used for all purposes, domestic, industrial and public. Our houses are very tasteful and often highly ornamental. The architecture is light and graceful and suited to a mild and quiet climate, for we have the pleasant air of your tropics without their storms or excessive heat. A slight sprinkle of rain is all we ever have in the shape of a storm in any part of the interior continent, and these sprinkles are rendered periodical by artificial means. There are no wide agricultural tracts with us, nor densely populated cities, but the population is distributed in towns, and continuous villages line the roads, each of which is devoted to some principal productive industry. There are principal streets that run miles, passing through and connecting these towns, and often bending so as to make a complete circuit. The streets are wide and we are always furnished with a number of rail tracks, and paved with a hard smooth material—sometimes stone and sometimes iron or alumina. The only vehicles used on the streets, besides the rail cars are light, private and pleasure carriages, propelled by storage batteries. The roads that unite the various internal provinces to each other and to the external continent, are chiefly the gravity roads, that I have already described to you. In some cases to save room, the roads are built in stories, one track above another. The work shops and farms, are situated conveniently near on streets parallel to the main thoroughfares,[66] and their products are conveyed from them, and their materials to them, on roads laid on those streets.”
“I should like to know something about your social and political arrangements, your industrial economy and your form of government,” said I. “If the government controls the increase of population, I suppose it must control labor and production; and consumption too—how is that?”
“The sort of control, which the government exercise is almost exclusively advisory. There is no government control in the sense of the term as used on earth. All productive labor is expended for the creation of common property, to which, when created, every individual has equal title. Not the slightest compulsion however is put upon labor, nor the least prohibition upon consumption.”
“Do you mean to say that nobody is obliged to work, and yet everyone can take what he wants from the common stock?”
“Yes.”
“Then yours is an angelic race, truly. We have not anything like that on this earth, and I reckon, we never will have.”
“The human race, as a whole, is not yet like it, although the tendency is certainly that way and it would be rash to predict it never will be, but there are other and older races on earth, that you overlook. Consider our relatives the Bees; did you ever see a lazy bee or one that wanted more than a reasonable share of the common property?”
“Yes,” said I, “it has become instinctive with[67] them to work and their wants are likewise, only such as instinct dictates.”
“Instincts,” he replied, “are only crystallizations of reason. They are habits become hereditary to such a degree that the person is liable to fall into them with little or no teaching. I know that the people of the human race pride themselves greatly on the assumed fact that they act from reason, while other animals act from instinct, but the fact is, that 99 out of every 100 good acts that human beings perform, are done through instinct or inherited disposition to do them, while only one is reasoned out. And your teachers appear to understand that your instincts alone are to be depended upon to produce good actions, since they always depreciate and throw suspicion on good acts not done from the “heart” that is, not done from instinct. They give little or no credit for such actions, and strive by cultivation of the emotions to substitute disinterested impulse or in other words instinct, for mere calculating reason. Now, we Lunarians have long since passed this stage. Lazy Lunarians are as impossible as lazy bees. To work is instinctive with us and so is consideration for the rights and dues of the rest, and as everyone can be relied on to obey his instincts, it is not necessary to watch any one to keep him from plundering the public or shirking out of his duties.”
“There have often been socialistic communities with us,” said I, “that have endeavored to live on the principles you speak of. But their lives have been of the most monotonous dead level sort. There is no chance for individuality or for the development[68] or exercise of the superior talents, which some are certain to possess in a higher degree than others. They are merely little despotisms and endure only while their leaders are people of exceptional ability. We do not regard such a state of society as desirable even if it could be made permanent.
“With us,” he replied, “the greatest liberty is accorded to the individual, but so well grounded is our predisposition to work for the benefit of the community, that no one has any fear or suspicion that another is not doing what he ought, or is able to do for the common good. There are extensive colleges for art, literature, science and invention, accessible to any according to their several tastes. If a person thinks, for example, that he has the conception of a valuable invention, he is admitted to the college of invention where there is every facility and appliance for developing the idea and constructing the machine or instrument. In these colleges there are depositories of models something like your patent office, and professors are on hand familiar with physics, chemistry and kindred sciences to advise and assist the inventor. As they are all working for the good of all, the inventor is not afraid his idea will be stolen, he finds the assistance he gets invaluable, and is often saved the useless labor of doing something that has been done already or attempting something in contravention of the principles of physics and therefore impossible. An invention, when made, is the property of the public, and if it lightens labor in any[69] direction, it allows it to take on greater activity in some other direction.
“All articles that can be produced in quantities by machinery are distributed to everybody desiring them, but individual works of art as great pictures and statuary and rare and curious things, are placed in public art galleries, libraries etc., accessible to all.”
“Well,” said I, “this is extremely pretty and no doubt it works all right with you wise Lunarians, but I cannot help imagining what sort of a mess we should make of it on earth, if we adopted the same policy. I admit that many of us are workers by instinct or at least a semi instinct, that controls us after some habit got by practice, and it is also instinctive with us to care for the young and those who are helpless from disease or old age, but there are plenty of people with whom it is equally instinctive never to do a lick of work if they can help it, and at the same time their instincts allow them to help themselves to the proceeds of the labor of others without any limit, except that of forcible restraint.”
“The trouble with you,” said he, “is that you have no control over the production of your people. You are like the civilized Indians, that once inhabited some of the western parts of your country, who were constantly threatened and invaded and finally exterminated by wild and barbarous neighbors, except that they were physically too weak to help themselves.
“It is true your civilization is now in little danger from foreign savages, but you allow yourselves[70] to be steadily invaded by fresh generations, of them born in your midst, and the crudeness and injustice of your political and social conditions, are such as to give but slight encouragement to the development of the unselfish instincts in anybody. Wealth carries power and power commands respect. Your wealth is distributed without justice, sometimes by accident and to those who are merely lucky, at other times to those who are simply selfish greedy and unscrupulous, and generally least to those who create it, and so luck and greed become prominent objects for your attention and emulation. How very young your race is and how much you have to learn!”