After eleven days’ passage in this violent flight, I perceived
that we began to approach near unto another earth, if I may call it, being the
globe or very body of that star which we call the moon.
The first difference I found between it and our earth was that it
showed itself in his natural colours, ever after I was free from the attraction
of the earth, whereas with us a thing removed from our eye but a league or two
begins to put on that lurid and deadly colour of blue.
Then I perceived also that it was covered for the most part with
a huge and mighty sea, those parts only being dry land which show unto us here
somewhat darker than the rest of her body, that I mean, which the country
people call el
hombre de la luna, the man in the moon. As for that part which shineth so clearly
in our eyes, it is even another ocean, yet besprinkled here and there with
islands, which for the littleness, so far off we cannot discern. So the same splendor appearing unto us and
giving light unto our night appeareth to be nothing else but the reflection of
the sunbeams returned unto us out of the water as of out of a glass. How ill this agreeth with that which our
philosophers teach in the schools I am not ignorant. But, alas, how many of their errors hath time
and experience refuted in this our age, with the recital whereof I will not
trouble the reader. Among many other of
their vain surmises, the time and order of their narration putteth me in mind
of one which now my experience found most untrue.
