Wednesday, March 12, 2014

EL HOMBRE DE LA LUNA






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.





 
From:  Bishop Francis Godwin, The Man In The Moon (1638) 

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