I soon discovered that I was acquainted only with its complexion, and as for the moon, I had seen her only as it were through a crevice in a shutter, occasionally. Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. I shall be a benefactor if I conquer some realms from the night, if I report to the gazettes anything transpiring about us at that season worthy of their attention,-if I can show men that there is some beauty awake while they are asleep,-if I add to the domains of poetry. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile but it is the Black Nile that concerns us. Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,-to penetrate to the shores of its lake Tchad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are there to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another side of nature: I have done so.Īccording to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites, “wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon.” My journal for the last year or two, has been selenitic in this sense.
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