Volcanic action alone, unaffected by either aqueous or atmospheric forces, can here be seen in all its glory.

In other words the Moon looks now as our Earth did endless ages ago, when "she was void and empty and when darkness sat upon the face of the deep;" eons of ages ago, long before the tides of the ocean and the winds of the atmosphere had begun to strew her rough surface with sand and clay, rock and coal, forest and meadow, gradually preparing it, according to the laws of our beneficent Creator, to be at last the pleasant though the temporary abode of Man! Having wandered over vast continents, your eye is attracted by the "seas" of dimensions still vaster.

Not only their shape, situation, and look, remind us of our own oceans, but, again like them, they occupy the greater part of the Moon's surface.

The "seas," or, more correctly, plains, excited our travellers' curiosity to a very high degree, and they set themselves at once to examine their nature.
The astronomer who first gave names to those "seas" in all probability was a Frenchman.

Hevelius, however, respected them, even Riccioli did not disturb them, and so they have come down to us.