On the right, they had just caught a glimpse of _Purbach_, a depressed valley almost square in shape with a round crater in the centre, when Ardan suddenly cried out: "A Railroad!" And, sure enough, right under them, a little northeast of _Purbach_, the travellers easily distinguished a long line straight and black, really not unlike a railroad cutting through a low hilly country.
This, Barbican explained, was of course no railway, but a steep cliff, at least 1,000 feet high, casting a very deep shadow, and probably the result of the caving in of the surface on the eastern edge.
Then they saw the immense crater of _Arzachel_ and in its midst a cone mountain shining with dazzling splendor.

A little north of this, they could detect the outlines of another crater, _Alphonse_, at least 70 miles in diameter.

Close to it they could easily distinguish the immense crater or, as some observers call it, Ramparted Plain, _Ptolemy_, so well known to lunar astronomers, occupying, as it does, such a favorable position near the centre of the Moon, and having a diameter fully, in one direction at least, 120 miles long.
The travellers were now in about the same latitude as that at which they had at first approached the Moon, and it was here that they began most unquestionably to leave her.

They looked and looked, readjusting their glasses, but the details were becoming more and more difficult to catch.
The reliefs grew more and more blurred and the outlines dimmer and dimmer.

Even the great mountain profiles began to fade away, the dazzling colors to grow duller, the jet black shadows greyer, and the general effect mistier.
At last, the distance had become so great that, of this lunar world so wonderful, so fantastic, so weird, so mysterious, our travellers by degrees lost even the consciousness, and their sensations, lately so vivid, grew fainter and fainter, until finally they resembled those of a man who is suddenly awakened from a peculiarly strange and impressive dream..