![]() Nearly all these peaks had once belched fire and molten lava but were now cold and dead. The Doctor afterwards explained to me that they were extinct volcanoes. The tops seemed to be cut off and cup-like. In fact all the mountains as well (for much greater heights could presently be seen towering away in the dim greenish light behind the nearer, lower ranges) had one peculiarity. The bottom of this, I saw as we drew nearer, was level, sandy and dry. Planing, circling and diving, he brought his wide-winged body very deliberately down towards a little valley fenced in with hills. And the only thing to do is to go forward with it, step by step, to the best of my recollection, from where the great insect hovered, with our beating hearts pressed close against his broad back, over the near and glowing landscape of the Moon.Īny one could tell that the moth knew every detail of the country we were landing in. Clearly the tale must be in any case an imperfect, incomplete one. But as he was nowhere near me when I set to work upon this book I decided I had better not consider the particular wishes of Jip, Gub-Gub, my mother, Matthew or any one else, but set the story down in my own way. The one who could have been of most help to me in writing my impressions of the Moon was Jamaro Bumblelily, the giant moth who carried us there. And certainly during all our waking hours upon the Moon there was so much for our ears and eyes and minds to take in it is a wonder, I often think, that any clear memories at all remain. If you try to spread it over too many things at once you just don’t remember them. Human attention is like butter: you can only spread it so thin and no thinner. ![]() For it seemed I hadn’t noticed any of the things I should have done to make the story of our voyage interesting to the ordinary public. But now I felt I had been a very poor noticer. I had always thought I was–pretty good, anyhow. It reminded me of the first time I had come to the Doctor’s house, hoping to be hired as his assistant, and dear old Polynesia the parrot had questioned me. I couldn’t seem to tell them any of the things they were most anxious to know. No, trying to get at what most people wanted to read concerning the Moon did not bring me much profit. And the things he wanted to learn were worse than either my mother’s or Jip’s: Were there any shops in the Moon? What were the dogs and cats like? The good Cats’-meat-Man seemed to have imagined it a place not very different from Puddleby or the East End of London. She wanted to know how we had managed when our underwear wore out–and a whole lot of other matters about our living conditions, hardly any of which I could answer. (Dab-Dab snorted at me for my pains and said I should have known better than to ask him.) I tried my mother. And what he was chiefly concerned to hear was the kind of vegetables we had fed on. I didn’t remember seeing any and yet I am sure there must have been some–or some sort of creature like a rat. I discovered he was mostly interested in whether we had seen any rats in the Moon. I had thought at one time that Jip could help me and after reading him some chapters as I had first set them down I asked for his opinion. People are so different in what they want to know about a voyage. And it is in that I am perplexed.įor the story could be told in many ways. And I feel that I should tell the story here not for the scientist so much as for the general reader. But that information was nearly all of a highly scientific kind. It is true I made many notes for the Doctor, books full of them. It is not an easy task, remembering day by day and hour by hour those crowded and exciting weeks. (and son of Jacob Stubbins, the cobbler of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh), find myself greatly puzzled. In writing the story of our adventures in the Moon I, Thomas Stubbins, secretary to John Dolittle, M.D.
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