Perhaps we should find such traces, and perhaps,
with all our searching, we should find nothing to suggest that life
had ever existed amid that universal ruin.
Look again at the border of the ``Sea of Serenity'' -- what a name for
such a scene! -- and observe how it has been rent with almost
inconceivable violence, the wall of the colossal crater Posidonius
dropping vertically upon the ancient shore and obliterating it, while
its giant neighbor, Le Monnier, opens a yawning mouth as if to swallow
the sea itself. A scene like this makes one question whether, after
all, those may not be right who have imagined that the so-called sea
bottoms are really vast plains of frozen lava which gushed up in
floods so extensive that even the mighty volcanoes were half drowned
in the fiery sea. This suggestion becomes even stronger when we turn
to another of the photographs of Mr Ritchey's wonderful series,
showing a part of the Mare Tranquilitatis (``Sea of Tranquility''!).
Notice how near the center of the picture the outline of a huge ring
with radiating ridges shows through the sea bottom; a fossil volcano
submerged in a petrified ocean! This is by no means the only instance
in which a buried world shows itself under the great lunar plains.
Yet, as the newer craters in the sea itself prove, the volcanic
activity survived this other catastrophe, or broke out again
subsequently, bringing more ruin to pile upon ruin.
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