Round the Moon. Chapter XVIII. Grave Questions.  In the meantime
the projectile had passed the neighbourhood of Tycho. Barbicane
and his two friends then observed, with the most scrupulous
attention, those brilliant radii which the celebrated mountain
disperses so curiously on every horizon.  What was this
radiating aureole? What geological phenomenon had caused those
ardent beams? This question justly occupied Barbicane. Under his
eyes, in every direction, ran luminous furrows, with raised
banks and concave middle, some ten miles, others more than
twenty miles wide. These shining trails ran in certain places at
least 300 leagues from Tycho, and seemed to cover, especially
towards the east, north-east, and north, half the southern
hemisphere. One of these furrows stretched as far as the
amphitheatre of Neander, situated on the 40th meridian. Another
went rounding off through the Sea of Nectar and broke against
the chain of the Pyrenees after a run of 400 leagues; others
towards the west covered with a luminou