noon
After this episode , it is time for us to return to our travellers , whose feelings , the moment they touched the ground , repayed them for all they had endured . Atterley looked around with the most intense curiosity ; but nothing he saw , `` surprised him so much , as to find so little that was surprising : '' -- vegetation , insects , and other animals , were pretty much of the same character as those he had before seen ; but , on better acquaintance , he found the difference greater than he had at first supposed . Having refreshed themselves with the remains of their stores , and secured the door of the machine , they bent their course to the town of Alamatua , about three miles distant , which seemed to contain about two thousand houses , and to be not quite as large as Albany ; the people were tall and thin , and of a pale , yellowish complexion ; their garments light , loose , and flowing , and not very different from those of the Turks ; they subsist chiefly on a vegetable diet , live about as long as we do on the earth , notwithstanding the great difference of climate , and other circumstances ; and do not , in their manners , habits , or character , differ more from the inhabitants of this globe , than some of the latter do from one another ; their government , anciently monarchical , is now popular ; their code of laws very intricate ; their language , naturally soft and musical , has been yet further refined by the cultivation of letters ; and they have a variety of sects in religion , politics , and philosophy . The lunarians do not , as Butler has it -- `` When the sun shines hot at noon , Inhabit cellars under ground , Of eight miles deep and eighty round . '' But , one half of their houses is beneath the surface , partly for the purpose of screening them from the continued action of the sun 's rays , and partly on account of the earthquakes caused by volcanoes . The windows of the houses consisted of openings in the wall , sloping so much upwards , that , whilst they freely admitted the light and air , the sun was completely excluded . As soon as they were espied by the natives , great curiosity was of course excited ; not , however , to so troublesome an extent , as might have been , from the circumstance of the Brahmin 's having visited the moon before .