Page:The Discovery of a World in the Moone, 1638.djvu/148

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of a new World.
131

hence it must necessarily follow that there may bee some Mountaines in the Moone so high, that they are able to cast a shadow a 100 miles off. An opinion that sounds like a prodigie or a fiction; wherefore 'tis likely that either those appearances are caused by somewhat else besides mountaines, or else those are fallible observations, from whence may follow such improbable inconceiveable consequences.

But to this I answere:

1. You must consider the height of the Mountaines is but very little, if you compare them to the length of their shadowes. Sr. Walter Rawleigh[1] observes that the Mount Athos now called Lacas casts its shadow 300 furlongs, which is above 37 miles, and yet that Mount is none of the highest, nay Solinus[2] (whom I should rather believe in this kinde) affirmes that this Mountaine gives his shadow quite over the Sea, from

  1. Hist. l. 1. c. 7. § 11.
  2. Poly. histor. c. 21.
K 2
Macedon