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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13289 ***
+
+The Certainty
+of a Future
+Life in Mars
+
+
+
+_Being the Posthumous Papers of_
+
+BRADFORD TORREY DODD
+
+EDITED BY
+L.P. GRATACAP
+
+
+BRENTANO'S
+1903
+
+PARIS
+CHICAGO
+WASHINGTON
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE BY EDITOR.
+
+
+The extraordinary character of the story here published, which some
+peculiar circumstances have fortunately, I think, put into my hands,
+will excite a curiosity as vivid as the incidents of the narratives are
+themselves astonishing and unprecedented. To satisfy, as far as I can, a
+few natural inquiries which must be elicited by its publication, I beg
+to explain how this unusual posthumous paper came into my possession.
+
+It was written by Bradford Torrey Dodd, who died at Christ Church, New
+Zealand, January, 1895, after a lingering illness in which consumption
+developed, which was attributed to the exposure he had experienced in
+receiving some of the wireless messages his singular history details. I
+was not acquainted with Mr. Dodd, but some information, acquired since
+the reception of his manuscript, has completely satisfied me, that,
+however interpreted, Mr. Dodd did not intend in it the perpetration of
+a hoax. His scientific ability was undoubtedly remarkable, and the facts
+that his father and himself worked in an astronomical station near
+Christ Church; that his father died; that his acquaintance with the
+Dodans was a reality; that he did receive messages at a wireless
+telegraphic station; that he himself and his assistants fully accredited
+these messages to extra-terrestrial sources, are, beyond a doubt, easily
+verified.
+
+A mutual friend brought me Mr. Dodd's papers, which I looked over with
+increasing amazement, culminating in blank incredulity. On rereading
+them and considering the usefulness of giving them to the public, I have
+been influenced by two motives, the desire to satisfy the fervently
+expressed wish of the writer himself and the reasonable belief that if
+they are preposterously improbable their publication can only furnish a
+new and temporary and quite harmless diversion, and that if Mr. Dodd's
+experiment shall be in some future day successfully repeated his claims
+to distinction as the first to open this marvelous field of
+investigation will have been honorably and invincibly protected.
+
+L.P. GRATACAP.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd
+
+Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan
+
+Note by the Editor
+
+The Planet Mars--By Giovanni Schiaparelli
+
+
+
+POSTHUMOUS PAPERS
+
+OF
+
+BRADFORD TORREY DODD.
+
+
+
+
+THE CERTAINTY
+
+OF
+
+A FUTURE LIFE IN MARS.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+In the confusion of thought about a future life, the peculiar facts
+related in the following pages can certainly be regarded as helpful.
+Spiritualism, with its morbid tendencies, its infatuation and deceit,
+has not been of any substantial value in this inquiry. It may afford to
+those who have experienced any positive visitation from another world a
+very comforting and indisputable proof. To most sane people it is a
+humiliating and ludicrous vagary.
+
+At the conclusion of a life spent rather diligently in study, and in
+association especially with astronomical practice and physical
+experiments, I have, in view of certain hitherto unpublished facts,
+decided to make public almost incontrovertible evidence that in the
+planet Mars the continuation of our present life, in some instances, has
+been discovered by myself. I will not dwell on the astonishment I have
+felt over these discoveries, nor attempt to describe that felicity of
+conviction which I now enjoy over the prospect of a life in another
+world.
+
+My father was the fortunate possessor of a large fortune, which freed
+him of all anxieties about any material cares, and left him to pursue
+the bent of his inclination. He became greatly interested in physical
+science, and was also a patron of the liberal arts. His home was stored
+with the most beautiful products of the manufacturer's skill in fictile
+arts, and on its walls hung the most approved examples of the painter's
+skill. The looms of Holland and France and England furnished him with
+their delicate and sumptuous tapestries, and the Orient covered his
+floors with the richest and most prized carpets of Daghestan and
+Trebizond, and of Bokhara.
+
+But even more marked than his love for art was his passion for physical
+science. His opportunities for the indulgence of this taste were
+unlimited, and the reinforcement of his natural aptitude by his great
+means enabled him to carry on experiments upon a scale of the most
+magnificent proportions. These experiments were made in a large
+building which was especially built for this object. It contained every
+facility for his various new designs, and in it he anticipated many
+advances in electrical science and in mechanical devices, which have
+made the civilization of our day so remarkable. I recall distinctly as a
+boy his ingenious approximation to the telephone, and even the recent
+advances in wireless telegraphy, which has been the instrumentality by
+which my own researches in the field of interplanetary telegraphy have
+been prosecuted, had been realized by himself.
+
+It was in the midst of a life almost ideally happy that the blow fell
+which drove him and myself, then a boy and his only child, into a
+retirement which resulted in the discoveries I am about to relate. My
+father's devotion to my mother was an illustration of the most beautiful
+and tender love that a man can bear toward a woman. It was adoration.
+Though his mind was employed upon the abstruse questions of physics
+which he investigated, or edified by new acquisitions in art, all his
+knowledge and all his pleasure seemed but the means by which he
+endeavored to gain her deeper affection. She indeed became his companion
+in science, and her own just and well regulated taste constantly
+furnished him new motives for adding to his wide accumulations of art.
+
+I can recall with some difficulty the day when with my father in a room
+immediately below the bedroom in which my mother was confined he awaited
+the summons of the doctors to see his wife for the last time. It was a
+rainy day, the clouds were drifting across a dull November sky. Through
+an opening in the trees then leafless, the Hudson was visible, even then
+flaked with ice, while an early snow covered the sloping lawn and
+whitened the broad-limbed oaks. I remember indistinctly his leading me
+by the hand through the hallway up the stairs, and softly whispering to
+me to be quite still, entered the large room dimly lit where my mother,
+attended by a nurse and a doctor, lay on the white bed. I remember being
+kissed by her and then being led from the room by the nurse. My father
+doubtless lingered until all was over, and the dear associate of his
+life, whose tenderness and charity had made all who approached her
+grateful, whose genial and appreciative mind had supplied the stimulus
+of recognition he needed for his own studies, passed away. After that I
+seemed dimly to recall a period of extreme loneliness when I was left in
+charge of a private instructor, while my father, as I later learned,
+bewildered by his great loss, and temporarily driven into a sort of
+madness, wandered in an aimless track of travel over the United States.
+
+On his return the sharp recurrence to the scenes of his former happiness
+renewed the bitterness of his spirit, and he reluctantly concluded to
+abandon his home. His own thoughts had not as yet clearly formed any
+decision in his mind as to where he would go or what he would do. It was
+inevitable, however, that he should revert to his scientific
+investigations. He found in them a new solace and distraction, but even
+then his passion for research would not have sufficed to adequately meet
+his desperate desire to escape his grief, if in a rather singular manner
+there had not come to him an intimation of the possibilities of some
+sort of communication with my mother through these very investigations
+in electricity and magnetism in which he had been engaged.
+
+I had become quite inseparable from him. He found in me many suggestions
+in face and manner of my mother, and particularly he was interested in
+my peculiar lapses into meditation and introspection which in many ways
+suggested to him a similar habit in her. On one occasion when, as was
+his wont, before we finally left the old home at Irvington, he had taken
+me in the summer evenings to the top of the observatory, then situated
+about half a mile west of the Albany road, we had both been silently
+watching the sun sink into a bank of golden haze, and the black band of
+the Palisades passing underneath like a velvet zone of shadow, I turned
+to my father and in a sudden access of curiosity said:
+
+"Father, if mother had gone to the Sun, would she speak to us now with a
+ray of light?"
+
+My father smiled patiently, half amused, and then standing and looking
+at the sun's disk, disappearing behind the Jersey hills, said, "My son,
+it was a curious thought of a well-known French writer, Figuer, who lost
+his son, who was very dear to him, that his soul with armies and hosts
+of other souls, had departed to the sun and that they made the light and
+heat of this great luminary, and this wise man felt some comfort in the
+thought that the heat and light of the sun as he felt himself bathed in
+radiance and warmth were emanations from his boy, and his eyes and body
+seemed then in a figurative, and yet to him, very real way,
+communicating with his boy. You smile. I know it is with interest. Let
+me read to you from Figuer's singular book what he has written about
+it."
+
+He disappeared and left me also standing and looking upward at a faint
+wreath of cloud, tinged in rosiness, which floated almost in the
+zenith. I was then about eleven years old, precocious for my years and
+gifted with a sympathy for occult and difficult subjects that became
+only intensified through the peculiar concentrated companionship I had
+from day to day, and month to month enjoyed with my father.
+
+This narrative may be inadvertently classed with those ephemeral
+fictions in which the reader is constantly conscious that the dialogue
+and the incidents are veritable creations. It may here be asked how
+could I recall with any literalness the conversations and events of a
+time so long past. I do not pretend or wish it to be thought that these
+interviews with my father are here literally related. That, of course,
+is beyond the limits of reasonable probability. But I do insist that in
+the following pages the occurrences described are very faithful
+transcripts of those connected with the peculiar inquiry and experiments
+my father and myself began, and brought to a startling conclusion.
+Although conducted in the form of an imaginative story the reader is
+importuned to give them his most implicit credence.
+
+My father soon returned with the small volume of Figuer and read, I
+imagine, that passage which runs as follows in Chapter XIII:
+
+"Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe; since it is, as
+we have shown, the origin of life, of feeling, of thought; since it is
+the determining cause of all organized life on the earth--why may we not
+declare that the rays transmitted by the sun to the earth and the other
+planets are nothing more or less than the emanations of these souls?
+that these are the emissions of pure spirits living in the radiant star
+that come to us, and to dwellers in the other planets, under the visible
+form of rays?
+
+"If this hypothesis be accepted, what magnificent, what sublime
+relations may we not catch a glimpse of, between the sun and the globes
+that roll around him; between the Sun and the planets there would be a
+continual exchange, a never broken circle, an unending 'come and go' of
+beamy emissions, which would engender and nourish in the solar world
+motion and activity, thought and feeling, and keep burning everywhere
+the torch of life.
+
+"See the emanations of souls that dwell in the Sun descending upon the
+earth in the shape of solar rays. Light gives life to plants, and
+produces vegetable life, to which sensibility belongs. Plants having
+received from the Sun the germ of sensibility transmit it to animals,
+always with the help of the Sun's heat. See the soul germs enfolded in
+animals develop, improve little by little, from one animal to another,
+and at last become incarnated in a human body. See, a little later, the
+superhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains of
+ether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that will gradually
+lead him to the highest round of the ladder of spiritual growth, where
+all material substance has been eliminated, and where the time has come
+for the soul thus exalted, and with essence purified to the utmost, to
+enter the supreme home of bliss and intellectual and moral power; that
+is the Sun.
+
+"Such would be the endless circle, the unbroken chain, that would bind
+together all the beings of Nature, and extend from the visible to the
+invisible world."
+
+From that moment, moved more and more by the strangeness of the fancy,
+which evidently fascinated him, he buried himself in the indulgence of
+the thought of the possibility of some sort of communication with his
+wife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to the
+fruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliating
+intercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men and
+women almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated in thought
+with themselves.
+
+In 1881 electrical science had well advanced toward those perfected
+triumphs which give distinction to this century. Electric lighting was
+well understood, the Jablochkoff and Jamin lamps were then in use, the
+incandescent and Maxim light, or arc light were employed, and indeed the
+panic caused by Edison's premature announcement of the solution of the
+incandescent system of lighting had then preceded by two years, the
+excellent results of Mr. Swan in England in the same field. Edison's
+first carbon light and his original phonograph were exhibited toward the
+end of 1880 in the Patent Museum at South Kensington.
+
+The daily News of New York in April of 1881 published the victory of the
+Edison Electric Lighting Company over the Mayor's veto in words that may
+be read to-day with considerable interest. It said "the company will
+proceed immediately to introduce its new electric lamps in the offices
+in the business portion of the city around Wall Street. It consists of a
+small bulbous glass globe, four inches long, and an inch and a half in
+diameter, with a carbon loop which becomes incandescent when the
+electric current passes through. Each lamp is of sixteen candle power
+with no perceptible variation in intensity. The light is turned on or
+off with a thumb screw. Wires have already been put into forty
+buildings."
+
+My father had anticipated the incandescent light in its fuller later
+development and had used, before it was announced by Prof. Avenarius of
+Austria, a method of dividing the electric current, by the insertion of
+a polariser in a secondary circuit connected with each lamp, a method,
+it need not be said to electricians, now utterly obsolete.
+
+The rooms of our physical laboratory at Irvington were almost all lit by
+electric lamps constructed somewhat on the principle of Edison's, but
+using platinum wires, and the old residents of that village may recall
+the singular, lonely house half hidden in broad sycamores, sending out
+its electric radiance late at night while my father and frequently
+myself, then a boy of thirteen years, worked at experimental problems in
+physics.
+
+My father gave my precocity for science a very successful impetus and
+left me at his death fully in possession of the ideas and projects he
+cherished. Amongst these projects, one partially realized, was the
+acceleration of plant growth by means of electric light, and heating by
+electricity.
+
+Dr. Siemens of England, it may be recalled, had very ingeniously
+experimented upon the influence of the electric light upon vegetation.
+In a paper read by that distinguished man before the Society of
+Telegraph Engineers in June, 1880, he referred to his conclusion that
+"electric light produces the coloring matter, chlorophyll, in the leaves
+of plants, that it aids their growth, counteracts the effects of night
+frosts, and promotes the setting and ripening of fruit in the open air."
+
+I find in an old note book of my father's, dated 1879, "chlorophyllous
+matter in leaves encouraged by electric energy, presumably by the blue
+rays." In heating and cooking by electricity my father had made some
+progress though he had not in 1880 employed his time in this direction.
+
+Perhaps more remarkable than anything else presenting my father's great
+scientific ingenuity was his improvements of the dynamo and the
+invention of a new successful small traction engine.
+
+In 1880 the complete distinction between alternating and direct currents
+had not been made, and the device of a successful converter, for the
+change of the former comparatively inert to the latter's dynamic
+condition, only dreamed of. Yet in my father's notebook I find this
+suggestive sentence: "It seems possible to devise an apparatus which
+would deliver from an alternating circuit a direct current to a direct
+current circuit."
+
+I have dwelt somewhat upon my father's scientific acquirements and
+genius in order to impress upon the reader the strictly legitimate
+training I received in scientific procedure, and I have instanced
+somewhat the status of his scientific development in 1880, because it
+was at that time that he concluded to leave Irvington and locate his
+laboratory and observatory elsewhere. And for the sake of his
+astronomical interests he determined to find some place peculiarly well
+fitted, on account of its atmospheric advantages, for astronomical
+observations. It is necessary likewise to recall some of the facts then
+known to astronomers and my father's own theories, in order to weave
+into a logical sequence the incidents leading up to my positive
+demonstration of a future life for some of our race in the planet Mars.
+
+Astronomy had a great charm for my mother. Her enthusiasm was soon
+communicated to my father who found his wealth was a requisite in
+establishing the observatory he had erected at Irvington and in its
+equipment. Telescopes are expensive playthings.
+
+The Lick Observatory was begun in 1880 and my father through
+correspondence with the directors of the University of California had
+learned many of the details pertaining to this great project. Influenced
+by the splendid prospects of this undertaking my father determined if
+possible to surpass it. He wrote to Fiel of Paris and expected to be
+able to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of the
+Lick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterly
+abortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leaving
+Irvington examining the various possible locations for his new
+observatory. The requisites were nearness to the equator, an equable
+climate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During this year my father
+heard that Prof. Hertz of Berlin had generated waves of magnetism and
+that it was hoped that these might ultimately prove efficacious as a
+means of direct communication between distant points without the
+introduction of wire conductors.
+
+This thought of communicating with distant points without fixed
+conductors greatly impressed my father and led him along a line of
+speculation upon which finally rested my own success in securing the
+messages detailed in this book from the planet Mars.
+
+I recall that one evening in the winter of 1881 while he was yet engaged
+in making preparations for his departure from the United States to New
+Zealand, which he finally chose for the erection of his laboratories,
+and especially his observatory, I heard him read with the greatest
+satisfaction of the attempt made in the siege of Paris to bring the
+besieged French into telegraphic communication with the Provinces by
+means of the River Seine.
+
+It was proposed to send powerful currents into the River Seine from
+batteries near the German lines and to receive in Paris upon delicate
+galvanometers, such an amount of their current as had not leaked away in
+the earth. Profs. Desains, Jamin, and Berthelot were interested in these
+experiments, although the suggestion had been made by M. Bourbouze, and
+after some interruptions when the attempt was to be carried out, the
+armistice of Jan. 14, 1871, brought their preparations to a close.
+
+How often my father spoke of these attempts, and half smilingly on one
+occasion as we watched the starry skies "thick inlaid with patterns of
+bright gold" said to me: "It seems to me within the reach of possibility
+to attain some sort of connection with these shining hosts. If we must
+assume that the disturbances on the Sun's surface effect magnetic storms
+on ours, it is quite evident that a fluid of translatory power or
+consistency exists between the earth and the sun, then also between all
+the planetary inhabitants of space, and I cannot see why we may not hope
+some day to realize a means of communication with these distant bodies.
+How inspiring is the thought that in some such way upon the basis of an
+absolutely perfect scientific deduction we might be brought into
+conversational alliance with these singular and orderly creations, and
+actually look upon their scenes and lives and history, and bring to
+ourselves in verbal pictures a presentation of their marvellous
+properties."
+
+I think it was on this occasion that my father expressed his thought
+upon some form of interplanetary telegraphy in a manner that left it in
+my own mind a very impressive and majestic idea. He had read at some
+length the address of Sir William Armstrong before the British
+Association in 1863, when that distinguished observer speaks of the
+sympathy between forces operating in the sun, and magnetic forces in the
+earth and remarks the phenomenon seen by independent observers in
+September, 1859. The passage, easily verified by the reader, was to this
+effect:
+
+"A sudden outburst of light, far exceeding the brightness of the sun's
+surface was seen to take place, and sweep like a drifting cloud over a
+portion of the solar surface. This was attended by magnetic disturbances
+of unusual intensity and with exhibitions of aurora of extraordinary
+brilliancy. The identical instant at which the effusion of light was
+observed was recorded by an abrupt and strongly marked deflection in the
+self-registering instruments at Kew."
+
+My father then pausing and walking impetuously across the room
+declaimed, as it were, his views:
+
+"Here we are, a group of limited intelligent beings circumscribed by a
+boundless space, and placed upon a speck of matter which is whirled
+around the sun in an endless captivity, bound by this inexorable law of
+gravitation, like a stone in a sling. About us in this ethereal ocean
+floats a host of similarly made orbs, perhaps, in thousands of cases,
+inhabited by beings throbbing with the same curiosity as our own to
+reach out beyond their sphere, and learn something of the nature of the
+animated universe which they may dimly suspect lies about them in the
+other stars. Why must it not be part of this immeasurable design which
+brought us here, that we shall some day become part of a celestial
+symposium; that lines of communication, invisible but incessant, shall
+thread in labyrinths of invisible currents these dark abysses, and bring
+us in inspiring touch with the marvels and contents of the entire
+universe."
+
+He turned to me and gazing intently at my upturned face which I am sure
+reflected his own in its enthusiasm and delight, continued: "You, my
+son, and I, will put this before us as a possible achievement and work
+incessantly for that end. Prof. Hertz has generated these magnetic
+waves; we will; and by means of some sort of a receiver endeavor to find
+out a clue to _wireless telegraphy_." These closing remarkable words
+were actually used by my father, and in view of the marvellous
+realization of Marconi's hopes in that direction, as well as my own
+stupendous success in reaching the inhabitants of Mars, was a distinct
+prophecy.
+
+It was a few months later that my father completed all of his
+arrangements in regard to the disposition of his investments, and
+perfected the necessary arrangements for being constantly supplied with
+funds by his bankers in New York. He also had agreed upon the apparatus
+to be forwarded, expecting to be largely supplied at Sydney in new South
+Wales, as it was from this point he intended to sail or steam to New
+Zealand. Much of the equipment for his observatory was to come from
+Paris, and he relied upon intelligent assistance both in Sydney and
+Christ Church, in New Zealand, for the erection and furnishment of his
+various houses.
+
+He finally concluded to place his station on Mount Cook at an elevation
+of 1,000 feet upon a well protected plateau, which was described to him
+by a Mr. Ashton who had extensive acquaintance and some five years'
+experience in New Zealand. We found this position ideal, and in the
+perfection of all the conditions necessary for our experiments possessed
+by it, made the realization at that time utterly unsuspected by either
+of us, of our final designs, commensurately more simple.
+
+I left New York with my father filled with a curious expectancy. I
+seemed to cherish no regret at leaving my childhood's home. I only felt
+a vague wondering delight to go abroad and see strange and new things.
+My seclusion with my father had developed in me a singular inaptitude
+for companionship with boys of my own age, and furthermore from the
+influence of his rather poetic and dreaming nature, I began to show a
+half wistful intensity of interest in things occult, mysterious and
+difficult. We left New York in 1882, and it was then that I read for
+diversion in my long ride to California, Colonel Olcutt's Esoteric
+Buddhism.
+
+The whole central fancy of reincarnation affected me deeply. But I
+modified the idea as displayed by Blavatsky and Theosophists generally.
+From a long familiarity with the stars, in conjunction with the
+inevitable creative and anthropomorphic sensibility of youth, I began to
+think that this reincarnation did not occur on the earth, but had its
+stages of transmutation placed elsewhere. In short, I amused myself
+incessantly with placing the poets in one star, the novelists in
+another, the scientists in a third, the mechanicians in a fourth, and in
+each I imagined a Utopia. A very little mature thought and the most
+ordinary observation of plain men, men who at 20 have far more practical
+sense than I possess to-day, would have demonstrated the hopelessness of
+this arrangement, and the deplorable social chaos it would have led to.
+
+I think, however, that along this line of feeling I grew more and more
+in sympathy with my father's dimly expressed hopes to achieve something
+tangible in the way of interstellar or planetary communication. So that
+gradually he, by reason of a desire that slowly invaded every emotional
+recess of his being, and I, through the vagaries of an imaginative mind
+reached successively an intense conviction that we should work in this
+direction.
+
+There was much in our scientific work also that encouraged a certain
+high mindedness and liberty of speculation, a careless audacity before
+the most difficult tasks. The resolution of matter into a phase of
+energy, the interpretation of light as an electric phenomenon, the
+mysteries of the electric force itself, the peculiar hypotheses about
+the force of gravitation, lead men, studying these subjects, and endowed
+with speculative tendencies to conceive, moved also by a quasi
+sensational desire to reach new results, that the most extravagant
+achievements are possible to science.
+
+With us, regarding the physical universe as a unit, recognizing the
+notes of intelligence of a deep coercive and comprehensive plan involved
+throughout, feeling that our human intelligence was the reflex or
+microcosmic representation of the planning, upholding mind, that if so,
+no conceivable limitation could be placed upon its expansion and
+conquests, that further it would be incomprehensible that the colonizing
+(so to speak) of the central mind occurred only on one sphere, when it
+doubtless might be embodied in other beings, on hundreds or thousands or
+millions of other spheres; that continuance of life after death was a
+truth; feeling all this, their concomitant influence was to make us
+positive that the human mind in an intelligent, satisfactory,
+self-illuminating way some day would reach mind everywhere in all its
+specific forms; and that the abyss of space would eventually thrill with
+the vibrations of conscious communion between remote worlds.
+
+With feelings of this sort excited and reinforced by my father's
+passionate hope to learn something of his wife's life after death we
+reached Christ Church, New Zealand, in June, 1883.
+
+I may now revert to the line of suggestions that led my father and
+myself to locate in Mars the scene, at least, as we surmised in part, of
+those phases of a future life which I am now able to reveal with, I
+think, positive certainty.
+
+The planet Mars as being the next orb removed from the Sun after our own
+world in the advance outward from our solar center, has always attracted
+attention. At perihelion, when in opposition with the earth, it is 35
+millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known from
+the drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli,
+Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation of
+land and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions,
+such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of its
+occupation by rational beings as altogether possible.
+
+During the opposition of Mars in 1879-80, Prof. Schiaparelli at Milan
+determined for the second time the topography of this planet. The
+topography revealed the curious long lines or ribbons, commonly called
+canals, which seamed the face of our neighboring planet. In 1882 this
+observation was enormously extended. He then showed that there was a
+variable brightness in some regions, that there had been a progressive
+enlargement since 1879 of his _Syrtis Magna_, that the oblique white
+streaks previously seen, continued, and, more remarkable, that there was
+a continuous development day after day of the doubling of the canals
+which seemed to extend along great circles of the sphere. In 1882
+Schiaparelli expected at the evening opposition in 1884 to confirm and
+add to these observations.
+
+My father had read Schiaparelli's announcements with absorbed interest.
+They fed his burning fancies as to the extension of our present life,
+and offered him a sort of scientific basis (without which he was
+inclined to view all eschatology as superficial) for the belief that we
+may attain in some other planet an actual prolonged second existence.
+
+His great reverence for Sir William Herschell was indisputable. He
+quoted Herschell's own words with appreciation. These pregnant sentences
+were as follows:
+
+"The analogy between Mars and the earth is perhaps by far the greatest
+in the whole solar system. Their diurnal motion is nearly the same, the
+obliquity of their respective ecliptics not very different; of all the
+superior planets the distance of Mars from the sun is by far the
+nearest, alike to that of the earth; nor will the length of the Martial
+year appear very different from what we enjoy when compared to the
+surprising duration of the years of Jupiter, Saturn and the Georgian
+Sidus. If we then find that the globe we inhabit has its polar region
+frozen and covered with mountains of ice and snow, that only partially
+melt when alternately exposed to the sun, I may well be permitted to
+surmise that the same causes may probably have the same effect on the
+globe of Mars; that the bright polar spots are owing to the vivid
+reflection of light from frozen regions; and that the reduction of these
+spots is to be ascribed to their being exposed to the sun."
+
+"In the light of these larger analogies," my father would continue, "why
+are we not further permitted to conclude that there is a more intimate
+and minute correlation. Why can not we predicate that under similar
+climatic and atmospheric vicissitudes, with a very probably similar or
+identical origin with our globe, this planet Mars, now burning red in
+the evening skies, possesses life, an organic retinue of forms like our
+own, or at least involving such primary principles as respiration,
+assimilation and productiveness, as would produce some biological
+aspects not extremely differing from those seen in our own sphere.
+
+"If we imagine, as we are most rationally allowed to, that Mars has
+undergone a progressive secularization in cooling, that contraction has
+acted upon its surface as it has on ours, that water has accumulated in
+basins and depressed troughs, that atmospheric currents have been
+started, that meteorological changes in consequence have followed, and
+that the range of physical conditions embraces phases naturally very
+much like those that have prevailed in our planet, how can it be
+intelligently questioned that from these very identical circumstances,
+an order of life has not in some way arisen."
+
+My father had an interesting habit of snapping his fingers on both hands
+together over his head when he declaimed in this way, always circling
+about the room in a rapid stride. I remember he stopped in front of me
+and continued in a strain something like this:
+
+"For myself I am convinced that there has been an evolution in the order
+of beings from one planet to another, that there is going on a stream of
+transference, from one plane of life here to planes elsewhere, and that
+the stream is pouring in as well as out of this world, and that it may
+be, in our case, pouring both ways, that is, we may be losing
+individuals into lower grades of life as well as emitting them to
+higher. See, what economy!
+
+"Instead of wasting the energies of imagination to account for the
+destinations of millions upon millions of human beings, the countless
+host that has occupied the surfaces of this earth through all the
+historic and prehistoric ages, we can, upon this assumption, reduce the
+number of individuals immensely, allowing that spirits are constantly
+arriving, constantly departing, and that the sum total in the solar
+system remains perhaps nearly fixed, just as in the electrolysis of
+water we have hydrogen rising at one electrode and oxygen at the other
+by transmission of atoms of hydrogen and atoms of oxygen toward each
+electrode through the water itself, in opposite directions, while for a
+sensible time the mass of water remains unchanged.
+
+"Let us suppose that in Mercury some form of mental life exists, that it
+is individualized, that it expresses the physical constants of that
+globe, that its mentality has reached the point where it can make use of
+the resources of Mercury, can respond to its physical constants so far
+as they awaken poetry or art or religion or science. Suppose that this
+life is one of extreme forcefulness, of stress and storm, like some
+prehistoric condition on our globe, but invested with more intellectual
+attributes than the same ages on our earth required or possessed,
+perhaps reaching a permanent condition not unlike that depicted in the
+Niebelungen Lied or the Sagas of the North. It might be called the
+_brawn_ period. Then the spirits born upon our planet or on any other
+planet in an identical condition, would find after death their
+destination in Mercury, where they could evolve up to the point where
+they might return to as, or to some other planet fitted for a higher
+life.
+
+"Then Venus, we may imagine, succeeding Mercury, carries a higher type,
+an emotional life, though of course I am not influenced by her
+accidental name, in suggesting it. Here in Venus, a period perchance
+resembling a mixture of the pagan Grecian life and the troubadour life
+of Provence may prevail and again to it have flown the spirits which in
+our planet only touch that development, which from Venus flow to us,
+those adapted for the religious or intellectual phase we present. This
+Venus life might be called the _sense_ period.
+
+"And now our world follows, with its scientific life which probably
+represents its normal limit. Beyond this it will not go. As we have
+developed through a _brawn_ and _sense_ period to our present stage, so
+in Mercury and Venus, ages have prevailed of development which
+eventuated in their final fixed stages at brawn and sense. In Venus,
+too, the brawn stage preceded the sense period. In us both have preceded
+the scientific stage. There has been, may we not think, constant
+interchanges between these planets of such lives as survive material
+dissolution, and they have found the _nidus_ that fits them in each.
+Souls leaving us in a brawn _epoch_ have fled to Mercury, souls leaving
+us in a _sense_ epoch have fled to Venus, and all souls in Mercury or
+Venus, ready for reincarnation in a _scientific_ epoch, have come to us.
+
+"But there is an important postulate underlying this theory. It is, that
+upon each planet the possibilities of development just attain to the
+margin of the next higher step in mental evolution. That is, that on
+Mercury the period of brawn develops to the possibility of the period of
+sense without fully exemplifying it, so in Venus the period of sense
+develops to the possibility of the period of science without attaining
+it, and in our world the period of science develops to the period of
+_spirit_, without, in any universal way, exhibiting it.
+
+"These are steps progressively represented, I may imagine, in the
+planets. And, in the further progress outward, we reach the planet Mars.
+Let us place here the period of spirit. On Mars is accomplished in
+society, and accompanied by an accomplishment in its physical features,
+also, of those ideals of living which the great and good unceasingly
+labor to secure for us here and unceasingly fail to secure. O my child,
+if we could learn somehow to get tidings from that distant sphere, if
+only the viewless abyss of space between our world and Mars might be
+bridged by the _noiseless and unseen waves of a magnetic current_."
+
+We reached Christ Church in June, in 1883, and for one year were most
+busy in completing the station we had selected, in receiving apparatus,
+getting our observatory built and a useful, but not large telescope
+mounted.
+
+The position taken by us was attractive. It was upon a high hill, a
+glacial mound which had been smoothed upon its upper surface into a long
+and broad plain. The prospects from this position were exceedingly
+beautiful. Christ Church was some ten miles distant and the irregular
+shores northward outlined by ribbons of breaking waves lay upon the
+seaward margin of our vision, while the broken intermediate landscape,
+with interrupted agricultural domains and forests was in front of us and
+far above us rose the grander peaks of the New Zealand Alps, a constant
+charm through the changing atmosphere, now brought near to us through
+the optical refraction of the clear air, and again veiled and shadowed
+and removed into spectral evanescent forms. The picture was intensely
+interesting and like all commanding views where the most expressive
+elements of scenery are combined, the remote sea, reflecting every mood
+of light and color, and the snowy peaks carrying to us the opaline
+glories of rising or setting sun was a comparison that stimulated and
+controlled the spectator with its wonderful charm and strength and
+poetic changes.
+
+To me whose emotional nature, inherited from a mother gifted with
+delicate tastes and a refined enthusiasm for the beautiful had been
+curiously discouraged by association with my father's scientific
+pursuits, this lively panorama constantly fed my dreams with pleasing
+pictures.
+
+My life has been an isolated and repressed one, except for the one
+incident I am about to bequeath to posterity. I had not enjoyed the play
+of youthful companions except in a fugitive way, I had not gone to
+school nor passed three years of muscular and buoyant activity in the
+usual pastimes and pleasures of childhood. I had a precocious nature and
+it had been unfolded in an atmosphere of strictly intellectual ideas. My
+mother had been a constant joy to me during the short years of her life
+on earth, but somehow by reason of sickness I had not enjoyed even her
+endearment as I might have.
+
+So in my father and his aspirations, and the later hopes of his excited
+and passionate longing to regain some trace of my mother, my life from
+four years of age was actually and potentially concentrated. My father
+cherished me with a great consuming love. He saw in me the
+representation in face and partially in temperament of his wife. He
+lavished on me every care. Yet because of his eager affection, and his
+complete suspense from social connections I was made too largely
+dependent on him alone. I lived in his companionship only. My
+conversation became prematurely advanced in terms and principles, and my
+childish confidence was nurtured by nothing less wonderful than books
+and theories, experiments and dissertations.
+
+The wonderful beauty of our new surroundings, the strangeness of our
+sudden removal from America, the long distances travelled, awoke in me
+new thoughts and I readily surrendered myself at times to the incoherent
+struggles of my nature, to find someone, something, more responsive to
+my young feelings than essays on magnetism, and a man, father though he
+was, immersed in demonstrations and problems. It was then that this
+distant picture in the days of the fragrant and reviving springtime,
+filled me with unutterable and touching ecstacy.
+
+My father, as I had said, fully intended to arrive at some definite
+conclusions as to the possibilities of wireless telegraphy. At one end
+of the grassy plain I have alluded to, our chief stations were erected
+and, at the distance of two miles, almost at the other extremity, we
+placed a smaller station. Our whole work was to achieve telegraphic
+communication between these points without wires. At night my father
+bent his telescopic gaze upon the heavens, and as the earth approached
+opposition to Mars in 1884 I remember his eagerness and his repeated
+adjurations that if we failed in the task in his lifetime I should
+devote my life, separated from all other occupations and indulgences, to
+carrying on his designs.
+
+At first he only dimly intimated his great ambition, the union of our
+world with others by magnetic waves, but as it slowly assumed a
+theoretical certainty he talked more and more boldly of this portentous
+and transforming possibility.
+
+I cannot refrain from noticing another important scientific activity of
+my father's. It was the use of photography in stellar measurement. As is
+well known to photographers, in 1871 Dr. R.L. Maddox used gelatine in
+place of collodion from which innovation rose the present system of dry
+plate photography. My father had always felt the greatest interest in
+the use of photography in astronomy. He was acquainted with the splendid
+work done by Chapman for Rutherford, New York, in his careful and
+exquisite photographs of the moon. As early as 1850 Whipple of Boston
+made photographs of the stars.
+
+It was, however, the incomparable advantages, furnished in speed, by
+the dry plate photography which made my father realize early as anyone,
+the boundless possibilities thus opened in human attainment for the
+penetration of the Sidereal firmament. He had made a great number of
+photographs at Irvington, and the photographic laboratory was a charming
+illustration of my father's ingenuity and precision. At Mt. Cook we
+enjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere for work of this sort, and
+amongst the first thoughts of my father was to provide the most
+satisfactory means for the continuance of our stellar photography.
+Besides our visual telescope we had a photographic telescope which was
+used, instead of connecting the visual lens on one and the same
+instrument, as in the Lick Observatory.
+
+The innovations introduced by photography have revolutionized the
+processes of stellar measurement. Instead of the laborious task of
+measuring the stars through the telescope, the photographic plate can be
+studied at ease as a correct and identical chart of the heavens and the
+results thus obtained placed at the disposal of astronomers. My father
+appreciated this and amongst his numerous projects of scientific
+usefulness the preparation of photographs of the stars fully occupied
+his mind.
+
+We had no Meridian Circle, as it was less in the direction of the
+determination of the position of stars than in the elucidation of the
+surfaces of planets, that my father's astronomical predilections lay.
+Our telescope was a refractor and had an objective of two feet diameter.
+It was firmly supported on a trap rock pedestal. The eye piece
+adjustment was unusually successful, and the remarkable freedom of the
+objective from any traces of spherical or chromatic aberration gave us
+an image of surprising clearness. The photographic results were
+admirable. I imagine few more satisfactory photographs of the face of
+Moon have been made than those we secured, so far at least as definition
+is concerned, and the detail within the limits of our powers of
+magnification.
+
+The telescope was very slowly installed and it was well in 1885 before
+we were able to use it for either observation or photography.
+
+As the surprising messages detailed in the following pages came by means
+of wireless telegraphy, I will dwell for an instant for the benefit of
+the non-scientific reader, upon the investigations made by my father and
+myself in this subject.
+
+The installation of a wireless telegraphic station is not necessarily
+difficult. The progress made since my father and myself began these
+experiments has been, of course, considerable, and yet so far as I am
+able to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largely
+anticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which the
+interception of messages is prevented was certainly forestalled by us,
+though in the communications with Mars herein detailed the ordinary
+[_non-syntonic_.--Editor] receiver was employed.
+
+We employed an induction coil, emitted a wave by a spark, and had a wire
+rod [_antenna_.--Editor] which was in turn part of an induction coil.
+This was the sender (transmitter) and we could regulate the wave length
+so that a receiving wire adjusted for such a wave could only receive it.
+[There seems to be implied in these words an arrangement known as the
+Slaby-Arco system, which American readers have had described for them by
+M.A. Frederick, Collins, Sci. Amer., March 9 and Dec. 28,
+1901.--Editor.] The receiver consisted of iron filings in which later
+carbon particles were added.
+
+My father died in 1892 and we had not at the time of his death learned
+of Popoff's microphone-coherer in which steel filings were mixed with
+carbon granules. The magnetic waves received at first by us presumably
+from Mars, and later, as the communications indisputably show, from that
+planet, were taken upon a Marconi receiver, or what was practically
+that.
+
+My father became more and more interested in the direction of
+interplanetary research by means of the magnetic wave. He argued
+vehemently, buoyed up by his increasingly augmented hopes as our own
+experiments improved, that the electric wave through space moving in an
+ethereal fluid of the extremest purity would progress more rapidly than
+in our atmosphere, that the tension of such waves would be greater, that
+they could be so "heaped up" as he expressed it--(_In the Slaby-Arco
+system an apparatus is employed consisting of a Ruhmkorff coil with a
+centrifugal mercury interrupter, by which a steeper wave front of the
+disruptive discharge is secured_.--Editor)--that their reception over
+the almost impassable distances of space would be made possible.
+
+This idea of piling up the waves was suggested by purely physical
+analogies. The enormous waves generated by severe storms upon the ocean
+travel farther than the smaller waves, and are less consecutively
+dissipated by the resistance of the water, the traction of its molecules
+and the occasional diversion of cross disturbances from other centers.
+
+Again some experiments made invacuo upon a limited scale seemed to show
+the accuracy of his predictions. Through a glass tube one foot in
+diameter and ten feet long we sent magnetic waves both when the tube
+was filled with air and when it was exhausted. Our means of measuring
+the time required in both cases were quite inadequate--perhaps there was
+no appreciable difference--but the records in the latter case, secured
+upon a Morse register, were unmistakably more vigorous and audible.
+
+At last our various results had reached a point where we felt justified
+in extending the limits of our investigations. We had up to this time
+only tried our messages between the two stations upon the plateau of Mt.
+Cook. My father now proposed that I go to Christ Church, install a
+sender (transmitter) and send messages to him at the observatory. I did
+so and the experiment was convincing. The day before I was ready to
+transmit a message I had attended an attractive church service--it was
+toward the close of Lent in the year 1889--and as my father was entirely
+unprepared for the account I proposed to give him of the function, I
+thought its correct transmission would afford an indubitable proof of
+our success. I wrote out the description. It was received by my father
+with only ten imperfect interpretations in a list of 1,000 words.
+
+From this time forward our plans for erecting a receiver in the
+observatory were pushed to a completion. We had discovered the
+necessity of elevation for the senders (transmitters) and receivers for
+long distance work, and a tall mast, fifty feet in height, was put up at
+the observatory, which--needlessly I think--was to serve as the
+terrestrial station for the reception of those viewless waves which my
+father thought might be constantly breaking unrecorded upon the
+insensitive surfaces of our earth.
+
+The eventful night came. It was August, 1890. Mars was then in
+opposition. The evening had been extremely beautiful. Nature united in
+her mood the most transporting contradictions of temperament. It was
+August and the day had been marked by changes of almost tropical
+severity, although, as we were south of the equator (the latitude of
+Christ Church is S. 44 degrees) August was, with us, mid-winter. A
+thunderstorm had broken upon us in the morning, itself an unusual
+meteorological phenomenon, and the downpour of black rain, shutting off
+the views and enclosing us in a torrential embrace of floods, had lasted
+an hour when it passed away, and the Sun re-illumined the wide
+glistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remote
+shore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, and
+islands, was readily seen; the northern Alps shone in their ermine
+robes, greatly lengthened and deepened by the season's snows, the washed
+country side below us was a patch work of rocks and fields and denuded
+forestland. Christ Church like a vision of whiteness sprang out to the
+west upon our vision, and immediately about us the mingling rivulets
+poured their musical streams through and over the icy banks of half
+consolidated snow.
+
+As night came up, the stars seemed almost to pop out in their
+appropriate places, like those stellar illusions that appear so
+appropriately upon the theatrical stage, and the low lying moon sent its
+flickering radiance over the yet unsubdued waters. It was the time of
+the opposition of Mars which brings that planet nearest to us. As is
+well known to astronomers, the perihelion of Mars is in the same
+longitude in which the earth is on August 27; and when an opposition
+occurs near that date, the planet is only 35 millions of miles from the
+earth, and this is the closest approach which their bodies can ever
+make.
+
+Our magnetic receiver had been placed in position, the Morse register
+was attached; the whole apparatus was in one of the upper rooms of the
+observatory, in proximity with the telescope through whose glass for
+days we had watched the approach of our sister planet. As the night
+settled down upon us we had taken our seats for a few instants at a
+table in a lower room engaged in one of those innumerable desultory
+talks upon our project and their, even to us, somewhat problematic
+character. Everything connected with that evening, apart from its having
+been carefully recorded in my diary and notebooks, is very distinctly
+remembered by me. I recall my father reading from a letter to Nature,
+May 15, 1884, by Mr. W.F. Denning, discussing "The Rotation Period of
+Mars." From my note-book I find the passage literally transcribed:
+
+It read--"Notwithstanding his comparatively small diameter and its slow
+axial motion, the planet Mars affords especial facilities for the exact
+determination of the rotation period. Indeed, no other planet appears to
+be so favorably circumstanced in this respect, for the chief markings on
+Mars have been perceptible with the same definiteness of outline and
+characteristics of form through many succeeding generations, whereas the
+features, such as we discern on the other planets, are either temporary,
+atmospheric phenomena, or rendered so indistinct by unfavorable
+conditions as to defy measurement and observation. Moreover, it may be
+taken for granted that the features of Mars are permanent objects on the
+actual surface of the planet, whereas the markings displayed by our
+telescopes on some of the other planetary members of our system are mere
+effects of atmospheric changes, which, though visible for several years
+and showing well defined periods of rotation cannot be accepted as
+affording the true periods. The behavior of the red spot on Jupiter may
+closely intimate the actual motion of the sphere of that planet, but
+markings of such variable, unstable character can hardly exhibit an
+exact conformity of motion with the surface upon which they are seen to
+be projected. With respect to Mars' case, it is entirely different. No
+substantial changes in the most conspicuous features have been detected
+since they were first confronted with telescopic power and we do not
+anticipate that there will be any material difference in their general
+configurations.
+
+"The same markings which were indistinctly revealed to the eyes of
+Fontana and Huyghens in 1636 and 1659 will continue to be displayed to
+the astronomers of succeeding generations, though with greater fullness
+and perspicuity owing to improved means. True, there may possibly be
+variations in progress as regards some of the minor features, for it has
+been suggested that the visibility of certain spots has varied in a
+manner which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on ordinary
+grounds. These may possibly be due to atmospheric effects on the planet
+itself, but in many cases the alleged variations have doubtless been
+more imaginary than real. The changes in our own climate are so rapid
+and striking, and occasion such abnormal appearances in celestial
+objects that we are frequently led to infer actual changes where none
+have taken place; in fact, observers cannot be too careful to consider
+the origin of such differences and to look nearer home for some of the
+discordances which may have become apparent in their results."
+
+It was just as he finished reading this extract that the shrill
+fluttering call of the maxy bird was heard from the bare branches of a
+poplar near the station, and in the next instant, in that intense quiet
+that succeeds sometimes a sudden unexpected and acute accent, the Morse
+register was audible above us, clicking with a continuity and evident
+_intention_ that, weighted as we were with vague sensational hopes, drew
+the blood from our faces, and seemed almost like a voice from the red
+orb then glowing in the southeastern sky. We sprang together up the
+stairs to the operating-room and saw with our eyes the moving lever of
+the little Morse machine. We had made ourselves familiar with the
+ordinary telegraphic codes, the international Telegraphic Code and that
+in use in Canada and the United States. They were useless. The
+succession of short or long intervals was entirely different and the
+message, if message it was, defied our persistent efforts at
+translation. The disturbance of the register continued some three hours,
+and though we were unmistakably in communication with some external
+regulated and _intentional_ source of magnetic impulses we were
+hopelessly confused as to their meaning.
+
+I can never forget our excitement. We were certainly the recipient of
+exact careful conscious messages. Their terrestrial origin, strange and
+incredible as it might appear, did not seem likely, for the two codes so
+generally in use were not represented in it. Could it be--the thought
+seemed to stop the beating of our hearts--could it be that we had indeed
+received an extra-terrestrial communication? The register of the dots
+and dashes cannot be all reproduced here, though a very long record of
+them, indeed almost complete, was made by myself. During the whole time
+that the register moved hardly a word of conversation escaped our lips.
+We were fixed in mute amazement. We were full of unexpressed imaginings,
+which were told, however in my father's face, so flushed with eagerness,
+as with half-parted lips he bent over the instrument or interrupted his
+attention by walking to the window and gazing far out into the heavens.
+
+The record we obtained is here reproduced, in part, as the whole would
+occupy altogether too much space. I am interested in giving it as it may
+effectually remain a proof of my sincerity in this matter, and will, I
+have the firm conviction, be repeated in the future, not exactly or at
+all, as I have written it, but some message similarly received will
+corroborate the statement here made, and the still further marvellous
+facts I am yet to relate.
+
+The record I will select for reproduction is as follows:
+
+. . . - . . .-- . . . - - - . - - . . . - . . .
+. . - - - - . . . . . - - - . . . . . . . . . .
+- - . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - -
+- - . . . - - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - -
+- . . - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - - . -
+. . . . - - - . . . - - - - - - - - - -
+- - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - -
+- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
+- . . . - . . . - - - . . . - . . . - . . .
+- - - - - . . . . - - - . . . . - - - -
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+As I now know there is a Martian language, if this communication came
+from that planet, which was my own and my father's deepest conviction,
+it would be impossible to interpret the foregoing record with any
+certainty, or indeed, in any way. Absolute ignorance of that language,
+except the brief mention in my father's communications, received by
+myself from that body--whose publication before I die is the sole
+purpose of this manuscript--make it quite certain that it is in the main
+a vowel language, consisting of short vocalic syllables. In such a case
+it is probable that some abbreviation has been used, and the problem of
+its resolution simply is placed out of the question. I may here
+partially forestall the facts communicated to me by my father from Mars.
+In those unparalleled messages he has told me of the desire of the
+Martians to communicate with the earth, and as the Martians themselves
+are largely made up of transplanted human spirits, the possibility of
+doing so would have been completely expected. But the singular
+evanescence of memory amongst these humans which absolutely displaces
+details of strictly mnemonic acquirements, except in certain directions
+of art and invention, has apparently precluded this.
+
+We remained at the register almost the entire night taking turns in our
+tireless vigil. But no more disturbances occurred. My father was deeply
+moved and I scarcely less so. Accustomed as we had become to the thought
+that wireless telegraphy would place us more readily in touch with the
+sidereal universe than with distant points upon our earth, presuming
+indeed, that, except for the intervening envelopes of atmosphere
+attached to our or any neighboring planet, the path of transmission of
+messages through space would be inconceivably swift, we saw nothing
+really impossible in the impression that we had that night received
+communications from extra-terrestrial sources.
+
+The thought was none the less stupendous, and it seemed almost
+impossible for us to allude to the subject without a peculiar sense of
+reverential self-suppression, at least for a week or so. Examination and
+inquiry showed us no contiguous source of the message and it seemed most
+improbable that it had come to us from any distant part of the earth, as
+we had become acquainted with the difficulty or impossibility of
+bridging our very great distances with the resources then at human
+command, and with the unavoidable exigence of the earth's convexity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a few months after this that my father, returning from a climb in
+the neighboring hills, complained of great weariness and a sort of mild
+vertigo. I had become exceedingly endeared to him. I found him a most
+unusual companion, and unnaturally separated as I had been from more
+ordinary associations, our lives had assumed an almost fraternal
+tenderness.
+
+I was greatly troubled to see my father's illness, and begged him to
+take rest; indeed, to leave the observatory for a while; to visit Christ
+Church. We had made some very congenial acquaintances in Christ Church.
+A family of Tontines and a gentleman and his daughter by the name of
+Dodan had often visited us, and while we had become somewhat a subject
+of perennial curiosity, and were more or less visited by curiosity
+hunters and others, actuated by more intelligent motives, the Tontines
+and the Dodans remained our only very intimate friends.
+
+Indeed, Miss Dodan had come to me, buried in scientific speculations and
+denied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light through
+a sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almost
+irksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedly
+enthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories was
+boundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescope
+adjusting everything with--oh! such exquisite precision--and then
+sometimes discovered my hand resting upon hers, or my head touching
+those silken brown curves of hair that framed her white brow and
+reddening cheeks, the throbbing pleasure was so sweet, so unexpected, so
+strange, that I felt a new desire rise in my heart, and the newness of
+life lifted me for a moment out of myself, and started those fires of
+ambition and hope that only a lovely woman can awaken in the heart of a
+man. I mention this circumstance that led to the fatal train of
+occurrences that led to my father's death.
+
+I urged my father to go to Christ Church and stay with the Dodans. Mr.
+Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her
+cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to
+his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness,
+which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home
+and scenes of his former happiness.
+
+He at last consented, and in October, 1891, accompanied by the Dodans,
+whom he had summoned from Christ Church, he went down the steep hillside
+that slanted from our plateau to the lowlands, and was soon lost from
+view in a turn of the road, which also robbed me of the sight of a
+waving, small white handkerchief, floating in front of a half-loosened
+pile of chestnut hair.
+
+A few days later I received a visit from Miss Dodan. I was then working
+at some photographs in the dark room. My assistant told me of her
+arrival. I hurried to our little reception room and library, where a few
+of my father's "Worthies of Science" decorated the walls, which for the
+most part were covered with irregular book cases, while a long square
+covered table occupied the center of the room, littered with charts,
+maps, journals and daily papers.
+
+Miss Dodan sat near the wide window looking toward Christ Church and the
+quickly descending road over which only a few days ago my father had
+journeyed. I caught in her face, as I entered, an anxious and disturbed
+glance, and I felt almost instantly an intimation of disaster. She
+turned to me as I came into the room and with a quick movement advanced.
+
+"Mr. Dodd, your father is ill. I hardly know what is the matter with
+him. He is quite strange; does not know us when we talk to him, and
+wanders in a talk about 'magnetic waves' and 'his wife' and 'different
+code.' Won't you come to see him? You may help him greatly."
+
+The kind, clear eyes looked up into mine and the impulse of real
+sympathy as she pressed my hand seemed unmistakable. I asked a few
+questions and was convinced that my father was the victim of some sort
+of shock, perhaps precipitated by the continuous excitement caused by
+our unaccountable experience in the observatory.
+
+I was but a few moments getting ready for the drive to Christ Church. I
+remember the cold, crisp air, the rapid motion, and can I ever forget
+it--the nearness and touch of Miss Dodan's person, perhaps only a
+hurried brushing past me of her arm, the stray touch of her floating
+hair, or the accidental stubbing of her foot against my own. It seemed a
+short, delicious drive. I fear my heart was almost equally divided
+between apprehension for my father's health and the joy of simple
+nearness to the woman I loved. At last we reached Christ Church. The
+Dodans lived in the suburbs in a pretty villa on a high hill, from whose
+top the city lay spread before them in its modest extent with its
+neighboring places and Port Lyttelon eight miles away.
+
+I found my father better, but it required my own zeal and affection to
+thoroughly restore him, and bring him back to his characteristic
+interest and alertness, which made him so original and delightful a
+companion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan and
+myself were frequently together, becoming more and more attached to each
+other, my father renewed his wonted studies, and strongly desired to
+return to the "plateau."
+
+I almost regretted, harsh as the thought may seem, our return. Such
+incidents are now a kind of sweet sadness to recall, for as I write
+these words, I hear nearer and nearer the summons that must put me also
+in the spirit world, while she, in whose heart my own trustingly lived,
+has been taken away, I think wisely and prudently, to live with her
+father's people in a charming, rustic village of Devonshire. But oh! so
+far away! and this picture which daily I draw from beneath the pillow of
+my sick couch must alone serve to replace the companionship of her face
+and voice.
+
+I can permit myself in this last record of an unrecoverable past to
+describe a treasured incident just before I left the Dodan home with my
+father. I was coming out of my room when I found Miss Dodan also
+emerging from her own bedroom at the opposite end of an upper hall. We
+met and I said: "Miss Dodan, it is a treacherous confession, but I wish
+you were going back with us, or that my father would stay a little
+longer here. I shall miss you."
+
+"Yes," she answered. "Aren't you a good nurse?"
+
+"Oh, I think you need not misunderstand me," I insisted.
+
+"Misunderstanding is rather an English trait, you Americans say," she
+retorted.
+
+"But in this case," I continued, "I hoped any disadvantages of that sort
+would be overcome by your own feelings."
+
+She blushed and looked quite dauntlessly into my eyes: "You mean," she
+inquired, "that you are sorry to leave me?"
+
+My face was very red, I knew, and I felt a puzzling sensation in my
+throat, but I did not hesitate: "Of course, I am sorry to leave you,
+more sorry than I can say, but I fear more, that leaving you may mean
+losing you."
+
+This time confusion seemed struggling with a pleased mirth in her face,
+and with a laugh and a quick movement toward the stairway she exclaimed:
+"Well, Americans, they say, never lose what they really care to win."
+
+I darted forward, but she was too quick for me and the chase ended in
+the lower hall in a group of people--her parents, my father, visitors
+and servants--and I saw her disappear with a backward glance, in which,
+I could swear, I saw two pouting lips.
+
+My father was overjoyed to return to our really very comfortable
+quarters on "Martian Hill," as Mr. Dodan, in reference to my father's
+infatuation over his imaginary (?) population of Mars, was accustomed to
+call our professional home.
+
+It was, I think, only a few weeks after this that my father called me to
+his room. He was standing in his morning apparel, a strange garb which
+he sometimes affected, made up of a black velvet gown brought together
+at the waist by a stout yellow cord, a bright red skull cap, a sort of
+sandal shoe, picked out with silver ornaments, his arms covered with
+loose, puckered sleeves of lace, dotted with black extending up to the
+close fitting sleeves of the velvet gown which only descended to his
+elbow. Beneath the gown, when he was thus theatrically attired, he wore
+a shirt of pale blue silk with a flat collar, over which came a black
+vest meeting his black trunks and blue hose.
+
+My father was a really striking and beautiful picture in his incongruous
+habiliment. His strong and thoughtful face, over which yet clustered the
+curly hair of boyhood, just touched with gray, lit up by his earnest,
+sad eyes, seemed--how distinctly I recall it--almost ideally lovely that
+morning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola,
+only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I came
+in, and as his eyes encountered mine, I detected the traces of tears
+upon his cheeks. My heart was full of love for my father, or childlike
+adoration it might have been called. I hurried to him and embraced him.
+The tenderness overcame his habitual self-restraint and he seemed to
+fall sobbing in my arms.
+
+"My son," he finally whispered, "my days are drawing very fast to a
+close. The shock I experienced at Christ Church prepared me to believe I
+would die in some attack of paralysis. A slight aphasia occurred this
+morning. It, too, as suddenly disappeared. But these warnings cannot be
+neglected. I and you must at once make preparations for that future
+colloquy which we must endeavor to establish between ourselves, when I
+have left this earth and you yet remain upon it.
+
+"I have been thinking a good deal on this subject and my reflections
+have resulted in this conclusion."
+
+His voice had now resumed its usual melody and power, and we sat down
+while he turned the pages of Prof. Bain's little work entitled "Mind and
+Body." He read (I marked at the time the passage): "The memory rises
+and falls with the bodily condition; being vigorous in our fresh moments
+and feeble when we are fatigued or exhausted. It is related by Sir Henry
+Holland that on one occasion he descended, on the same day, two mines in
+the Hartz Mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second mine he
+was so exhausted with inanition and fatigue, that his memory utterly
+failed him; he could not recollect a single word of German. The power
+came back after taking food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs the
+memory in ninety-nine men out of a hundred."
+
+My father then continued: "It seems to me quite clear that our memory,
+at any rate, however little of our other mental attributes is engaged in
+matter, is quite constructed in a series of molecular arrangements of
+our nervous tissues. No doubt there is memory also in that subtle fluid
+that survives death, but, inasmuch as memory is so closely expressed in
+physical or material units or elements, does it not seem plain that as
+spirits we shall probably lose memory?
+
+"The material structure in which it existed, which in a sense was memory
+itself, is dissipated by death. Memory disappears with it. But perhaps
+not wholly. Some shadow of itself remains. What will most likely be
+treasured then? The strongest, deepest memories only. Those which are
+so subjectively strong as to leave even in the spirit _flesh_ an
+impression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs:
+'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuing
+in the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the original
+agent, and of recalling them at after-times by purely mental forces, I
+shall remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed impressions. It
+must be considered as almost beyond a doubt that the _renewed feeling
+occupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the original
+feeling_, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can be
+assigned.'
+
+"It seems to me, my son, in view of all this, that, as the fondest hope
+of my life is to send back to you from wherever I may be, a message, and
+as we both believe the means must be something like this wireless
+telegraphy, I must imbed in my mind the whole system we have developed,
+and especially make myself almost intuitively familiar with the Morse
+alphabet. Beating, beating, beating upon my brain substance this
+ceaselessly reiterated mechanical language, it will become so
+incorporated, that even in the surviving mind I shall find its traces
+and be able to use it.
+
+"So I have concluded to put aside almost everything else and think and
+live in the thought only of this coming experience. You understand me?
+You sympathize in this? Yes, yes, I shall get ready for this supreme
+experiment which may at last, to a long waiting world, bring some
+reasonable assurance that death does not end all. As I think of it, as I
+look forward to meeting your mother, the whole prospect of death grows
+wonderfully interesting and sublimely welcome. And yet, my son, you, you
+who have been so patient, so kind, giving up your life for my
+convenience and pleasure, I dread to leave you. But I will speak to you!
+Watch! wait! and at that instrument upstairs, which I know responded to
+some waves of magnetism crossing the oceans of space, I shall be heard
+by you in English words, opening up the mysteries of other worlds!"
+
+He stopped in sheer exhaustion with his whole face charged with almost
+frantic ecstacy. It seemed to me so natural, nurtured in the same
+impossible dreams, that I saw nothing ludicrous in his hopes.
+
+From that day on we gave ourselves up to telegraphing from our two
+stations, while my father again and again consulted models of our
+transmitters and receivers. This excitement lasted a long time and it
+did seem psychologically certain that in any disembodied condition my
+father would be likely to recall some important parts or all of this
+well learned lesson.
+
+For years my father, as I mentioned before, in his astronomical studies,
+had limited himself to the study, photography and drawing of the
+surfaces of our planetary neighbors. Mars particularly fascinated him,
+for he had, by some illusion or accident of thought fixed his belief
+firmly that Mars represented his future post mortem home.
+
+The progress of study of the physical features of Mars had been
+considerable. With these results my father and I were very familiar, had
+been in correspondence with certain astronomical centers with regard to
+them, and had even contributed something toward the elucidation of the
+problems thus presented.
+
+In 1884, before the Royal Society, some notes on the aspect of Mars, by
+Otto Baeddicker, were read by the Earl of Rosse. They were accompanied
+by thirteen drawings of the planet and showed many features represented
+on the Schiaparelli charts. W.F. Denning in 1885, remarked upon "the
+seeming permanency of the chief lineaments on Mars, and their
+distinctiveness of outline." Schiaparelli confirmed his previous
+observations upon the duplications of the canals and Mr. Knobel
+published some sketches.
+
+In 1886, M. Terby presented to the Royal Academy of Belgium notes on
+drawings made by Herschell and Schroeter, indicating the so-called
+Kaiser Sea. M. Perrotin at the Nice Observatory was able to redetect
+Schiaparelli's canals, which elicited the remark that "the reality of
+the existence of the delicate markings discovered by the keen-sighted
+astronomer of Brera seems thus fully demonstrated, and it appears highly
+probable that they vary in shape and distinctness with the changes of
+the Martial seasons."
+
+These observations of M. Perrotin were detailed at length in the
+_Bulletin Astronomique_, and the distinguished observer called attention
+to the fact that these markings varied but slightly from Schiaparelli's
+chart, and indicated a state of things of considerable stability in the
+equatorial region of Mars. M. Perrotin recorded changes in the Kaiser
+Sea (Schiaparelli's _Syrtis Major_). This spot, usually dark, was seen
+on May 21, 1886, "to be covered with a luminous cloud forming regular
+and parallel bands, stretching from northwest to southeast on the
+surface, in color somewhat similar to that of the continents but not
+quite so bright." These cloud-like coverings were later more distributed
+and on the three following days diminished greatly in intensity. They
+were referred by Perrotin to clouds.
+
+In March and April of the year 1886 a study was made of the surface of
+Mars by W.F. Denning in England. Mr. Denning's drawings corroborated the
+charts of Green, Schiaparelli, Knobel, Terby and Baeddicker. He found
+the surface of Mars one of extreme complexity, a multitude of bright
+spots in places, but with a general fixity of character which led him to
+believe that the appearances were not atmospheric. He indeed attributed
+to Mars an attenuated atmosphere and thought that some of the vagaries
+in its surface characters were due to variations in our own atmosphere
+He did not find the Schiaparelli canals as distinct in outline as given
+by that ingenious observer. He noted many brilliant spots on Mars and
+indicated the disturbing influences of vibrations produced by winds on
+the surface of our earth in connection with changes in the earth's
+atmospheric envelope.
+
+In 1888 M. Perrotin continued his observations on the channels of Mars
+and noted changes. The triangular continent (Lydia of Schiaparelli) had
+disappeared, its reddish white tint indicating, or supposed to indicate,
+land, was then replaced by the black or blue color of the seas of Mars.
+New channels were observed, some of them in "direct continuation" with
+channels previously observed, amongst these an apparent channel through
+the polar ice cap. Some of these seemed double, running from near the
+equator to the neighborhood of the North Pole. The place called Lydia
+disappeared and reappeared. A strange puzzling statement was made that
+the canals could be traced straight across seas and continents in the
+line of the meridian. M. Terby confirmed many of these observations.
+Later the so-called "inundation of Lydia," observed by M. Perrotin, was
+doubted. Schiaparelli himself, Terby, Niesten at Brussels, and Holden at
+the Lick Observatory, failed to remark this change. These observers did
+not double the canals satisfactorily, but all agreed upon the striking
+whiteness and brightness of the planet.
+
+M. Fizeau (1888) argued that the Schiaparelli canals were really glacial
+phenomena, being ridges, crevasses, rectilinear fissures, etc., of
+continental masses of ice. Again (Bulletin de l'Academie Royale de
+Belgique, June) M. Nesten averred that the changes on the surface of
+Mars were periodic.
+
+In 1889, Prof. Schiaparelli reviewed what had been observed upon the
+surface of the planet in a continued article in _Himmel und Erde_, a
+popular astronomical journal published by the Gesellschaft Urania and
+edited by Dr. Meyer.
+
+Some remarkable photographs taken by Mr. Wilson in 1890 were commented
+on by Prof. W.H. Pickering in the "Sidereal Messenger." They showed the
+seasonal variations in the polar white blotches.
+
+In 1889 there reached us from Chatto and Windus of London a most
+entertaining book by Hugh MacColl, entitled "Mr. Stranger's Sealed
+Packet." It was a work of fancy, ingeniously constructed upon scientific
+principles. It described a hypothetical machine, a flying machine, which
+was made up of a substance more than half of whose mass had been
+converted into repelling particles. Such a fabric would leave the earth,
+pass the limits of its attraction with an accelerating velocity and move
+through space. In such a way Mr. Stranger reached Mars. He found it
+inhabited by a people--the Marticoli--happy in a state of socialism, and
+with abundance of food manufactured from the elements, oxygen, hydrogen,
+carbon and nitrogen, with electric lights, phonetic speech, but without
+gunpowder or telescopes.
+
+Its inhabitants had been derived from the earth by a most delightful
+scientific fabrication. A sun and its satellites in its course around
+some other center draws the earth and Mars so together that on some
+parts of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome that
+of the earth and gently suck up to itself inhabitants from the earth,
+who would not suffer death from loss of air, as the atmosphere of both
+bodies would be mingled.
+
+These observations and this last scientific myth have some interest in
+view of the actual knowledge now vouchsafed to the world through my
+father's messages. I have very briefly reviewed them.
+
+My father's premonitions were fully realized. He grew sensibly weaker as
+the months of 1891 passed. His mind became eager with the cherished
+expectation which grew day by day into a sort of a mild possession. It
+seemed to me that there was a moderate aberration involved in his deeply
+seated convictions, and when sometimes I saw him walking past the
+windows on the plateau with his head thrown back, his arms outstretched
+as if he were inviting the stars to take him and his murmuring voice,
+repeating some snatches of song, I felt awed and frightened.
+
+My father was stricken with paralysis on September 21, 1892, became
+speechless the following day, but for a day thereafter wrote on a pad
+his last directions. Some of these were quite personal, and need not be
+detailed here. It was indeed pathetic to see his strenuous and repeated
+efforts to assure me that he remembered all the parts of the telegraphic
+apparatus, and his smile of saddened self-depreciation when he
+hesitated over some detail. At last he sank into a torpor with the usual
+stertorous breathing, flushed face and gradually chilled extremities.
+His last words were scrawled almost illegibly by his failing
+hand--"Remember, watch, wait, I will send the messages."
+
+Miss Dodan came to the plateau and was helpful; to me especially. She
+kept up my breaking spirits, and her womanly tenderness, her brave
+grace, and the joy my loving heart felt in seeing her, enabled me to go
+through the trial of death and separation.
+
+All was finished. My father was buried in Christ Church cemetery by his
+own request, although thus separated by a hemisphere from his wife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year had passed. I had received nothing. Mr. and Miss Dodan came to
+the observatory. They both were acquainted with the singular
+prepossessions which controlled both myself and my father, and I think
+Mr. Dodan was himself, though he admitted nothing, most curious and
+interested in the whole matter. Miss Dodan frankly said she was. But I
+know, to Miss Dodan's fresh, healthy, human life there was something
+weirdly repellent in this thought of communication with the dead. She
+thought of it with a nervous dread and excitement. It just kept me in
+her thoughts a little shrouded in mystery and superiority and closed a
+little the avenues of absolute confidence and peaceful self-surrender.
+
+I had forgotten nothing, although at first an overwhelming sense of the
+uselessness of the attempt, the almost grotesque absurdity of expecting
+to hear from beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere any word
+transmitted through a mechanical invention, upon the earth's crust, made
+me feel somewhat ashamed of my preparations, yet I arranged every
+portion of the receiver and exercised my best skill to give it the most
+delicate adjustment.
+
+Whenever I had occasion to rest I either sent an assistant to the post,
+or kept on my pillow, adjusted to my ear, a telephone attachment to the
+Morse register, so that its signals might instantly receive attention.
+At length as time wore on I arranged a bell signal that might summon us
+to the register.
+
+On the occasion of this visit by the Dodans I was in the loft at the
+receiver which was in a room to one side of that we called "the
+equatorial," where the telescope was suspended. I was as usual waiting
+for a message that never came, and my failing hopes, made more and more
+transitory by the brightness of the southern spring and all the instant
+present industry of the fields below me on the low-lands, seemed to
+dissolve into a mocking phantom of derisive dreams.
+
+I stood up hackneyed and forlorn. Had I not done everything I could? Had
+I not kept my promise? I heard the voices below me; one, that musical
+tone, that made the color come and go upon my cheeks, and as I turned
+hastily to descend to them while the breathing earth seemed to send
+upward its powerful sensitizing odors that turn energy into languorous
+desire, and touch the senses with indolence; at that moment the Morse
+register spoke!
+
+Could my ears have deceived me? No! It was running, running, running,
+intelligible, strong, definite; it seemed to me of almost piercing
+loudness, although just audible. I bent over, seized my pad and wrote.
+The Abyss of Death was bridged! From behind the veil of that inexorable
+silence which lies beyond the grave came a voice--and what a voice! The
+clicking of a telegraphic register in signals, that the whole world knew
+and used. I was quiet, preternaturally so, I think, as I took down the
+message. I became almost aged in the intense rigidity of my absorption.
+
+I was told the Dodans came up and saw me, heard the telltale clicks of
+the register, and unnoticed left me. Still I wrote on, unheeding the
+time. My assistants, pale with wonder, stood around me. The measured
+tappings were the ghostly voices of another world. This message began at
+10 a.m., Sept. 25, 1893. It ended at 10 p.m. on the same day. It came
+quite evenly, though slowly, and was unmistakably intended to be
+inerrantly recorded, as indeed it was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"My son," it began, "I am indeed in the red orb of light we have so
+often looked up to when we were together on the earth, and about which
+our wondering minds hazarded so many fruitless guesses. I have been here
+a short time, and now am able to return to you, by that cipher we so
+fortunately printed upon the tablet of memory, word of my existence.
+
+"I can hardly describe to you my occurrence on this planet. I found
+myself here without any recollection of whence I had come, without a
+traceable thought of anything I had ever heard before.
+
+"I was suddenly sitting in a high room, brilliantly lighted by a soft,
+tranquillizing radiance, listening to a chorus of most delicately
+attuned voices, indescribably sweet, penetrating and moving. Around me
+upon white ivory chairs arranged in an amphitheatre sat beings like
+myself, all looking outward upon a sloping lawn where were gathered
+beneath blossoming fruit trees an army, it seemed, of half shining
+creatures, unlike myself, singing these wonderful choruses.
+
+"I have since learned that I did not reach Mars in that identical moment
+when I found myself sitting in the hall. I had come to it, as all
+disembodied spirits from the earth come to it at one receiving point, a
+high hill not far from the tropic of Mars. This hill, crowned and
+covered with glass buildings, is known as the hill of the Phosphori.
+Here, for nearly one of our months, the incoming souls, which are little
+more than a sort of ethereal fluid, presenting a form only observable by
+refracted light, or I should say polarized light, are bathed in a
+marvellously phosphorescent beam procured by absorption from the sun.
+These souls are intermingled in a chaotic stream that I may liken to the
+streaming currents of heated air in convection from a source of heat
+upon our earth, and this continuous tide is caught in a great spherical
+chamber or a series of chambers extending over five miles around the
+bald summit of this eminence.
+
+"In these colossal chambers the phosphorescent light from enormous
+radiators beats incessantly through and through the slowly, oscillating,
+vibrating, revolving soul matter. And here the process of
+individualization is achieved. A soul, or many souls, are separated
+from the great tide, by flashing, under the bombardment of the
+phosphorescent blaze into shining forms. They assume a shape outlined by
+light, and just slightly subject to gravity from the atomic compression
+necessary to maintain their illumination, they fall lightly out from the
+domes of the spheres, touch the floors beneath, and are led away.
+
+"In this way I found later I had arrived at Mars. When the spirits, thus
+shaped in light and otherwise almost immaterial and unclothed, emerge
+from the Hill of the Phosphori, they are taken along wide, white roads
+to some of the many chorus halls which fill the City of Light, where I
+am now, and from which I am sending this magnetic message. They remain
+for hours, even days and weeks in these halls listening in a sort of
+stupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one great
+recreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocal
+gift in beings who have never enjoyed its exercise on earth.
+
+"Gradually under the influence of this musical immersion, as under the
+bombardment of the phosphorescent rays, a mentality seems developed;
+voice and language come, and the soul moves out of the concourse of
+listening souls, moved by a desire to do something, into the streets of
+the city. This is called, as we might say, the Act Impulse. From that
+time on the soul rushes, as it were, to its natural occupation. Its
+mentality, aroused by music, becomes full of some sort of aptitude, and
+it enters the avenues of its congruous activity as easily, as quickly,
+as justly as the growing flower turns toward the Sun wherever it may be.
+
+"Let me present to you the curious scene my eyes encountered as I sat in
+the great Chorus Hall. I say my eyes. It is hard perhaps for you to
+realize what an organ can be in a creature, so apparently, as we are,
+little more than gaseous condensations. The physiology and morphology of
+a spirit is not an easy thing to grasp or define. I am yet ignorant upon
+many points. But dimly, at least, I may make your natural senses
+cognizant of it.
+
+"You have seen faces and forms in clouds. How often you and I from Mount
+Cook on the earth have watched their changing and confluent lineaments
+in the clouds above the New Zealand Alps. It is the same way with
+Martian spirits. They are tenuous fluids, but the individual pervades
+them and a material response is evoked, and the light from their
+surfaces is so halated, intensified, or reduced as to form a figure with
+a head and arms and legs.
+
+"In some way I imagine the organs are optical effects, ruled by mind,
+which is located in this luminous matter. Later I will describe the
+process of _solidification, the resumption of matter_, for these spirit
+forms slowly concrete into beings like terrestrial men and women. There
+is, therefore, a dual population here, the extreme newly transplanted
+souls, and the flesh and blood people, and between them the transitions
+from spirit to corpuscular bodies. But all this takes place in the City
+of Light. Elsewhere over the whole planet the spirits are seldom seen,
+but only the vigorous and beautiful race of material beings into which,
+they--the spirits--have _consolidated_.
+
+"To return to my first experience in the Chorus Hall in the City of
+Light. I seemed to be in a great alabaster cage enormously large and
+very beautiful. Its shining walls rose from the ground and at a great
+height arched together. The front was a network of sculpture, it held
+the rising rows of what seemed like ivory chairs on which the motionless
+white and radiant assemblage were seated. The whole place glowed, and
+this phosphorescent prevails throughout the City of Light, just as it
+does in the Hill of the Phosphori, when we first landed in this strange
+existence.
+
+"The music came from a field in front of the Chorus Hall, which held a
+wonderful array of beings who, while not radiant as we were, had a
+_lustrous_ look over their smooth and lovely bodies, which were tightly
+clad in the palest blue tunics and leggings. These creatures were
+consolidated spirits. They are constantly augmented by new arrivals,
+and, as the number remains almost unchanged, as new arrivals appear,
+others leave and then move off from the City of Light into the vast
+regions of Mars outside and beyond the city.
+
+"A word of explanation would make this all clear. The Hill of the
+Phosphori begins the transmutation of the psychic fluid which makes up
+the souls as they flow into Mars from space. At the Hill the very
+moderate condensation begins, just enough to bring them to the ground by
+gravity. The psychic fluid is susceptible to the light, absorbs and
+emits it, and so the spirit forms are shining like great _ignes fatui_
+on our old earth. The spirits thus individualize, pass in companies to
+the City of Light, and come to the huge chorus halls which surround the
+city on its outskirts, in the country margin.
+
+"They reach these chorus halls by a sort of suasion produced apparently
+by their sympathy with music. Music and Light are the energies, which at
+first and measurably throughout all the latter days of Martian life,
+direct work and thought and being. The music is quite audible for long
+distances, especially in the direction of the Hill of the Phosphori
+where the spirits land. Drawn by it they move unconsciously toward the
+singing centers. Now there are perhaps a hundred of these chorus halls
+about the City of Light grouped in the direction of the Hill of the
+Phosphori, and the music is quite different in them. There are four
+principal sorts, the grave, the gay, the romantic and the harmonic. By
+their interior sympathy the kinds of spirits move to the choruses which
+afford the music they respond to and it is wonderful how infallibly this
+attraction acts.
+
+"The bands separate and strings and lines of the phosphorized spirits
+train away without direction to the choruses that attract them, although
+only a sort of subdued and confused murmur reaches them from the halls.
+
+"Throughout the first stages of life here, the spirits are somnambulous.
+They move and act unconsciously and in obedience to their imbedded
+instincts and tastes. Only, as under the influence of music and light
+and afterwards occupation, they are transmuted by consolidation into the
+fair material race, which outside of the City of Light controls the
+planet, does consciousness and curiosity and language arise. I sat a
+long, long time in the chorus hall, to which I was drawn, which
+produced _grave_ music. I knew nothing, felt nothing, was but dimly
+cognizant of what was about me, but I thrilled with the music.
+
+"I felt the process of condensation going on, and it was a process
+exquisitely blissful. Now and then, a spirit form would arise and step
+down the rising forms and go out, another and another, while as silently
+spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori would enter and take their seat
+and bathe in the almost unbroken surges of music that come from the
+field outside, from the multitude beneath the almond blossom laden
+trees. Movement is without volition in the spirit stage; attraction that
+follows a hidden impulse, that seems indescribable at first, directs
+them. It is only as the process of consolidation in the City of Light
+individualizes, that the spirits become, as you would say, human. But it
+is a humanity of great beauty. Material particles invade or transfuse
+them, replacing the diaphanous phosphorescent spirit fluid, and they
+grade into supple white and rosy figures, strong, strenuous and
+splendid.
+
+"After remaining a long time, perhaps, in the chorus hall, I felt the
+restlessness that causes one after the other of the spirits to go out. I
+followed the solitary line out into the city, the solemn, swaying music
+still heard as I stepped out upon the broad steps which face the city.
+I was now more observant, something like sight and feeling and memory
+were slowly generated within me, and I noticed that whereas the arriving
+spirits moved like apathetic ghosts, those with whom I now was, turned
+with interest this way and that, seemed apprehending and alive.
+
+"The spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori came on the broad avenues
+leading to the chorus halls like waifs of cloud driven by a zephyr, with
+no visible distention of parts, no leg, or arm, or head or body motion.
+Now they moved with some anatomical suggestions.
+
+"I stood amid a colonnade of arches, the white shining columns rose
+around me to the high, shining roof, before me a long descent of steps,
+and beyond me and around on a softly swelling eminence was spread the
+City of Light. It was a marvellous picture.
+
+"The City of Light is simple and monotonous in architecture, but its
+composition and its radiance quite surpass any earthly conception. The
+buildings are all domed and stand in squares which are filled with fruit
+trees, low bush-like spreading plants, bearing white pendant lily-like
+flowers or pink button-shaped florets like almonds. Each building is
+square, with a portico of columns, placed on rising steps, a pair of
+columns to each step. Vines wind around the columns, cross from one
+line of columns to another and form above a tracery of green fronds
+bearing, as it was then, red flowers, a sort of trumpet honeysuckle.
+
+"The walls of the buildings are pierced on all sides with broad windows
+or embrasures, filled, it seemed, with an opalescent glass. Avenues
+opened in all directions, lined on both sides with these wonderful
+houses, which are made of a peculiar stone, veined intermittently with
+yellow, which has the property of absorbing and emitting light.
+
+"It is indeed a phosphori as, if I recall it aright, the sulphides of
+barium, strontium, and calcium were upon our earth. Later I shall see
+the great quarries of this stone in the Martian mountains. Another
+strange feature in these Martian houses was the hollow sphere of glass
+upheld above each house. It is a sphere some six feet in diameter made
+up of lenses. It encloses a space in the center of which is a ball of
+the phosphorescent stone. During the day the rays of the sun are
+concentrated upon this ball of stone, and at night the stored-up
+sunlight is radiated into lambent phosphorescent light.
+
+"It was the close of a Martian day that I felt the returning impact of
+volition and left the chorus hall. I emerged, as I said before, upon the
+broad platform with its colonnade of columns and arches and saw the
+city as the night drew on. It is difficult to put in words, my son, the
+wonderful effect.
+
+"Each house built of this strange substance, which throughout the day
+had been storing up the energies of light, now, as the fading day waned,
+became a center of light itself. At first a glow covered the sides of
+the houses, the colonnade and dome, while the glass prisms above them
+sent out rays from their imprisoned balls of phosphori. The glow spread,
+rising from the outskirts of the city in the lower grounds to the
+summits of the hills where the sun's last rays lingered. It became
+intensified. The green beds of trees were black squares and the houses,
+pulsating fabrics of light between them. A slight variety of
+architecture in places was accentuated by diverse and varying lines or
+surface light.
+
+"The whole finally blended and a sea of radiance was before me in which
+the beautiful houses were descried, the illuminated groves, and like
+enormous scintillations the glassy spheres--the Martians call them the
+_Plenitudes_ above them. Many other developing beings were around me,
+and voiceless, mute, impassioned, with an admiration which we had as yet
+no adequate organs to express we gazed upon the throbbing metropolis,
+ourselves luminous spectres in the vast eruption of glorious light
+before, above, around us.
+
+"As the night settled down the light grew more intense, more beautiful.
+I could discern the opalescent glasses in the houses sending out their
+parti-colored rays, patching the trees with quilts of changing colors,
+and far away there came, still unsubdued by the night, the continuous
+elation of music.
+
+"All night, all day, the choruses kept on with intermissions, but the
+singers change. This musical facility is the mental or emotional
+characteristic of the Martian. There is more in music than you
+earthlings know or dream of. It is a part of the immortal fiber of men,
+and in Mars it _creates_ matter, for the slow assumption of material
+parts, as I have said, is propagated and accomplished by music, and the
+parts thus made are the most perfect expression of matter the divine
+form of man or woman can know, I think. They are tuned to health, to
+beauty, to inspiration, but all of this you shall know.
+
+"So I went down the steps into the city. I was with a group of spirits
+who noticed me, and whom I noticed, but as yet the listless, strange,
+doomed expression was on our faces, and though memory was beginning to
+light its fires within us, though the transmission of viewless particles
+of matter into our fluent bodies of spirit had begun, though mind and
+desire were awakened, not a word passed our shining lips, and we moved
+on in silence.
+
+"The City of Light is often called in the Martian language also the City
+of Occupation, for here the forming spirits work. I have told you that
+as _consolidation_, through Music and Light, goes on, the aptitudes or
+tastes are awakened, and this first birth of desire in Mars carries the
+spirits off from their ivory seats in the Chorus Halls to the City,
+where like an animal ferreting its purpose by intuition, they seem
+impelled whither their needs are best satisfied.
+
+"I now know that the City of Light is generally divided,--not exactly,
+but as association would naturally impel, into four quarters, the
+quarter of art, the quarter of science, the quarter of invention, the
+quarter of thought. This is simply that the artists, the scientific
+minds, the designers, and the philosophers are somewhat by themselves.
+The population of the City of Light is made up of a fair, white race of
+Martians, and of the forming spirits. As the forming spirits attain
+materialization through occupation, they may remain in the City or go
+out into the other cities, and into the country to work and live.
+
+"Besides the quarters I have mentioned, there is the business section
+and the offices of the government.
+
+"In the light of all I have learned since I came, I may at once explain
+something about the actual life and social organization of this strange
+world.
+
+"The Martian world is one country. There are here no nationalities. The
+center of the country is in the City of Scandor, quite removed from the
+City of Light. Business is carried on as with you on the earth, but its
+nature and its physical elements vary, as you will see. There is a
+circulating medium, banks and business enterprises, but it is more
+veiled, more hidden, less, far less, insistent than with you. A great
+socialistic republic is represented in Mars, and the limits of
+individual initiative are very narrow. Still they exist.
+
+"One prime element of difference is in the nourishment and the area of
+population. The Martian lives only on fruit, and he lives only a few
+degrees on either side of the Equator. All the businesses that in your
+earth arise from the preparation and sale of meat and all the various
+confections, disappear there, and also all the mechanism of house
+heating and lighting. Also there are no railroads, but innumerable
+canals, which form a labyrinth of waterways, and are fed from the tides
+of the great northern and southern seas.
+
+"The business is largely agricultural, but in the cities the pursuit of
+knowledge still continues. There is, however, on Mars a much lessened
+intellectual activity than on the earth. It is a sphere of simplified
+needs and primal feelings exalted by acutely developed love of Music.
+Mars is the music planet. There are not on Mars newspapers, journals,
+magazines, books. The tireless production of these things on the earth
+has but one analogy in Mars, the publication of music scores, the
+recitation of poetry and symposia, and the great illustrated journal,
+Dia. But these things I will explain later.
+
+"I wandered on that night through the city with other spirits. We went
+through the city streets in the radiance of the _Plenitudes_ above the
+houses. The night air was blowing through the trees, and the city was
+filled with people. They were the Martians. We were scarcely noticed. In
+the City of Light the new arrivals are not questioned until they begin
+to "take shape," as they say here, and then they are closely examined,
+and their origin, if it can be traced, is written down and kept in great
+registers.
+
+"The groups were moving in streams toward the higher ground, and as my
+companions were gradually separated from me and were lost like wisps of
+moving light here and there, I went on alone. I came up long, wonderful
+avenues between walls of light, regularly punctuated by the dark squares
+of trees, and the spherical radiations of the Plenitudes above the
+houses.
+
+"The people about me seemed all young, or scarcely more than, as we say,
+in middle life. They speak less than the earth folk, and when they speak
+they utter very simple sentences, and seem very sincere. I often stood
+by little groups gathered at the corners of cross streets, and listened
+to their musical intonations. The language is vocalic and monosyllabic.
+It sometimes suggests a Mongolian tongue, but without the guttural
+clicks and coughs. The Martians are all gifted in music. It fills their
+lives.
+
+"From point to point crowds were assembled about platforms where singing
+was in progress, and every now and then a man or woman in the street
+would sing loudly and passionately with such power and beauty that the
+impressionable Martians would follow the refrain of the song and the
+whole street for blocks and blocks would resound in waves of delightful
+melody. There are no mechanical modes of propulsion in the streets of
+the City of Light. _The Martians all walk_.
+
+"I approached the top of the broad hill on which the City is built, and
+came suddenly out into a square filled again in its park-like center
+with trees. From amid these trees rose a massive building, which I
+instantly recognized as an observatory; the many round domes, as on
+earth, were unmistakable.
+
+"I passed up the walks of the square to the building and entered it.
+
+"It was illuminated by balls of phosphori in glass globes, and its cool,
+broad halls and stairways were, in the soft light, very beautiful. But
+their wonderfulness consisted in the insertion upon the walls of
+illuminated plans and maps of the heavens. These miniature firmaments
+were all afire, so that each opening, carefully graded in size to
+represent stars of the first or second or third magnitude, was filled
+with a beaming point of light, and I walked in these noble corridors
+between reduced patterns of the universe of stars. I can hardly tell you
+how astonished and entranced I was.
+
+"I had for the first time since I reached the planet the impulse of
+speech, and I raised my hands with that motion of snapping the fingers,
+which you recall was characteristic of me on earth, and _spoke_. I
+cried, 'Here is my home.'
+
+"As my hands dropped to my sides I felt resistance. I looked down upon
+myself and could behold the changing surfaces of my body. Under this
+completing stroke of volition the work begun upon the Hill of the
+Phosphori and the Chorus Hall in reducing the intangible spirit fluid to
+corporeal expression was now hastening to an end. I do not stop here to
+consider the reflections this suggests as to the nature of matter, those
+abstruse speculations we indulged in so often over the pages of Muir and
+Helmholz and Tait and Crookes.
+
+"I had reached the ascending stairway, when my hand--for hand it now
+seemed to be--was taken in a friendly pressure, and I turned and saw a
+tall figure with a face of extreme nobility, somewhat scarred, I
+thought, dressed in the usual Martian attire of a flowing tunic and
+closely fitting body clothing. He said in English, 'You are from the
+earth as I am.'
+
+"My son, how can I, in this dull, mechanical method of conversation with
+you, ignorant, indeed, whether the magnetic waves loaded with my
+message, are traversing or not the millions of miles of space to your
+ear, how can I make you realize the wonderful and blessed feelings of
+amazement and happiness that the stranger's words brought me. Here I
+was, a disembodied soul from Earth, which at that moment I only dimly
+recalled, undergoing the strange process of re-establishment in flesh
+and blood, and slowly appropriating those natural appetites which come
+with flesh and blood, a waif of spiritual being in the great voids of
+creation, impelled by some implanted power of affinity to this remote,
+strange, phantasmal and unreal place, overwhelmed in a stupor of
+confusion, like some awakening patient from the vertigo of a terrifying
+dream!
+
+"I looked upon my friend, and in the rapidly rising flood of emotions
+that came with the acting members of my body, flushed and throbbing with
+excitement, and with a wild joy besides, I flung myself upon his neck
+and pressed him with arms that seemed once more those natural physical
+ties that have held upon my breast those I best loved on earth.
+
+"The stranger led me slowly up the stairway and past great celestial
+spheres which filled the higher hallways, conducting me to a room at one
+corner of the great structure. The room was a singular and unique
+apartment. It consisted of a large central space, furnished with the
+usual ivory chairs, and a broad, massive center table, also of ivory,
+curiously inlaid with particles of the omnipresent _phosphori_, which
+gave out a liquid light and imparted indescribable chasteness and beauty
+to the carved ornaments upon them. The floor was dark, a leaden color,
+lustrous, however, like black glass, and made up in mosaic. Around the
+room were alcoves lit by lamps of the phosphori, and in each alcove a
+globe of a blue metal upon which were painted sketches like charts or
+maps. A chandelier of this blue metal was pendant from the ceiling, and
+in its cup-like extremities, arranged in vertical tiers, were round
+balls of the phosphori, glowing softly.
+
+"Wide windows, unprotected by glass or sashes, just embrasures framed in
+white stone which everywhere prevails in Mars, looked out upon the
+marvellous City, which thus seemed a lake of glowing fires, over which,
+rising and refluent waves of light constantly chased each other to its
+dark borders, where the surrounding plain country met the City's edges.
+But throughout the distance I could trace lines of light marking
+highways or roads leading interminably away until quite extinguished at
+the optical limits of my vision.
+
+"The walls of this beautiful room rose to an arched ceiling which was
+inlaid with this wonderful blue metal, seen in the globes, designed in
+scrolls and waving ribbons, and just descending upon the walls
+themselves in attenuated twigs and strings. The walls were bare and
+shining.
+
+"My friend led me to one of the great windows and placed me in a chair.
+Drawing another beside me, placing his hand on mine, and leaning outward
+toward the burning splendor below us, above which in the still, clear
+heavens shone those stellar hosts you and I have so often watched with
+wonder, he said:
+
+"'Ten Martian years ago I came to this world as you have come. As a
+spirit I entered the chambers on the Hill of the Phosphori. I sat in the
+Chorus Hall. I entered the City and slowly changed, as you are changing,
+into one of the Martian white people. I found my work, as you will, in
+this Patenta, for by that name in Mars is called this home of astronomy
+and physical philosophy. Here, amid telescopes and apparatus of
+experiment and investigation, I have spent the years, mapping with many
+others the skies, and above all beating the earth we left, as have many,
+many, whom you will meet, with magnetic waves, hoping against hope, that
+some response might be gained, some hint of that connection through
+space which the physicists of this planet expect, ere long, may make all
+the beings of the universe one great sidereal society.'
+
+"He stopped and leaned away from me, perusing my face with interest.
+Words came to my lips, memory again asserted its triumphant declaration
+that I was the same being as had lived upon the earth, and with it the
+sudden turbulence of hope that she, your mother, whom we so often
+expected to regain, might, as I had, have reached this planet, too, and
+to me, renewed in youth, might come the glory and the joy of knowing her
+again.
+
+"I turned to him and spoke: 'Kind friend, I am yet dazed and stricken
+with the marvellousness of my being here. It seems but a short time, a
+lapse of even a day, that I bade good-bye to my son on the death-bed in
+my home on earth. I am too tormented with wonder to speak to you much. I
+can tell all I know of myself in a little while. But now as I grow
+stronger, tell me of this new world, and oh! give me, sir, food. I feel
+the quickening fevers of appetite and desire.'
+
+"The man arose and left the room. In a few moments he returned followed
+by a boy and a young woman bearing a basket. They spread a yellow cloth
+upon a small ivory table and set down two plates of the bright blue
+metal; upon one they placed a pile of small round cakes and on the other
+a number of red and yellow gourd shaped fruits. At a signal from my
+companion I arose and sat at the table.
+
+"He remained at the window and continued: 'While you break your long
+fast, let me tell you what I know about this new world which will now be
+your home for a long time. You will learn all, but I am not watching
+to-night. In seeing you and hearing the familiar English speech I am
+moved myself by currents of retrospection; my earth home comes back to
+me. I will satisfy your curiosity, and, you in turn, must tell me what
+has happened in the old home.'
+
+"He paused; from the streets of the city rose a sacred song. It came
+like a slowly increasing torrent of sound, soft and low, rising with
+impetuous fervor until it seemed to engulf us in its melodic tide.
+Individual tones were heard in it, but its solidity and mass were most
+impressive. I shook and trembled beneath the impact of its vibrations;
+in its surging glory of sound I became fully reincarnated. I awoke naked
+and ashamed. The man saw my confusion. He hurried to a niche in the wall
+and handed me the tunic of the Martians with its girdle of blue cord and
+its cap and shoes of the blue metal exquisitely wrought and light. I put
+them upon me and lifting the cakes and the mellow-soaked pears to my
+lips, listened.
+
+"'The Martians,' he continued, 'are both a natural and supernatural
+race. The natural race are largely prehistoric, though many yet exist;
+the supernatural race are made up of beings from other worlds and a
+great majority come up from the earth. How reincarnation first began on
+Mars is unknown, though the natural people, the Dendas, have traditions
+about it, vague and contradictory. It must have been slow. The
+supernatural people thus brought to Mars have created its civilization,
+discovered the phosphori, and established Music, which is so much of
+their life, and accelerated in the way you have learned the process of
+materialization.
+
+"'They built this City of Light from phosphorescent stone quarried from
+the Mountains of Tiniti. Formerly the spirits came helter skelter to
+Mars all over its surface and went wandering about, helped to
+reincarnation by the various villagers or citizens. The great new
+improvement in the last half century has been the creation of the
+receiving station at the Hill of the Phosphori, the building of the
+Chorus Halls, and the establishment of the City of Light. Light draws
+the spirits, and though spirits reach other points of Mars, the
+centralization of Light here, draws most of them to this side. The
+Martians are not immortal. They vanish in time.
+
+"'As reincarnated all spirit becomes young but nourishment has undergone
+a change. The physiological process is singular. I need not dwell upon
+it. Evaporation replaces defecation. Love enters the Martian world, but
+it has lost much of the earthly passion. The physiological effects are
+also different. There are no children here.
+
+"'We live in the tropical regions mostly of Mars, and the polar and
+north temperate zones are empty. The natural Martian races are found
+more plentifully there. They are strong and small and work under the
+supervision of the supernaturals. They are like the earthlings and eat
+meat. Our food is bread and fruit. Our language does not lend itself to
+composition; it only sings. Literature, as we knew it on earth, does not
+exist here. The natural Martians have tales and stories and plays and
+some books. These things no longer interest the supernaturals. Our life
+is quite simple, almost expressionless, except for the power of our
+music. The souls from different parts of the earth recognize each other
+and converse in human language, but, unless practiced, it is forgotten
+and our euphonies take its place. I have used my earth language with a
+friend and still speak English well.
+
+"'We have art here, but it is almost wholly sculpture and architecture
+and design. Color, except in glass, does not greatly please the Martians
+and there are few painters. They survive from other worlds, but cannot
+secure pigments, and draw only in black and white for the most part.
+They are cartoonists, as we would say, on the earth. But we grow fruits
+and flowers, the former in varieties and richness unknown upon the
+earth and the latter in delicate tints with blues and yellows, the only
+primary strong tints the Martians admire.
+
+"'Mechanical invention is discouraged, except as it assists astronomy.
+Astronomy is the great profession. Cars, railroads and conveyances, as
+you say on earth, do not exist. We walk or sail and float upon our
+canals. Our industry is agriculture and building. Architecture is
+studied and advanced beyond all you have ever known on the earth. Mars
+is filled with beautiful cities. Its whole government consists in a
+council at the City of Scandor, from which representatives issue to its
+various departments. One is here in the City of Light. His motives are
+always just. There are no parties, for there are no policies. Life is so
+simple. Beauty and knowledge only rule us. Character, as you, as I, knew
+it on the earth, does not exist. There are no temptations, and we live
+as children of Light, in a sort of childhood of feeling, with great
+gifts of mind. But even living is noble. There is indeed rivalry. Yes,
+envy is with us. We worship God in great temples in services of song.
+Sermons are never heard.
+
+"'In this city the great designers live, also the men who work at the
+deep problems of life and thought and matter; and the sculptors. It is
+the next largest city to Scandor. Scandor is far away. I never saw it.
+Glass work is done here and throughout Mars. Making the blue metal which
+you see, quarrying stone and ore and coal for the smelters and glass
+factories, the fabrication of dress material and fabrics for houses,
+making our boats and canal ships, cutting down the forests in the
+Martian highlands, cultivating fruits and flowers and the great wheat
+fields are the chief industries, and there are lesser lines of work, as
+the potteries and the instrument makers.
+
+"'There are no industries in the City of Light. It is employed as I told
+you. Its population is constantly changing, for spirits like you are
+reincarnated here, and these new multitudes come and go. To-morrow, the
+ships on the canals will carry many away. The spirits, as you did, when
+they enter the city, wander as they will; they enter the houses, the
+workshops, the laboratories, everything in obedience to their
+instinctive choice. The people of the City of Light are therefore
+largely engaged in caring for them as they fall into bodily forms,
+clothing, feeding, housing them.
+
+"'Each householder and all citizens report to the Registeries what
+spirits have come to them, and whence they came, and the great diversion
+and entertainment of our people is to listen to the stories of other
+worlds, which these new arrivals bring. Memory does not survive long
+and they soon forget their past history. It is best so, except in
+fugitive and dreamlike fragments, unless they are great.
+
+"'According to their desire or aptitudes, the spirits are sent away when
+Martianized to the different parts of Mars, and many stay here with us
+in the workshops and laboratories.
+
+"'Besides Music, the people of Mars delight in recitation, and in the
+City of Scandor I hear there are great theatres or public places where
+recitations and concerts and even noble operas are held. Many of these
+are brought to us by great spirits from other worlds, their own works in
+poetry or prose or music. In Scandor there are great orchestras with all
+the instruments we had upon the earth, and the paper, Dia, is published
+there, which is read everywhere in Mars. There are few books, no schools
+in the common sense. The thinkers have assemblies and there are
+announcements and explanations of discoveries.
+
+"'Our life in many ways is like the life on earth, but less active, more
+contemplative, and sin and money-making are almost absent. The wicked of
+all sorts have one fate; they are fired off the planet. We can overcome
+the attraction of gravitation by our Toto powder. These executions are
+strange to earth eyes. You will see them. The Toto powder is also a
+motive power.
+
+"'We have a medium of exchange, silver, and there are rich and poor with
+us, but no poverty. There can be no armies nor navies. The government
+carries on extensive works of improvement and keeps the canals and pays
+its laborers. The government supports this City of Light and the people
+here are paid for the number of spirits they care for and assist.
+Happiness reigns on Mars, but it is a pensive happiness. We never,
+because of the singular physiology of our bodies, can know the
+boisterous and passionate joys of earth, neither do we know many of the
+ills of the flesh. We have sickness and there are accidents. We have a
+death, but it is like evaporation. We decline again after a long life to
+the spirit stage and vanish. So there are partings here, and the old
+sadness of the end as on earth; but the gaiety of children, the ambition
+of youth, the devotion of parents is unknown.'
+
+"His voice sank, he bent his head upon his hands, and a sort of tremor
+ran through him, and when again he looked upon me his eyes shone with
+moisture, and the hot tears ran down his cheeks. Memory might be
+fleeting on Mars, but the loved ones of the earth were yet remembered,
+and the abysses of the eternal void of space could never be crossed by
+the wave of speech or recognition. This was the pathos of the Martian
+life.
+
+"I was shown by him, as the slowly arising sweetness of fatigue showed
+itself within me, to a bedchamber of charming simplicity. The graceful
+bedstead of the blue metal was covered with snowy covers, curtains hung
+at the windows also white. The furniture of the room was of a sort of
+pale, red wood obtained in the great Martian forests where the trees
+known as the Ribi grow, whose leaves and flowers have a pink tint, which
+in seasons of fruitage is more intense, and present enormous areas of
+extraordinary beauty.
+
+"This room was at the top of one of the many branching wings of this
+composite astronomical laboratory. To reach my room we walked through
+hallways all illuminated with the phosphorescent glowing balls while the
+radiant patterns in the walls shone also with a pale beauty. These balls
+possess a wonderful lighting power and besides their self-illumination
+can be stimulated into the most intense brilliancy by electric currents
+with which the Martians are profoundly acquainted. The electrical
+displays on Mars surpass description and the waves of magnetism I am now
+utilizing to send to you these messages are ten miles in amplitude.
+
+"I fell asleep, quickly lulled into an almost death-like slumber by the
+cadence of innumerable fountains. Near the _Patenta_ is the Garden of
+Fountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was the
+plash and rivulous current of these water courts that brought on sleep.
+
+"I awoke when the Martian dawn was coming on. Slumber had given me the
+last reassurance of identity of body, and I awoke with a delightful
+sense of health and youth. I stood at the wide window near my bed and
+gazed out upon the yet luminous City of Occupation. The picture was of
+surprising strangeness and beauty. Far off, until melting into the
+encroaching edges of an outer blackness, the City extended its folds and
+surfaces of light. The streets were empty, the music of the Chorus Halls
+stilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets,
+a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thickly
+leaved trees and the firmament shone with the larger stars, beginning to
+pale before the rising sun. As the sun rose higher, the effulgence of
+the City died away, the light of the same great orb which brings the
+dawn to you, covered with its rays the white and glorious City, the
+music seemed again revived, and from the doorways of the houses I could
+see forms issuing, while far off the Hill of the Phosphori raised its
+glass domes in the air, where the homogeneous tide of spirit was
+undergoing differentiation, as we might say, into separate cognizable,
+discreet beings. An unspeakable delight filled me. I felt the power of
+mind and with it the radiant energy of manhood."
+
+No more words came. The message ended. Not a motion or sound succeeded
+this wonderful trans-abysmal dispatch.
+
+Well, here, at last, was the long expected, impossible, amazing reality.
+When I had deciphered the last word, when I had it borne fully in upon
+me, the significance of it all, I turned to the one natural effort to
+answer this Martian communication. I sent out from the battery of our
+transmitter the longest wave of magnetic oscillation I could emit. The
+message was simple: "Have received all. Await more. Transmission
+perfect."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Again for weeks I watched the station. My assistants relieved me, and
+amongst them was now included Miss Dodan. It was only a few days after
+the Dodans found me at the register, absorbed in receiving my father's
+message, that Miss Dodan called. She ran toward me at the open door of
+the station, her face fixed in an anxious expression of half-alarmed
+expectation.
+
+"Did you really, Mr. Dodd, hear anything? Is it true that something came
+from your father. Oh, tell me, can it be possible?"
+
+I took her clasped hands in my own, looked into her face and told her
+everything. She was the first visitor to the station since the day of
+the marvellous experience. My assistants had promised secrecy, which I
+reinforced effectively by doubling their salaries. I felt I ought not to
+have revealed this thing to Miss Dodan, and when in the first impulse of
+confidence everything so unwittingly passed my lips, I took her arm in
+mine and walked out upon the broad plateau toward the opposite end
+where our smaller experimenting station had been built.
+
+"Miss Dodan," I said, "I am going to ask a great favor of you."
+
+"Yes," she answered, half musingly, for the tremendous fact I had
+related had half robbed her of her consciousness of passing things.
+
+"I want you solemnly for the present to promise me not to reveal the
+strange thing I have told you. It would hardly be believed. No, I am
+sure it would be laughed at, and I would become in the eyes of everyone
+a foolish, impossible dreamer. This would give me a deep sorrow. My
+father's name would be dragged into the mire of this common ridicule.
+You revered my father."
+
+I bent more closely over her, I felt her breath upon my cheeks, her eyes
+seemed fixed in mine, and then I did what I had never done before, I
+kissed the lips of a woman and it was also the lips of the woman I
+loved. There was no resistance, no withdrawal; a tremor--was it
+pleasure?--seemed to disturb her for a moment and again I kissed her.
+This time with a quiet effort toward release she separated herself from
+me, and while I still held her hands, our walk stopped and we faced each
+other, just where looking westward the spires, and flocking houses of
+Christ Church came fully in view.
+
+"Miss Dodan," I began, fearful to use her first name through a
+reluctance that was itself the expression of the deep love I bore her,
+"Miss Dodan, I may for some time yet be engaged in this now imperative
+work. I cannot, you know, now leave it. It is the most marvellous thing
+the world has ever known. It means so much to me, indeed to us all.
+These messages are erratic--fitful. I have now waited for weeks for a
+renewal of these strange communications and there is nothing. But in the
+midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment
+me. I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you all
+the devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment
+that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant
+to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now
+to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an
+instant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait,
+until the depthless power of my love for you can be made clear."
+
+I would have sunk upon my knees in the abasement and passion of my
+desire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her arms
+about my neck and placed her head where--well, I am no connoisseur in
+love scenes--but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gave
+her heart to me.
+
+We passed back in silence, and when she left me the fluttering
+handkerchief that had so often waved back its salutation on the winding
+distant road was now in my hands, and its signals sent by me came to her
+from the plateau. It was the simple pledge of our mutual love, a pledge
+that even now as I prepare these last pages of a manuscript that is a
+testament to the world, soothes my pain and renews the happiness of that
+day, forever and forever lost.
+
+The next message came a few days after my interview with Miss Dodan. It
+was a rainy day in November--the spring time of that Southern land. The
+register was heard by one of my assistants, Jack Jobson, a man who had
+unremittingly taken my place when I was absent, and who seemed more than
+anyone else dazed and wonder stricken over the experience we had. He
+came running to me, a wild terror in his face, exclaiming, "It's going
+again, sir. Hurry! It's running slow." I sprang upstairs, and before I
+had reached it heard the telltale clicks. It was not altogether a
+sheltered position, and as I reached the table I felt the bleak and
+chilly air penetrating the crevices of the window, a raw ocean breeze
+that in a few instants crept through my bones. But I was again
+unconscious of everything; that marvellous ticking obliterated all
+thought of earth, its affairs, accidents, dangers, loves, hopes,
+despairs, all forgotten, swallowed up in the immeasurable revelation I
+was about to receive.
+
+The second message began at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of November
+25, 1893, two months exactly after the first. Its very opening sentences
+I failed to get. It lasted late into the morning of the next day. The
+strain of taking it was somehow singularly intense upon me. I was taken
+from the table the next morning unconscious. I had fainted at the close.
+It began, as I received it, a few opening sentences having been lost:
+
+"...was sent to you I was in the City of Light, and now I am in the City
+of Scandor.
+
+"The morning of that wonderful night in which I became a flesh and blood
+Martian, strong and young and beautiful, dawned fair. My friend came for
+me, and we went together to the great 'Commons' of the Patenta, a superb
+hall where all the professors, investigators, and students in the great
+Academy sit at many tables. This huge dining room is at the center of
+the group of buildings which make up the Patenta. Corridors lead into it
+from the four sections of the Patenta, and as we entered, from the
+different sides there were many men and some women taking the ivory
+chairs at the side's of the long tables of marble, on which rose in
+beautiful confusion of color crowded vases of fruits.
+
+"Surrounding the room are niches instead of windows, and in each niche
+one noble symbolic figure in white or colored marble.
+
+"Light fell in a torrent of glory through the faintly opalescent glass
+compartments of the ceiling, from which, at the intersection of the
+broad and long rafters of blue metal, hung chandeliers formed in
+branching arms with cup-like extremities, and holding spheres of the
+omnipresent _phosphori_.
+
+"I stood a moment with my companion at the entrance of the great dining
+room, and watched the groups and individual arrivals, as they assorted
+themselves into companies or engaged in some short interchange of
+greetings. It was a very beautiful scene. The faces of all were
+wonderfully clear and strong, and in the commingling of forms, the bold,
+intellectual features of some, the more rare, delicate outlines of other
+faces, the flowing of the graceful tunics and robes, the pleasant,
+musical confusion of voices, with the quick, glancing movements of
+attendants, the heaped up chalices and baskets, vases and broad
+spreading plates of fruit, the many carelessly arranged and profuse
+bunches of radiant flowers in tall receptacles of glass or alabaster, in
+all this, with the strong, simple architectural features of the Hall,
+the eye and mind and senses seemed equally stimulated and satisfied.
+
+"Amongst the glorious throng my companion pointed out to me many of
+those great men and women whom I seemed to know by their writings and
+portraits when on the earth. At one table sat Mary Somerville,
+Leverrier, Adams, La Place, Gauss and Helmholz; at another Dalton,
+Schonbeim, Davy, Tyndall, Berthollet, Berzelius, Priestly, Lavoisier,
+and Liebig; here were groups of physicists--Faraday, Volta, Galvani,
+Ampere, Fahrenheit, Henry, Draper, Biot, Chladini, Black, Melloni,
+Senarmont, Regnault, Daniells, Fresnel, Fizeau, Mariotte, Deville,
+Troost, Gay-Lussac, Foucault, Wheatstone, and many, many more. At a
+small table immediately beneath a dome of glass, through whose softly
+opaline texture an aureole of light seemed to embrace them, sat
+Franklin, Galileo and Newton. It would be impossible to describe to you
+my amazement at the astonishing picture.
+
+"It almost seemed as if the air vibrated with the excitement of its
+impact and use, as these giant minds conversed together. Endowed again
+with youth, scintillating, brilliant, the flush of a semi-immortality
+impressed upon their faces, which again bespoke the eminence of their
+intellects, in picturesque and effective, almost pictorial groupings,
+this wondrous gathering filled me with new rapture. My comrade led me to
+other branching halls similarly occupied. Chemists were here
+conspicuous--Chevreuil, Talbot, Wedgewood, Daguerre, Cooke, Fresenius,
+Schmidt, Avogadro, Liebig, Davy, Berthollet, and many, many more.
+
+"It formed an equally striking scene. I turned to my companion and asked
+him how it was that the mathematicians, chemists, physicists,
+astronomers, were so crowded together. He said, 'The Patenta covers,
+with all its buildings, a space about one mile square, and here in
+laboratories and in the great observatories these men have flocked
+because of a sympathy in their tastes and talents. Although astronomy is
+the great profession, and, as I will show you, the marvels of the
+Universe are being more and more fully known, yet the study of the
+elements and the laws of matter is popular and also followed
+unremittingly. It is true that we know these people are from your earth;
+they have reported all that to the Registeries, to whom I will soon
+conduct you; they yet retain strong memories of the earth, though it is
+confined more largely to knowledge than to experience. In some, the
+Martian life and habit has almost obliterated their earthly notions and
+designs. It is singular that of the scientific workers of the earth the
+astronomers, physicists, and chemists alone reach Mars. The biologists,
+zoologists, botanists, geographers, and geologists rarely are booked at
+the Registeries as coming from the Earth. Their lives may be prolonged
+elsewhere, they seldom reach us.
+
+"'There are some exceptions. The plants of Mars are numerous, its rocks
+and animal life curious, and they are well understood. A few doctors
+from the earth are here, but medicine and surgery are not so much
+needed, yet in the study of life our philosophers have made great
+strides. Your thinkers and poets, artists, composers, dramatists,
+musicians, come here, but of all the wonderful students of Nature the
+earth has produced, as far as I know or have heard, Lamarck and Agassiz,
+Owen, and Cuvier alone have been reincarnated on our globe. And the
+warriors and generals of the earth are unknown here.'
+
+"We had reached a table unnoticed, unheard. There was a constant rush of
+words about us. The melodic charm of the Martian tongue, like the soft
+vocalization of Italian pleased me. If the Martians are without books
+or papers, they possess all the resources of conversation. Animation,
+pleasure, salutation, cheerfulness and joy was everywhere, the perfume
+of flowers filled the air, the shafts of sunlight broken into the most
+enticing iridescence filled the great noble rooms with lovely colors,
+and the clear white tables, beautifully spread with fruit, seemed to
+chasten appetite into something ethereal and rare.
+
+"As we stood an instant at our places the people arose, and from some
+distant and concealed place, so situated I afterwards learned, as to
+gain access to all the dining halls, there came a swell and burst of
+jubilant music. It was so fresh and free and bewitching in its glee and
+ringing cadences, so consonant and accordant with the glad and
+illustrious feeling of the place and time, that my heart seemed to leap
+within me; and then it softened, and changing into notes of melodic
+gravity, ended in a splendid outcry of soaring, piercing notes--the
+salute to the morning. Long after the voices had finished, the rolling
+notes of an organ continued the loud outburst.
+
+"As we sat down, the conversation was again resumed and I noted then the
+singular clearness and suavity of this Martian language. I must hasten
+my narrative. I have so much to tell you. We ate the great cereal of
+Mars--the Rint--a delicious food, in which, as it seemed to me, the
+substance of a sort of rice was mingled with a creamy exudation in all
+of which was enclosed the flavor of the orange and the peach. This, with
+a fruit, a kind of milk, and many wines, forms the nourishment of the
+Martians. The fruits are most various, and every hidden or patent fancy
+of the gourmet seems elicited or satisfied in them. I cannot now
+describe them even if I recalled them. One commended itself to my taste
+strongly, a sort of nodular banana, holding a fragrant nucleus, like a
+large strawberry immersed in a savory juice, and coated with a rind
+stripped from it by the hand. It is of most stimulating qualities. It is
+called Ana.
+
+"Few implements are in use; the Rint is taken in short spoons and the
+fruit is usually manipulated with the fingers. The milk and wine are
+drunk from the most ingeniously devised and ornamented glasses, napkins
+of the Tofa weed are used, a pale green cloth, and large bowls of
+acidified water in which floats a morsel of soap are served at the end
+of meals. Great variety prevails, and individual fancy, taste, desire,
+or invention sway as with you on earth.
+
+"The breakfast over, the companies arose and moved out in clusters and
+trains to the avocations of the day. Many of these workers in the
+Patenta have houses throughout the city, while others living singly
+congregate in the numerous apartments, and enjoy these commons. The
+extraordinary assemblage I saw here is repeated in the other great
+communal halls where the artists, philosophers and inventors congregate.
+But the Halls are of quite different construction in each quarter of the
+City.
+
+"Accompanying or associated with these Halls are the Courts of
+Announcement and Recreation. Here lectures, conferences, entertainments,
+are given, and the people of the City flock in droves not infrequently
+accompanied by numbers of the new Spirits who here are often enabled to
+gain their final solidification; '_Gell_' as the Martians say.
+
+"My companion led me out of the Hall. Men and women were moving slowly
+in various directions and as we made our way over the campus and between
+the many noble buildings I saw many of the lambent spirits half emergent
+into fleshly shapes accompanied by the watchers, who are in great
+numbers in the City, carrying over their arms the white and blue dresses
+with which to clothe them as the spirits fall into solid forms.
+
+"Amongst these buildings I easily noted the marvellous observatories
+where objectives twenty feet in diameter are used with which the
+astronomers actually discern the life of our earth. The reports they
+make from week to week of their inspection of the Solar system, and of
+the commotions, changes, births and demolition of Stars, are the
+sensations of Mars. These Reports are read aloud in the Halls of
+Announcement and Recreation. But astounding beyond belief, they
+photograph the surfaces of these distant bodies, and report in moving
+pictures the disturbances of the cosmic universe. No wonder that the
+whole Mind, as it were, of Mars is concentrated on the fabulous results
+of their cosmic studies.
+
+"We descended from Patenta Hill in an avenue that led between the white
+columned houses with their spheres of Phosphori and their umbrageous
+squares around them. It was a season of flowers, though I understood
+that by the use of fertilizing injections the number of flowers in a
+shrub and even in an herb can be here greatly multiplied. The windows of
+the houses were open and their sills crowded with blossoms. The use of
+the red blossoming vine was strangely extravagant. In many cases it had
+thrown its branches over an entire house, clambering over the roof and
+encircling the phosphoric cage, so that the white house was dissected by
+its twigs and tendrils, while the red honeysuckle flowers depended in
+clusters from the walls, the roof gutters, and the light house globes
+above them.
+
+"The Court of the Registeries was a long low structure made of the
+prevalent white stone with a roof of what seemed to be red copper. It
+was built upon one of the canals which here enter the city and formed
+one side of a long pier or dock to which and from which interesting
+little boats were constantly approaching and as constantly departing.
+
+"A hum of business and everyday work surrounded the place, and it seemed
+refreshing to note the stir and bustle of affairs. Streams of people
+were entering the Court as we arrived. They were inhabitants and
+watchers bringing the new incarnations to the Registeries to have their
+origin recorded if they could recall it. Indeed many spirits fail
+utterly to remember their former condition, and happen, as we might say,
+upon Mars, unexplained and inexplicable. They even are without speech
+and learn the Martian language as a child learns to talk.
+
+"We pushed in with the jostling crowd, and even as I entered I could
+hear the murmurous chant of the Chorus Halls, borne hither-ward on the
+morning wind. It now seemed a long time, although but one day apparently
+had elapsed since I sat, a trail of luminous ether, undergoing the
+strange process of materialization.
+
+"How incredible it all was, how incomprehensible. I pinched myself until
+I could have cried out with pain, and at that very instant a voice
+saluted me, calling me by name and a rushing figure encountered me. I
+stood transfixed. Before me was Chapman, the mechanic, workman, and
+photographer for Mr. Rutherford, in New York in the seventies, a man
+whom I knew well, from whom I had learned much, and whose skill helped
+so largely in the production of Rutherford's negatives of the Moon. My
+repulsion was over in an instant. I clasped him heartily. It seemed so
+good, so human, to embrace something in this strange world. An equal
+resistance met my own. We were indeed substance.
+
+"'Mr. Dodd,' exclaimed my old acquaintance, 'are you here? This is
+wonderful. Have you just become one of us? What luck! what a great
+providence for me! I am in the observatory. Must sail to-morrow to
+Scandor to report a sudden confusion in Perseus. They call it here
+_Pike_. You shall go with me. I have a long leave of absence I will show
+you many marvels. And you can tell me everything about Tony. He was a
+baby when I knew you.' Turning to my smiling companion, he spoke in
+Martian, of which to give you some semblance I cipher these words: 'Aru
+meta voluca volu li tonti tan dondore mal per vuele vonta bidi ami.'
+
+"I returned Chapman's hearty salutation. I yet retained the human speech
+of earth and I was struck with the miraculous incident that in the
+planet Mars, in a populous city, I was addressing a friend in the
+English tongue.
+
+"But the joy of it was inexpressible. Oh, the sweetness of old
+acquaintanceship in strange, and as here, impossible surroundings! I
+gazed on him with unspeakable curiosity. I talked to him just to hear my
+own voice and his in response, to realize if words were still words with
+the old meaning, if the intangible mutation I had undergone was a
+reality, if I was indeed alive, if my lungs and throat, the
+configuration of my mouth, the vocalic impact of the air, was a fact, a
+sound, a meaning, or whether it all was some phantasmagoria, beautiful
+and fair indeed, to be dispelled with a shock of annihilation.
+
+"No! we were breathing, sensate things, were human kin and kind. The
+sudden vertigo sent me throbbing, like a stricken animal, against the
+high pillars of the room we had entered, and a reflex tide of emotion
+swept over me in a storm that shook me with convulsive sobs.
+
+"My companion handed me a black wafer. I took it, it dissolved, a
+fierce acridity seemed formed in my mouth, and in an instant I felt
+strong and bold.
+
+"The Registeries were offices in the alcove-like openings in the sides
+of this very long building. In the same building were the Courts, which
+are few, and here the rooms for the reception and storage of supplies
+for the City. The Hall of Registeries is prolonged into a series of huge
+buildings extending along the walls of the Canal.
+
+"I was led by my unknown friend and Chapman to one of these recesses on
+which I recognized a globe of our earth with its continents in relief.
+Here upon simple tables were spread great bound books made up of thick
+creamy leaves of white paper. These were the Registers. The original
+home, planet, world, or star, from which each emigrant spirit had
+departed was, as far as possible, determined, and appropriately
+recorded. The details of their lives were inquired into, the condition
+and history of the sphere they had left examined, and thus by the
+revision and comparison of these narratives the history of the various
+worlds was in a fair way known, almost as accurately as their present
+inhabitants knew them.
+
+"The alcoves of the Registeries were really ample rooms. Cases holding
+voluminous records were ranged upon their walls; maps, charts, even
+paintings and drawings, as made by the arriving spirits hung upon the
+walls, and in broad albums were gathered the portraits, in small size,
+of the incarnated persons. The Registeries were young men who, from long
+intercourse with the affairs and occupants of each of the different
+extra-Martian bodies, whence spirits came, had become familiar with
+their languages and circumstances and avocations.
+
+"The keeping, indexing, compiling, illustration, of these extraordinary
+records is a difficult and inexhaustible task.
+
+"The results are often reproduced to the Martians in lectures,
+bulletins, or in sections of the great newspaper Dia.
+
+"The young men approached us as we entered the room, and after saluting
+my guide and also Chapman with the Martian cry, Tintotita, led me to a
+chair, and giving me one of the black wafers, whose acidity had a short
+time before so vigorously renewed my consciousness, began their inquiry.
+
+"The photograph of each visitor is taken, and a process quite like our
+collodion or wet process is used. The portraits are more permanent than
+with the perishable dry plates. It is a curious thing to learn that for
+100 years these records and pictures have been taken, and that there
+are on Mars hosts of unidentified spirits, who entered its wondrous
+precincts before that time.
+
+"The duration of life in Mars is very various. There seems here an
+undiscovered law, and a group of observers in Mars are to-day trying to
+penetrate this mystery. It is asserted that there is evidence that
+Egyptians of the ante-Christian epoch are to-day living in Mars, but
+their identification is now almost impossible. On the other hand, it is
+a fact ascertained and recorded that in one hundred years many Martians
+die, while others scarcely survive the ordinary limit of our human life
+on earth. This gives a great interest to Martian society. Here for ages
+have possibly flown disembodied spirits from our earth; in their
+reincarnation they have assumed the features and faculties of youth;
+they have also, under changed conditions of life, and moderated
+functions and activity in living, been physically, perhaps mentally,
+modified. Their own memory of their past on Earth, however vivid, and
+then in exceptional beings, has slowly disappeared or left only vague
+cloud-like waverings and congeries of reminiscences.
+
+"So that great human souls that have entered Mars in the early centuries
+of our earth's historic periods may be living here almost unrecognized.
+They have drifted into occupations suitable to their genius in some of
+the many great cities, and no vestige of their past remains. The system
+of the Registeries is scarcely a century old, and while now from the
+marvellous industry and persistence of the investigators, the great ones
+of the neighboring worlds, and even the most obscure are in some
+cognizable way identified, yet from the long ages before that there is
+almost no authentic registration.
+
+"This is more to be regretted as the law of life on the planet might
+then be better formulated. Essentially it seems necessary for existence
+here to be in unison with the conditions; contentment means longevity.
+Of course, the remarkable men and women I saw at the Patenta were all
+well known. They had made themselves known, and not only were their
+earthly names and lives put down on the pages of the Registers, but all
+their knowledge had been as inquisitively and scrupulously impressed.
+Nor is this all. From many worlds and earths there is flowing constantly
+to this planet new, strange, wonderful beings. Here is a cosmos of
+races, tastes, nationalities, destinies, civilizations, and instincts,
+from whose amalgamated and fused vortices of tendency this marvellous
+life has been formed.
+
+"However completely the mere memory of detail vanishes, the traits of
+nature remain, and these mingling beings present a kaleidoscope of
+contrasted or blending talents. But union of beings comes in here as in
+our States to combine all together and create this unique expression of
+social beauty, tenderness, scientific power, progress and spiritual
+exaltation. Marriage is here as with us, and love holds its deathless
+sway among the white and noble Martians as on earth, while the affection
+of friendship seems to weave every atom of society to every other atom
+in a social texture over which only moves the refining powers of thought
+and aspiration.
+
+"Mars does indeed seem a sort of Paradise, for it is quite certain that
+the best, the truest, the deeper and emphatic souls come here; and while
+a sort of sin or social incompatibility is found here, and there are
+crimes, and while death and sickness and accidents occur here, as I have
+told you, yet these things have a moral or mental, rather than physical
+expression. At least, in a great measure, and they are rare. No!
+accidents of matter pertain to Mars; its materiality is complete. As I
+send this to you I feel my warmth, the heat of my body, the expiration
+of my breath, the movements of my eyes, the beating of my heart, all,
+all, these bodily phenomena seem unchanged--their physiology is changed,
+their corporate reality seems the same, their corporeal consequences
+are different. But I cannot explain clearly this to you. Do I know it
+clearly myself?
+
+"I was questioned by the Registeries, both of whom had come from the
+earth, though in them, as in all the less highly endowed, memory was
+fading. Because of this, Registeries quickly succeed each other, since
+the later arrivals from the other worlds are better adapted to elicit
+the information needed from the new spirits. And this applies to other
+worlds, to Mercury and Venus, etc., whose Registeries are, so far as
+possible, appointed from previous occupants of those spheres.
+
+"The larger, far larger percentage of spirits come from the three
+planets, Mercury, Venus and the Earth; but there are singular
+inexplicable arrivals from distant stars, and of these the records are
+in many instances of extraordinary wonderfulness. I must not pause to
+recount this. I know it very imperfectly.
+
+"My examiners had little to do. My memory seemed of great power, and I
+told them the story of our experiments, discoveries and our compact to
+communicate with each other. This portion of my story was listened to
+with admiration. Chapman, my guide, and the two Registeries leaped to
+their feet, exclaimed with delight and embraced each other in ecstacy.
+'At last! At last!' cried out all of them, while hastily calling
+officers of the building to them they rapidly explained my singular
+announcement. It seemed to run like fire through the throngs. A great
+crowd was soon pressing in upon us on every side, while the Martian
+ejaculation '_Hi mitla_' rang in all directions. I was astounded. What
+was this strange excitement, and why had my simple tale awakened this
+fierce commotion?
+
+"My guide noting my dismay and alarm, laughingly explained the reason of
+the confusion. 'For years and years,' he said, 'it has been hoped by the
+Martians to send some message to the Earth. We understand wireless
+telegraphy, we can bridge almost infinite distances with the monstrous
+waves of magnetic disturbances, it is possible for us to generate. We
+have bombarded the earth with magnetic waves, but no response, no single
+indication has been returned to us that our messages were received. Our
+knowledge of the earth language is complete, even our knowledge of the
+telegraphic codes is partially so. But we have hopelessly repeated, are
+even now repeating these efforts.
+
+"'You, my friend, are the first man from Earth who tells us that
+wireless telegraphy is understood upon Earth, that receivers have been
+invented; but above all it amazes and transports us to know that you
+have perfected means, before leaving the Earth, to have such messages as
+you may deliver from Mars properly received. There is, though,' he
+exclaimed, as he turned to the eager, shining faces about me, 'still a
+grave doubt whether our good friend can assure us of the ability of the
+_Earthlings_ to send us back any communication. They may be unable to
+force through this enormous distance waves of sufficient magnitude to
+reach us.'
+
+"There was a loud murmur of disappointment, mingled with exclamations of
+dissent and reproach. Once more I was plied with questions, and then, my
+son, there came to me, singularly clouded in forgetfulness until that
+instant, the memory of that fruitless message which we received about a
+year before my death on Earth.
+
+"I arose, and amid a hush of expectation excited by this motion,
+accompanied as it were with a gesture inviting silence, spoke aloud in
+English:
+
+"'My friends, I recall a night in August, 1890, in the Earth's
+chronology, when my son and myself, then hoping against hope that the
+carefully adjusted receiver we had, would ever be called upon to herald
+a message from another world, were suddenly surprised to see and hear
+the register of our instrument move and sound. It was indeed animated
+by some extra terrestrial power. Could that power have come from your
+Mars; were we the first to receive one of your messages that you have so
+long been raining on the Earth?'
+
+"I looked around in enthusiasm, and with a conscious sense of
+companionship, pride and affection. I do not think I was altogether
+understood, except by a few, but the contagion of my own pleasure seized
+the multitude, and a great melodious shout arose, while cries of '_Hi
+mitla_' echoed in the Hall, and then, carried away with an emotional
+impulse, these excited Martians broke into a song, a swinging chant,
+that brought to the doors of the room new accessions of spectators whose
+instantaneous sympathy was expressed by the added volume of sound they
+contributed, until beneath the vibrant power of the great chorus the
+building seemed itself to tremble.
+
+"And then a curious and astounding thing happened. My old acquaintance,
+Chapman, leaped up in the dense clusters, and springing on a table
+shouted, 'To the Patenta.' The words seemed understood by almost all. I
+was seized by powerful arms, swung upon the shoulders of two splendid,
+vigorous youths. While by one impulse the throng surged through the
+doors in a sort of triumphal progress, I found myself moving in the
+midst of the excited populace up a broad avenue to the central hill of
+the city again, which was crowned by the many towers, halls, domes and
+aggregated arms and facades of the wonderful Patenta, the great communal
+home of Experiment and Observation.
+
+"The clamor of our approach brought to the scene the dwellers in the
+houses and the wanderers in the streets. And amongst the great density
+of forms and faces I saw the phosphorescent figures of many forming
+spirits swept on in this friendly anarchy of delight and anticipation.
+
+"My son, as I send these words out into the ether-filled realms of space
+across the millions of miles that intervene between that speck of light
+on which even now I know you lament my departure, and this new home of
+mine, which to you also is but a speck of light, I feel in a desperation
+of doubt that you will never hear them.
+
+"How thrilled and awe-struck I became as I gazed around me, and looking
+over the surging mob beheld their multitudinous lineaments, the faces of
+the races of our earth, its many nations, the faces of men or women who
+had lived in Venus, in Mercury, in the fixed stars, perhaps, as we call
+those globes from whose lambent surface light reached the earth after
+the expiration of a century of years. What a beautiful exhilaration of
+feeling it imparted, these flushed and shining faces, the liquid eyes of
+the south now charged with the fires of transporting expectation, the
+steady gaze of blue-eyed northerners firm and rapt and steadfast; the
+power of huge, colossal frames of muscle, the sinuous activity of spare
+and slender forms all attired in that consummate garb of blue and white,
+their caps of metal reflecting the light in cerulean lustres.
+
+"On, upward, we moved, impelled by an impulse quite indefinable but
+sufficient to condense about us by its contagion the Martian populace,
+quick, responsive, inquisitive, intelligent and excitable as children.
+We were approaching the Patenta by an ever widening avenue, our rustling
+approach announced by a chant of vociferous and yet melodious notes.
+
+"The avenue of Approach is known as the _Imprintum_. On either side rose
+lines of marble columns, their lofty capitals crowned with statues,
+their bases clustering with marble groups, while breaking now and then
+the white monotony, spiral and intertwining pillars of colored glass
+sprang into the air, like titanic tropical vines holding in extended
+fingers the balls of phosphori.
+
+"The pavement we trod was made of blocks of the phosphori, and at night
+this magnificent, indescribable and transcendent street becomes a path
+of flame, showering upon the files of silent marble statues above it the
+splendor of this spectral effulgence.
+
+"As we came near the buildings of the Patenta our outcry and the
+sonorous pulsations of the singing brought to its windows and doorways
+the many workers in the laboratories, lecture halls, and offices. We
+were regarded with wonder. But there seems present amongst these people
+a telepathic power, not perhaps what we call that in the Earth, but an
+intuitive construction of meaning upon the passing of a word or a hint.
+Forerunners furthermore had given some account of the strange new spirit
+from the Earth, who had prearranged with people on the Earth itself, to
+return to them, if possible, messages of his experiences after a human
+death. It had been the dream of the Martians, the sensation of their
+daily lives, the hope of returning to their former dwelling places, some
+token, word, salutation, indeed to somehow begin that almost apocryphal
+conception of binding the Universe into a conversational unit.
+
+"No marvel that they were now excited, transported; no wonder that I,
+the accidental being, who falling in their world, as it were, from
+outside, should be the agency to lead to the eventual conquest of these
+great designs.
+
+"On we swept like a tide that advances upon a coast, encompasses each
+salient rock, island and projection, and evading it by embracing it,
+rises still further into the bays and harbors, and brings the full tide
+at last to its most remote limits. So columns and stairways, halls, and
+wings, and arms, of buildings successively were surged round, and the
+vast complex pushed its way to the great Hall of Attention.
+
+"This enormous structure was built somewhat to one side of the great
+Observatories. It was rectangular, elevated and attained to by stairs on
+every side. It resembles a huge Grecian temple, but the interior
+treatment was quite contrasted. Externally it was made of the white
+phosphorescent marble with colonnades of columns of the blue metal
+supporting its projecting roofs. I was carried as by a cataract of
+waters up its stairways. Already its bronze gates were swung wide open,
+and through them the Martian army passed with impetuous stride. Learned
+men, the leaders and great physicists, many of those I had seen in the
+morning had reached the Hall. These were constantly augmented by new
+arrivals from the more distant Schools of Philosophy, Design and Art,
+while streaming in at every door came the joyous multitude, and the
+great vault of the Hall of Attention resounded with the rolling chorus.
+
+"It was a moving, an impossible spectacle. The balconies swept upward
+to a wall of polished granite. They were supported by columns of mosaic
+marble; the floor of roughened glass was concealed with benches of a
+gray stone, whose backs were carved in a tracery of branches, over which
+were thrown pale yellow rugs or shawls; the broad ceiling was divided
+into deep, rectangular recesses _plafonded_ with opalescent glass, and
+these recesses were made by the intersection of huge girders of the blue
+metal, while provisions were made throughout for electric lighting by
+tall glass cylinders, which glow like pillars of lambent flame, and
+stood upright, affixed to the walls at regular intervals, or concealed
+in cavities along the ceiling, or grouped like the fasces of the Roman
+lictors, at the railings of the balconies.
+
+"A wide platform occupied the center of this vast auditorium, and upon
+this I was carried as by a wave of the sea. Here I touched the floor;
+the accompanying crowds dispersed through the hall, which became filled,
+and as it filled some unnoticed signal ushered the glow of the electric
+ether in the cylinders, until a glory of radiance mingled with the
+sunlight and illuminated the audience, whose songs had died away, and
+who sat in attitudes of attention, their faces upturned, their blue
+caps shining resplendently, like a surface of tempered steel.
+
+"I stood alone with my former guide, and Chapman. I felt moved by some
+singular enthusiasm; the exaltation of the moment possessed me, and
+unannounced, as yet unquestioned, I rose to my full height upon a narrow
+rostrum in the platform, and turning from side to side spoke with an
+elation that seemed to propel my ringing words over the great assembly
+with the power and shock of a trumpet:
+
+"'Men and women,' I cried, 'I have reached your wonderful world from
+that habitation of mortal men known to many of you as the Earth, where
+death ceaselessly destroys generation after generation, and only the
+incessant processes of birth as quickly renew the falling ranks of life.
+To us on earth, the disappearance of those we love and cherish, the
+sundering of ties which a lifetime of love and companionship has
+established, the sharp vanishing away into nothingness and silence of
+the faces and spirits of the great and glorious, the good, the helpful,
+the true and noble, has made death an awful, hideous, to some a hopeless
+mystery.
+
+"'We stand on earth speechless before the unseen power which snatches
+from our caresses all that we most cherish, all that makes our life
+there worth living. There is no solution of the mystery, no voice, no
+return, no message, only a blankness of doubt, misgiving and desperate
+yearning in those who must continue. There is indeed with those on Earth
+a partial confidence by reason of religious faith, but strong as that
+seems to be, the endless succession of centuries, each crowding the
+viewless habitations of the dead with the still more and deeper streams
+of disembodied souls, unaccompanied by any response, any utterance or
+return, limit or telltale apparition, has somehow filled all minds with
+a creeping wonder if even the assurances of Revelation can be believed.
+
+"'Dying on the Earth may have continued in historic, and what is called
+prehistoric time, for over 50000 years, and yet from those unnumbered
+millions not a cry or a whisper, note, or vision, is heard or seen to
+betray their destiny, if destiny beyond the grave there is.
+
+"'But back of Religion, back of experience, back of rational doubt or
+infidelity, the heart keeps up its importunate cry of hope. We dare not
+crush out within us the sweet thought of reunion. Upon that earth I lost
+a wife, who summed up to me everything of value, virtue, and beauty
+human life can claim. The passionate desire to regain her, the defiant
+mutiny of my heart against any thought of her annihilation, made me
+turn to the shining hosts of heaven for reassurance. In them somewhere I
+believed the vanished soul of my companion had flown. This wonderful
+world was known to me, and what the wise men of the Earth said of its
+possible population. It was then that with my son I devised, following
+certain suggestions, a system of wireless telegraphy. We have both, my
+son and myself, felt certain that some disturbance was recorded by our
+instrument from some planet beyond the earth. From that moment my son
+and myself felt convinced that we might be permitted to bring about a
+release of the inhabitants of the Earth from the narrow limits of its
+own surface, and launch out upon the spaces of the universe the messages
+that would return to us with some news of other worlds, or bring
+assurance that the Death of the world was but the swinging door to some
+new existence.
+
+"'Men of Mars, that Death which tore from me my wife set his seal at
+last on me, but before the summons was executed, I had made arrangements
+in every possible detail to communicate with my son. We agreed upon a
+cypher, and I have so imprinted each measure of our compact upon my
+memory that all of it is as clear to my mind as it was before I left the
+Earth. Give me possession of your great instruments, let me bridge the
+millions of miles to our earth, and in an instant stir the populations
+of the Earth into fierce attention, so that from now on through all the
+coming years you Martians shall speak with the people of the earth and
+again from Mars, as from some relay station, messages shall pass outward
+to the stars, and thus from planet to planet the reinforced utterance
+may pierce the universe of worlds.'
+
+"I finished; a great shout arose from the immense multitude; with one
+impulse the light blue metal caps were swung from their heads and tossed
+upward, while the cheers passing out into the streets were caught up,
+and in refluent waves of sound rolled back upon me like the murmur of a
+distant storm at sea.
+
+"I do not think I was quite understood, but the chief feature of my
+speech was realized, and the Martians, quick to respond to any
+suggestion, and inflammable of nature, had become enthusiastic over the
+prospects of this new revelation.
+
+"I stood an instant uncertain what I should do, or what new development
+would follow my evident popularity. Suddenly a strong, ringing voice
+spoke from the gallery immediately in front of me. It said--I could not
+quite separate the speaker in the moving throng: 'Come to the _Manana_.'
+
+"Chapman and my friend whispered together 'Volta,' and then turning to
+me told me to follow them. I followed. Already the hall had become
+partially emptied, and we pushed onward amongst radiant men and women,
+who received me with smiles and gestures of approval. Once outside the
+Hall of Attention, we hurried through some narrow corridors, up winding
+stairways, until at length we emerged upon a lofty platform carrying a
+railing about it, and so elevated above all the surrounding buildings of
+the Patenta that my glance seemed to sweep the circuit of the City, and
+swept outward over a rolling and low country through which ran wide
+mirror-like ribbons of water, the great canals of Mars, while afar off
+melting into the crystalline hazes of the horizon rose dark masses of
+mountains.
+
+"I stood an instant stupified and overcome. The deep voice of a
+salutation came to my ears, and turning I saw the face of Volta. Beside
+me was a large induction coil, and above it two huge plates of copper
+about ten feet apart. The next instant a flash passed between the
+electrodes, and I was caught and turned aside with my companions. The
+light of the spark was intense, and the spark itself of great
+dimensions.
+
+"Volta then spoke: 'My friend, your arrival on the surface of our planet
+is a sensation. We are all delighted. You have solved our difficulties.
+With this transmitter you can yourself send to the earth the message you
+wish. And this receiver will catch the waves of the smallest
+amplitudes.'
+
+"He pointed to a singular train of tubes, each filled apparently with a
+shining line of straw shaped metallic bodies. This was raised by some
+silk cord passing to a pulley and arm, perhaps a hundred feet above us.
+
+"Volta spoke with difficulty; he seemed preoccupied, and after I was
+shown the transmitter, and its mechanism was explained, he took my hand
+warmly, pressed it between his own, and then speaking in the Martian
+tongue to Chapman, left us.
+
+"I then sent you, my son, my first message. What pleasure! The great
+sparks flashed magnificently. Chapman and my friend were in ecstacies. I
+worked steadily until the night. And when all was over I waited until
+the stars came out, until again the City of Light shone like some huge,
+myriad faceted stone, and then there came, while Chapman and my friend
+stood mute beside me, your faint response.
+
+"I scarcely caught the lisping ticks, but they came, and it seemed
+indeed as if the power of the Creator had passed into the hands of men.
+
+"With a joy too deep for the futile hopelessness of words to express,
+we both descended from the high station and through the great halls. I
+found my way to the charming, peaceful room above the glowing city and
+fell asleep with prayers upon my lips for all the dead and dying upon
+the Earth.
+
+"The next day as I awoke I found my friend and Chapman waiting for me. I
+felt wonderfully refreshed, and the exultant mood of the Martians
+possessed me. I sang with an interior tumult of excitement. I drew
+before my mind the beauty of your mother reincorporated in this gay,
+lovely world of Mars, so full of power and light and youthful impulse.
+Again I sang, and it was the very air your mother so often played to me,
+'Der Grüne Lauterband,' of Schubert. A few passers by, below my window,
+caught the refrain, my voice rose higher and higher, and their
+disappearing figures seemed to carry the merry, hopping notes far away.
+How fair and glorious it all was!
+
+"And I was to visit Scandor, to visit the beautiful Martian country, the
+mines, the huge fossil ivory deposits, to sail on those canals, whose
+resplendent lines we had detected from the earth.
+
+"My door was shaken, and almost as if yet living on the earth, I cried
+out 'Come in.' Chapman and my friend entered with laughter and
+congratulation. Chapman spoke first: 'Dodd, you are summoned to the
+Council of the Patenta. All are anxious to see you. At present it is
+hoped you will not push further the matter of the telegraphy with the
+Earth. The disturbances in Pike increase daily--flashing stars seem to
+emerge from nothing, meteoric showers, like a rain of sparks rush across
+the fields of the telescopes, gaseous disengagements from what seem like
+shining nuclei, shoot upward for thousands of miles from their surfaces;
+all is chaos, and these disturbances have been noticed in other regions
+of the heavens. Again spirits have ceased arriving at the Hill of the
+Phosphori, the Chorus Halls are almost empty, and the singers have no
+employment. Such a dearth of spirits has not been known before for
+months. It is not uncommon for long intervals to occur when only a few
+spirits arrive, but now there are none.
+
+"'The Registeries report that many lately reincarnated spirits speak the
+languages of Venus and Mercury, and tell of the terrific physical
+convulsions in both planets, that wars are raging in Mercury, and a
+singular plague devastating Venus. The country people have sent in word
+by the canals that rockets in clusters covering hundreds of square miles
+are arising from Scandor. The cause is unknown, cannot even be
+surmised, and last night Herschell and Gauss, at the big telescopes,
+detected a comet charging towards us with an incredible velocity. The
+Council believe I should at once start for Scandor to bring the month's
+report, and these new excitements, to the paper Dia, while they urge
+that you should recount to the governors at Scandor your story, and the
+marvellous fact of the answer sent back from the Earth to you by your
+son. We will go, after an audience with the Council, together, and
+because of some need of more stone from the quarries, we will stop on
+our way out and leave orders at Mit and Sinsi, where the quarries are.
+The trip is full of beauty and wonder, and Scandor, I am told, is Heaven
+itself.'
+
+"He paused. I thought there was a shade of disappointment in my friend's
+face, as Chapman drew me to one side, and I stepped quickly back to him,
+and said: 'Will you not go with us, too? You first cared for me and
+brought me food and raiment.' His eyes were again bright with peace.
+'No, my new friend, I cannot go now. I am waiting, waiting here at the
+City of Light, watching the spirits, if perchance my son from your earth
+is amongst them. Surely he will come some day, and then my happiness
+will be all God can make it.'
+
+"We hurried away to the Chamber of the Council. Once more through the
+devious paths of the great groups of buildings which make up the
+Patenta, between the flowering trees and the tulip flowered vines we
+made our way, with feet so buoyant and so strong that we seemed almost
+to fly.
+
+"The Chamber of the Council of the Patenta was a beautiful room. It was
+one of the few great chambers in the City of Light, dressed in color and
+tapestries. A deep carpet of scarlet Talta wool covered the floor, and
+there hung at irregular intervals from a silver cornice deep green
+curtains. The furniture was very wonderful. A dark wood, like teak,
+opulently fitted with silver, formed the great table that occupied the
+center of the room, as also the heavy chairs on which were placed
+cushions of a golden yellow silk. There were no windows in the room. The
+light entered from above through two simple round apertures covered with
+white glass. Book cases stood about the room filled with large folios,
+which, as I observed from a few spread upon the table, were not printed
+books, but filled with writing in a round, clear hand, legible at some
+distance.
+
+"But the most extraordinary feature of the room was a marvellous
+colossal figure at one end of the room, in a recess richly hung with
+green tapestries. It was cast in silver upon which dull shades and
+frosted and polished surfaces were appropriately combined, as their
+position required, in the portrayal of a Being of incredible benignity
+of expression, attired in flowing robes with an outstretched hand, his
+face invested with a harmonious union of power and sweetness. Beneath it
+upon the enormous black pedestal the letters in silver were
+conspicuous--Tarunta--the Deity. This amazing creation arrested the
+attention of my friend Chapman, and myself, and we stood half
+spell-bound under the influence of its seraphic and potent beauty.
+
+"The next moment we were conscious of the throng filling the room. There
+were many of the great physicists and chemists and astronomers and
+observers whom I had seen at the breakfast in the Dining Hall the
+previous morning with a few others who were the first men I had seen in
+Mars wearing the expression of age. They almost seemed venerable. I
+remembered then what I had learned on my arrival at the Patenta--that
+age and death also supervene in Mars.
+
+"I was observed at once, and friendly hands were extended to me from all
+sides. I was led to the head of the table. There I was invited to
+enlarge my story as given in the Hall of Attention, and I was told to
+tell it in English. A scribe near me conveyed to pads of paper my
+narrative.
+
+"When I had finished an audible murmur of approval filled the room, and
+the most aged of the older men arising, and speaking in Martian,
+translated to me by the scribe, said:
+
+"'My friend, you have delighted us. The time is approaching when we can,
+I trust, receive such visitors from all the worlds, and gradually bring
+it to pass that the visible universe may be bound together through the
+power and sympathy of language. The Council desires that at present you
+refrain from sending your second message until you have visited Scandor,
+and seen something of this new world upon which you have so auspiciously
+alighted.
+
+"'Heroma (Sir, Sire, etc., etc.), Chapman will accompany you. The
+government at Scandor should be apprized of certain strange celestial
+conditions, and we are in receipt of news that at Scandor also unusual
+things are happening. While all we know or have observed could be
+transmitted to Scandor, and all their own knowledge in turn sent to us
+by wireless telegraphy, for reasons which we are not at liberty to
+explain at present, it has been thought best to send the approved diary
+of the Patenta to the government, and also learn in return, by word of
+mouth, what has transpired at our capital. It will afford you some
+opportunity to visit the Martian Mountains, and be more informed for the
+second message you are expected to transmit to the Earth when you
+return.'
+
+"After a few salutations, in which interview I found myself face to face
+with the reincarnated forms of some of the greatest scientific thinkers
+who have lived upon our globe, I left the Council Chamber with my friend
+and Chapman, to prepare for our coming journey. It was then that I
+entered more deeply the City of Light, and saw the unspeakable splendor
+of the Garden of the Fountains.
+
+"The Garden of the Fountains lies over toward the great Halls of
+Philosophy, Design and Invention, whose domes and temple-pointed roofs
+of copper and blue metal I could easily discern. It covers over half a
+square mile of space. It is supplied with water from an enormous lake
+resting in the hollow of an extinct volcano, fifty miles to the east of
+the City of Light, at an elevation of 5,000 feet. A great conduit or
+water main, as we would say, conveys the water to the garden. The Garden
+is built actually upon piers of concrete and stone, connected by arches
+of brick, and through the subterranean chambers, thus formed, the
+division of the streams is made, and there controlled. The whole was
+designed by the great Martian artist, Hinudi, whom some aver is the
+reincarnated Leonardo da Vinci of our Earth.
+
+"The Garden is approached through a labyrinthine avenue made up of
+Palms, which on that side of the City seem to be plentiful, and over
+these palms in extraordinary profusion the vines of the red flowered
+honeysuckle. You cannot see beyond the wall of green on either side in
+this winding way, and only as you gaze upward does the eye escape the
+imprisonment of its surroundings, where above the waving summits of the
+palms you see a lane of the bluest sky.
+
+"As you draw near the debouchment (into the garden) of this oscillating
+road, the splash and roar of falling waters invades your retreat. And
+then suddenly as if a curtain had arisen or dropped to the earth you
+emerge upon a great marble terrace of steps, and before you is spread a
+forest of geysers distributed in entrancing vistas in a lake of tumbling
+and scintillating waters. The scene is amazing and transporting. Rushing
+jets of water are enclosed in hollow pillars of glass, whose lines are
+ravishingly combined in the separate clusters of fountains.
+
+"The heights of these fountains vary from 150 to 200 feet, and they are
+arranged in a peculiar disorder, which, however, conforms to an
+elaborate plan. The water rises in these colored tubes in green columns,
+then breaks into sheets and bubble-laden cataracts of spray above them,
+pouring far outward like blazing showers of little lamps in the full
+sunlight. Many of the tubes are inclined, and the ejected shafts of
+water collide above them, producing explosive clouds of shattered
+vesicles of moisture that float off or drop in miniature rains over the
+lake. This wildness of fountains extends over many a mile. All the jets
+are not in tubes. Many uncovered fountains are interjected amongst the
+glass pillars.
+
+"The pillars vary in form, and have much diversity of aperture, so that
+the water shoots from them in every posture and form. It makes a
+bewildering picture. The exposure of water in the great lake or pond
+which holds these fountains is broken with waves, and the tempestuous
+scene with the constant excitement of the rising and flowing avalanches
+of water creates feelings of abounding wonder. The marble steps extend
+around the lake, and behind them on all sides rises the wall of the
+palms, beaten into motion by the wind blowing ceaselessly. The
+esplanade-like margin between the top step and the palm enclosure
+accommodated great numbers, while the benches in retreating alcoves,
+were also filled.
+
+"It was a varied, exhilarating scene. The moving throngs, the wonderful
+confusion of the spouting fountains in their chrysalids of glass against
+the sky line, the perpetually waving fronds of the palms!
+
+"We hurried to the pier of the Registeries after Chapman had secured the
+sealed envelope, in which were placed the communications to the
+government at Scandor. The canal which enters the City of Light at this
+point is divided into a number of branches whose confluent arms, about a
+mile from the City, unite into two parallel canals whose course we were
+now to follow to the City of Scandor. The small boat we entered was a
+curious vessel of white porcelain, broad and short, with raised keel,
+prow, and expanded stern.
+
+"It was moved by some motor, electric in nature. A pilot took his place
+at the bow, and, under a canopy of silk, in the light of a setting sun,
+followed by the music of the City, we passed away from the City, which,
+even as we left it, slowly, in the descending darkness of the night,
+began to kindle into light, and send upward into the velvet zenith its
+phosphorescent glows."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+"It was afternoon when Chapman and I, fully equipped and provisioned,
+moved off from the long granite pier at the Registeries, after an
+affectionate parting from my guide and friend, who returned sorrowfully
+to resume his watch for his son, whose coming to Mars seemed to him so
+assured.
+
+"How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed! Down the crowded
+canal we slowly moved, amidst the calling crews, the pleasant cheers,
+and beckonings of sightseers; and back of us rose on its hills the City
+of Light, that, as we passed still further away, and watched it in the
+fading sunset, began to glow, and finally, to shine like some titanic
+opal in the velvet shadows of the night.
+
+"These numerous arms of the canal some miles from the City coalesce and
+merge into the enormous trunk canal that passes on to Scandor through
+hills and mountains and the plain country, excavated by the wonderful
+Toto powder. This trunk canal is doubled; upon one member, the boats
+pass outward to Scandor, and on the other the boats return. Branches
+pass north and south at centers of population, and of some of these
+which pass actually into the frozen depths of the polar countries, I may
+tell you later.
+
+"As we slowly progressed into the undulating plain country, with its
+villages and farm lands, diversified by woods, and sometimes solitary
+projections of rock, as the stars stole urgently into the sky, as the
+phosphori lamps began their soft illumination of the decks, and while
+murmurs of songs from merrymakers on the land came to us in snatches
+bewitchingly, though incongruously mingled with the delicious odors of
+the Napi grass, I turned to Chapman, and felt that now, throughout the
+hours of the genial night, I would pour out unchecked the flood of
+inquiry that had risen again and again to my lips in this strange new
+life.
+
+"'Chapman,' I began, 'you must feel that I have a great deal to ask you.
+This new life, with its surprises and the strange incidents of the two
+or three days I have already lived here have suggested so many
+questions, can we not now talk about these marvels?'
+
+"'Certainly,' replied Chapman, as he lifted a glass of delicate pearl
+pink, filled with the pungent and keenly stimulating _Ridinda_, to his
+lips. 'Put on your thinking cap, and perforate me with all the puzzles
+you can think of. I am a trifle rattled myself in this new ranch--have
+not been here long--but I tell you, Dodd, Mars is first class. It suits
+me. Never enjoyed living so much, never found it so much a matter of
+course, and as to livelihood, when I think of those freezing nights on
+the earth in Rutherford's cheesebox shooting at the moon with wet
+plates, I can tell you this sort of thing isn't a long call from all I
+ever hoped to find in Heaven. Open your batteries. To-morrow will be
+full of sight-seeing, and I guess you will forget all you want to know
+to-day in trying to remember what you will see then.' He took another
+sip of the snapping liquid, drew his chair closer to my own, and while a
+sort of musical echo lingered in the air, I began:
+
+"'Chapman, where on Mars are we? I seem to feel neither heat nor cold. I
+see these flowers, the palms in the Garden of the Fountains, day passes
+into night, and there is no very apparent change of temperature, so far
+as feeling goes. What are we made of? Is this new body we carry
+insensible to heat or cold? I feel indeed my pulse beat. I am conscious
+of warmth in the sun, and of coolness in the shade. I feel the wind blow
+on my cheeks, but all these sensations are so much less keen than on the
+earth, and yet again I realize that sensations are in some ways as vivid
+as on the earth. The pleasure of my ears and eyes is wonderfully deep
+and exhaustive, the sense of taste rapid and delightful. I am happy,
+supremely happy, and affection, even the hidden fires of love, burn in
+my veins as on the earth.' Chapman looked at me with that bright smile
+he wore on earth, and his gestures of expostulation were amusing. 'Wait,
+Dodd, don't talk so fast. You remember I had a slow way on the earth. I
+have no reason to think it will prove any less pleasant to stay slow on
+Mars. One thing at a time. My own sense of position is not so secure
+that I can tell exactly all you want to know, and there are a good many
+things that the heavyweights up here don't pretend yet to explain. Now,
+where are we? Well, the City of Light is about 40 degrees south of the
+Martian equator, not so far from what on earth would be the position of
+Christ Church, where you "shuffled off the mortal coil." Don't frown.
+Mars is a serene, sweet place, but I am not yet so intimidated by the
+lofty life here as to drop my jokes. Some Martians strike me as a trifle
+heavy in style, just a suggestion of a kind of sublimated Bostonese
+about them, don't you know. Curious! However, the ordinary Martian is
+gamy, good company, full of happiness, with a considerable fancy for
+jokes, absurdly addicted to music, and as credulous as a child. Somehow,
+Dodd, a good deal of my earthly nature has stuck to me, and I revel in a
+dual life. I have my Martian side, but I can't, and this life can't,
+knock the old foibles of the world you left, out of me yet. I may get
+the proper sort of exultation in time, but just now I've imported
+considerable human horse sense.'
+
+"He looked at me whimsically; I walked away, and watched the receding
+city.
+
+"The motion of our white boat was so smoothly rapid, that soon, and
+almost unnoticed we had threaded all the many lanes, windings, and locks
+that led to the broad canals some twenty miles from the city. We had
+passed laden barges, flat and storied boats carrying excursions or
+freight, and trains of smaller craft crowded with fruit brought in from
+distant farms for the great population of the City of Light. The scene
+assumed a fairy-like unreality as night settled down, and the boats
+swarming with light, or else carrying a few red lanterns, passed us
+while their occupants or owners chanted the lonely lullaby of the
+Martians, which begins: 'Ana cal tantil to ti.'
+
+"It was yet to me all a wonderful dream, from which each moment I
+dreaded awakening. It was all so beautiful!
+
+"I sat again with Chapman under the canopy, talking of the earth.
+Strange Mystery! Here we were with our earth memories yet vivid,
+recalling incidents of life in New York City, and summoning amid all the
+appealing charm of this strange new life, the little, sordid variances
+and trials, vexations and minor sufferings that had marred his own life
+on earth. We turned to these things, not because they were grateful or
+pleasing to remember, but because it seemed to _establish_ us, or rather
+me, to give me identity, and build up the growing certainty that I had
+come from the earth, and was re-embodied in this new sphere of active
+feeling and experience.
+
+"I told him of you, of the death of your mother, of our flight to New
+Zealand, our experiments, the Dodans, and then turning to him, as we saw
+the Martian moon rise in ruddy fullness far away over the hill of
+_Tiniti_, I said, searchingly: 'Chapman, you remember Martha? How
+beautiful and good she was! I have kept one long, sad, and still
+deathless hope in my repining heart. I shall see her again! It must be!
+I have felt so certain of this that no argument, no appeal to reason,
+can drive away the keen sense of its realization. Have you seen her on
+Mars amongst the thousands you have met, and is there on this entrancing
+orb any other place than the Hill of the Phosphori, for the disembodied
+of other worlds to enter this new world?
+
+"Chapman smiled. 'Yes,' he answered, 'I remember your wife very well. I
+could pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet in
+the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion,
+and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings
+have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing
+skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; it
+may yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accounts
+told me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at different
+points; many indeed have been received near Scandor, and on one or two
+occasions the prehistoric peoples, the little strong men of the
+mountains and the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that
+has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And
+quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood
+might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious
+practices, not to say superstition. But look, how fair the night has
+become.'
+
+"The landscape about us was wonderfully illuminated by the two
+satellites, Deimos and Phobos, which, as you well know, were made known
+to astronomers on the earth by Prof. Asaph Hall in 1877. What a
+marvellous spectacle they presented, moving almost sensibly at their
+differing rates of revolution through a sky sown with stellar lights.
+The combined lights of these singular bodies surpassed the light of our
+terrestrial moon, by reason of their closeness to the surface of Mars,
+while the more rapid motion of the inner satellite causes the most weird
+and beautiful changes of effect in the nocturnal glory they both lend to
+the Martian life.
+
+"We were sailing in a broad river-like canal, perhaps one mile or more
+wide. On all sides the undulating ground, covered with cultivation,
+varied with thick patches of trees, with here and there shining lights
+from villages and isolated homes, carried the eye onward to a rising
+hill country, beyond which, again, silhouetted against the shining sky
+where Phobos began to rise mountain tops were just discernible.
+
+"Deimos, the outer moon, was already shining, and its pale, sick light
+imparted a peculiar blueness impossible to describe upon all surfaces it
+touched. Here was the phenomenon we witnessed with increasing pleasure.
+Phobos was emerging from a cloud and its yellow rays possessing a
+greater illuminating power, mingled suddenly with the blue and spectral
+beams of Deimos and the land thus visited by the complimentary flood of
+light from these twin luminaries seemed suddenly dipped in silver. A
+beautiful white light, most unreal, as you mortals might say, fell on
+tree and water, cliff, hill, and villages. The effect was not unlike
+that instant in photography when a developing plate shows the outlines
+of its objects in dazzling silver before the half tints are added, and
+the image fades away into indistinguishable shadow.
+
+"It was a print in silver, and while we gazed in mute astonishment the
+sharp shadows changed their position as Phobos, racing through the
+zenith, changed the inclination of its incident beams. The effect was
+indescribable. I walked the deck in an agitation of wonder and delight.
+Chapman, to whom the novelties of this Martian life were still
+wonderful, followed me, and was the first to speak.
+
+"'Dodd, you know that the strangest thing about this whole place is your
+body. It's body all right enough, but I can't quite understand what sort
+of a body it is. It hurts in a way, and is pleased in a way, but it
+seems a better made affair in texture and parts than anything we
+possessed on earth. Exertion is so easy.'
+
+"'Well, Chapman,' I answered, while my eyes rested on the water, through
+which an approaching barge rose like a vessel of frosted or burnished
+white metal, 'we were taught on the earth that, with gravitation reduced
+one-half, the same weight on Mars would seem only half as heavy as on
+the earth, and that the effort which there carried us eight feet would
+here send us sixteen.'
+
+"'It is true,' returned Chapman, 'but that doesn't explain everything.
+We sleep less here, we scarcely touch meat, and yet exertion, prolonged
+by hours, scarcely accelerates the blood or vexes the nerves, and
+generally we don't grow old. Our bodies are light; the texture,
+apparently firm and resisting, is somehow diaphanous. I've seen the
+light through the palm of my hand. And then again I haven't. Somehow
+mind works in the body here and changes it, and changes it different at
+different times. Why, Dodd, the other day at the Patenta, a student
+jumped up with a cry of delight at something, and stumbled and fell from
+a window to the ground, but he stood up without a bruise or hurt of any
+kind. His exultation, his emotional excitement made him buoyant, I
+think, and he fell to the earth like a thistledown. There was no
+concussion.'
+
+"'Well,' I responded, 'I cannot tell. I know very little as yet. I feel
+wonderfully active and vitalized. My senses are acute. I see further,
+hear further, smell further than I ever did on earth, and it even seems
+to me I can anticipate things. The nerve currents are so rapid, the mind
+seems so persuasive, that coming events are registered by a prophetic
+feeling I can scarcely describe. For that reason, Chapman, I grow
+happier every minute, for now I see approaching that great joy, my
+reunion with Martha, the one great divine event I hunger and hope for.
+
+"'Well,' said Chapman, as a cloud covered the scudding moons, 'I do hope
+you may see her, and somehow I think, too, you will. But, Dodd,' the
+moons emerged, and the lower one was in transit across the face of the
+upper, 'I must call your attention to this strange peculiarity of our
+bodies, that we undergo extremes of temperature with almost no
+noticeable sense of the great heat or cold. This region we are
+traversing is about the latitude of Christ Church, as I told you, and it
+is the period of harvests, and the heat is moderate, but in the height
+of summer the heat seems scarcely more felt than now, and in the
+clothing I am now wearing, I have sailed through the ice packs of the
+North, and slept thinly covered in its snows, but without undue
+discomfort. I tell you, matter in us, and flesh and blood in us are all
+differently conditioned.'
+
+"'Why not ask these questions of the wise men of the Patenta, the
+doctors and chemists?' I replied. 'I can think of an analogy that might
+make this Martian constitution intelligible. A close, dense body
+conducts heat or cold; a loose, open texture or cellular mass does not.
+In our curious embodiment from spirit the substance of our bodies is an
+etherealized matter, loosely, I might say, flocculently, disposed, and
+while it conveys sensations of a certain tone or key of vibratory
+intensity, it will not respond to any violent or coarse shocks. They
+simply cannot be carried. They escape us. Are the people all alike
+amongst the Martians?'
+
+"'Oh, no,' returned Chapman, who pointed to the widening spaces in the
+beams between the slow Deimos and the fleeter flying Phobos, 'there are
+great differences. I have seen that. In materialization some seem badly
+put together, and these resemble our former terrestrial bodies. They
+grow old, they succumb to disease, they feel changes of weather and they
+have less vitality. Yes,' and he drew nearer, 'it is these unhappy
+misbirths in this spirit land who retain the sin of earth and cannot
+survive and get the _Kinkotantitomi_ or irreverently, as the earthling
+would say, the grand bounce. They are fired off the planet.'
+
+"He paused and laughed. How strange this almost human laugh sounded, and
+yet how pleasant! I looked at him with a deep affection. He noticed the
+impression, and quickly drawing me to him, said half timidly:
+
+"'Dodd, that sort of laugh and those words of mine just used, are not
+Martian, they don't belong to these rarefied beings here. They have a
+human or earthly taint, and they frighten me. I seem so lonely
+sometimes. My stray fun which I once enjoyed on earth must somehow be
+forgotten here. I feel so irreverent at times, so full of horse play,
+but I must keep up the high key and act like the rest. Indeed for the
+most of the time I feel as they do, I suppose, but sometimes that sort
+of ribaldry and feelings of the ludicrous that made us joke, and prank,
+and cut up in genial companionships come over me, and I am suffocating
+with a glee out of place to this exalted society. Ah! it's good to feel
+you, my friend, so fresh and new from earth. It's promised here in the
+learned talk I have heard, that those who disappear from Mars become
+reincorporated upon earth again, if they belong there. Well, I wouldn't
+mind if I got returned, wonderful and sweet and happy as all this seems.
+The dear, dear old Earth!'
+
+"He flung his arms around me, and our faces met, as if we had been lost
+brothers. A sort of terrifying melancholy invaded me. I was so distant
+from all I had known and loved, so distant from the surges we had
+watched from our observatory at Christ Church, so distant from the life
+of heat and clothing and genial domesticities; the life even, it might
+be called, of the daily paper, the novel, the new book, the life of
+politics and human history, and conventionality, the life of ups and
+downs, of sickness and health, of individual enterprise, of routine and
+mechanical fatigue, the life of exertion, contrast and social
+inequality, with its picturesqueness, its incessant interest, all this
+was now utterly removed by all the measureless leagues of icy space
+between me and the floating planet--the old sin-stricken Earth--that was
+shining in the Martian skies, so inconspicuous and tiny--so
+inaccessible.
+
+"But my heart was pulsating audibly. If I could recover Martha, if, in
+this serene atmosphere of good will and fairness and kindness, in the
+midst of unknown possibilities of knowledge, in the company of
+enthusiastic and high-minded men and women, in this arena of scientific
+wonders, and in the joy and beauty of universal happiness and thrift and
+peace and well doing and intuition, I could find a human companionship
+in the woman whose face and nature have summed up for me the whole of
+life, if I could find her! then, indeed, this new world would be all my
+earthly home could be, and the endless future with her for guide and
+friend would lose its terror and lonely isolation, and--I dared to think
+it--even the presence of God himself become bearable.
+
+"Chapman had stolen away from me. He had stolen to the little, dainty
+rooms that were sunk in the cockpit or cabin of our boat, and I was
+standing alone in the light of the midnight moons in Mars, a waif from
+the far earth, incomprehensibly born after death into this human
+presentiment and renewal in youth, and again instinct with revivified
+passion and desire; and breathing the atmosphere of a planet that for
+years I had watched through the tube of a telescope, as a floating flake
+of celestial fire. A delicious drowsiness overcame me, and while I
+noticed the pilot was changed, his place being taken by another, and
+that we were approaching a ridgy or disturbed country, I found my way to
+the white couch prepared for me, and sank into a deep and dreamless
+sleep.
+
+"The morning of the next day was clear and beautiful. Shall I ever
+forget that first approach to the mountains of Tiniti, where Mit and
+Sinsi, the villages of the quarries, are located. All day long the boat
+propelled through a diversified country, covered with morainal
+heaps--great hills of drift matter, heaps of worn pebbles and rolling
+plains of estuarine sediment. Much of this land seemed untouched with
+cultivation, and sublime forests of the loftiest trees covered it. The
+canal passed through solitudes, where the silence was only broken by the
+cackling laugh of a crane-like bird, marching in lines along the banks,
+or perched like sleepy sentinels amid the outstretched branches of the
+trees.
+
+"These wild and fascinating regions were often alternated by miles of
+bright plantations radiant with the yellow leaves of the Rint, bearing
+its deep red pods, while avenues of palms, not unlike the royal palm of
+the Earth, led in long vistas to clustering groups of houses, and we,
+too, caught glimpses of basking lakes on which, even as in the Earth,
+the patient fisherman in basket-like circular boats, waited for his
+flashing captives.
+
+"Then, again, there were prairie-like stretches of a sort of pampas
+waving in cloudy lines, the glistening pappus of the wild Nitoti, a
+peculiar, low composite, that grows in abundance and furnishes food to
+the strange gazelle of this latitude in Mars.
+
+"This animal, the Rimondi, could be seen in scampering herds over these
+plains, its horns making an hour glass form above its head, as they bent
+to each other, touched, and then curved outward again to reunite a
+second time.
+
+"We were rapidly moving northward, and just as it would be on the earth,
+the changing vegetation gave visible notice of our advance.
+
+"But more interesting than nature were the scenes of life along our way,
+and the custom of public worship filled me with wonder. Amphitheatres
+of stone built high above the ground, and approached by encircling
+terraces of steps dotted the country at long intervals. These, Chapman
+explained, were the churches of the people. Here they gathered from long
+distances around, and, even as he described their meaning, the
+congregations were seen assembling, while later we heard the music flung
+in waves of sound from these houses of song and worship.
+
+"Chapman did not understand the Martian faith. There seemed little to
+understand about it. It was one national expression of the love of
+goodness and of beauty, but it was all directed to a source of
+infallible wisdom, power and justice.
+
+"Thus considering the country and its customs we fell again into a long
+colloquy:
+
+"'Dodd,' said Chapman, musingly, 'we should all become as these people
+about us, and do the same things, and believe and act as they do. You
+will, but I think I remain a little strange. I seem a spectator that a
+caprice has cast upon this globe, and though I live here, I must succumb
+to a certain alienation, a lack of mediation between their life and my
+former existence, and because of this subtle estrangement, I shall
+contract disease, or meet with accident, or waste in age, while you
+shall stay young, and living, sink into the Martian life and yield to
+it a spiritual, a mental acquiescence. You will become absorbed, and,
+with your love realized, the whole rhapsodic life of this world will
+mingle you forever in its tide of song and science and labor.'
+
+"'Yes,' I answered, 'I am sure I shall. For whatever period of time I
+stay here, I am one with this beautiful and strange life. I respond
+naturally to all this serenity and joy, this precision of power over
+inanimate things; this flooded being and the dawning sense that through
+the stepping stone of Mars, I approach yet higher beatitudes of living.
+At least in Mars the sordid taint of suffering, of ignominious physical
+torture and privation, which spoiled the Earth, is almost unknown.'
+
+"Chapman laughed, and an echo gave back from some hillside its musical
+response. 'Ah, it may be, I know it is true, and yet--and yet--the Earth
+possessed a pictorial, a dramatic power in its contrasts of happiness
+and suffering, of goodness and sin. It had literary material. Its
+consecutive growth in the ages of social and national and economic
+history were so wonderful, so thrilling in interest, in the details of
+character and adventure, in the incessant panoramic display it gave of
+light and shade. And on it rested the shadow of a strange, pathetic
+doubt, the mystery of creation. Its romance, its fiction, its fable, and
+the animating picture it furnished, with its sceptics and its
+believers, its haters and its lovers, its tyrants and its heroes. Its
+wide, verbal immensity! I miss all that, or almost all. This life is
+evenly celestial, and glowing, and carelessly happy. And here knowledge
+is extreme and pervasive and omnipotent. The dear commonplaces of the
+Earth life are unknown too, the ludicrous is absent, and the sublimity
+of sacrifice impossible.'
+
+"He laughed again, and I felt for one brief, incredible instant a pang,
+too, that the blossoming, full, sensual Earth has passed from beneath my
+feet forever.
+
+"But it was past. For me nothing was left behind when Martha had gone
+before. The future for me was the pilgrimage through worlds for her lost
+face. The sum and substance of a world's growth, of the unintermittent
+and heraldic progress of the soul was union with her. And deeper in my
+convictions than science or faith or desire, lay the consciousness of my
+sure approach.
+
+"Again the evening fell. We arrived at the entrance of a gloomy and
+stupendous gorge. It was the wonderful passage driven through the first
+area of igneous rocks before we reached the quarry country of the
+Tiniti. It pierced the dark and stubborn dike that rose in sheer walls
+like the Palisades on the Hudson, 1,000 and 1,200 feet above our heads,
+and it seemed that the darkening tide was carrying us into the bowels of
+the sphere. As the precipitous walls rose on either side, a loud report,
+followed by another more muffled, startled us. Looking upward, Chapman,
+shouting '_Golki, tanto_,' with outstretched hand pointed to a flaming
+missile passing over our heads, and apparently in the direction we were
+heading.
+
+"It was a meteor. It was just such a phenomenon as we know of on the
+Earth. I felt certain that it was a bolide from space, one of those
+fiery visitors of stone and iron that collide occasionally with our
+Earth, and that somewhere before us, in the country we were approaching,
+it would be found.
+
+"Later a few straggling shooting stars appeared. The languor of fatigue
+overcame me, and I slept prostrate on the cushions of the deck as the
+murmurous reverberations from the walls of the rock-bound canal rose and
+fell, with the cadence of the waves, splashing softly against their
+feet.
+
+"I dreamt of the Earth, the pictures naturally recalled, by these
+surroundings, of my life on the Hudson River in New York, and it seemed
+so real, that I should find myself with you working away in the old
+laboratory at Yonkers near the Albany Road. Suddenly I was shaken, and
+opening my eyes I beheld the firmament of heaven falling in coruscating
+cascades about us. Starting up, I found myself clutching Chapman, who
+had called to the pilot to stop the boat. A few of the attendants were
+grouped near us, and the loudly suppressed exclamations made me realize
+that these visitations were perhaps infrequent upon Mars.
+
+"It was a meteoric shower, like our leonids in November. It rained
+pellets or balls of fire, these phosphorescent trains gleaming
+spectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall.
+Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase and
+diminish, and recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the ground
+of some meteoric mass.
+
+"It was a marvellous and splendid scene. It lasted till the dawn. We
+remained almost unchanged in position, while the tiny comets crowded the
+sky with their uninterrupted march, and the air was shot through with
+intermingled lanes of light.
+
+"As the morning broke, we had passed the great gorge in the canal, and
+had entered a wild, savage, almost treeless country. Great weathered
+columns of rock stood alone in the debris of their own dismemberment,
+the bare gray or rusty and jagged expanses sloping up steeply from the
+edge of the canal, sparingly dotted over with gray bushes, and covered
+with an ashen colored lichen.
+
+"The scene was here forbidding and desolate. We moved for miles through
+the waste of a ruined world. The whole region had been the stage of
+great volcanic activity, and the monticules of scoriaceous rock, the
+broad plains excavated with deep pools that reflected their dismal,
+untenanted borders in the black depths of unruffled water, spoke of
+meteorological conditions long prolonged and intense. It was a weird,
+strange place, silent and dead. But amongst these vast ejections, these
+truncated fossil craters were embedded masses of the rare self-luminous
+stone that made the City of Light. Chapman told me how in pockets or
+huge amygdaloidal cavities, this white phosphorescent substance was
+quarried, brought up bodily perhaps in the slow upheaval of the region
+from the deep-seated sources of this mineral flood.
+
+"The canal passed along for miles in the depression between two folds of
+the surface. Finally, gazing ahead, there slowly came into view a huge
+_rictus_, a gaping rent in the side of the black and gray and red walls
+to our right, and a minute movement of living forms, scarcely
+discernible, revealed the first quarry near the little town of Sinsi.
+
+"As we drew nearer I descried a slant incline from the open excavation
+down which the blocks of stone were slid. They were brought to the
+surface by hoisting cranes, and just as our little porcelain
+cockle-shell glided to the dock, an enormous fragment rudely shaped into
+a cubical form, was moving down the metal road bed to the edge of the
+canal.
+
+"Here we landed, and a crowd of people hailed us, and amongst them were
+many of the prehistoric people, the short, sturdy brown or copper
+colored northerners who work in the quarries and mines. It was
+nightfall. Their day's work was over, and they crowded around us with
+interest. They were good-natured, but quiet, and dressed in a kind of
+overalls that was made in one garment from head to feet.
+
+"Chapman pushed amongst them, followed by me. We made our way to a
+pleasant house, built of the quarried volcanic rock, alternating with
+the white stone of the quarry, and covered with an almost flat roof of
+the blue metal. In this house we were received by the Superintendent of
+Quarries, a supernatural, who still retained a mechanical aptitude,
+brought with him from the earth. The greetings were pleasant, and as the
+Superintendent spoke his former earth language, which had been French,
+we got along intelligibly.
+
+"The rooms of this house were large, square apartments, simply furnished
+with the white chairs, tables and couches I had seen in the City of
+Light, but on its walls were drawings and photographs of the quarry, the
+country, and groups of the workmen. Amongst the pictures were some
+wonderful large scenes of an ice country, and the lustrous high wall of
+a gigantic glacier. I pointed these out to Chapman. He told me that to
+the north of the mountains lay the great northern sea, in winter a sea
+of ice, and that from continental elevations within it glacial masses
+pushed outward, invading the southern country. A road led over the
+mountain from Sinsi to regions beyond, where there were fertile
+intervals and plains inhabited by populations of the small, early people
+we had met.
+
+"Here were their settlements, from which the workmen of the quarries had
+been brought. Beyond this again lay the margins of the polar sea. The
+Superintendent--his name was Alca--had visited this region, and probably
+made the pictures I wondered at. The Superintendent said we should visit
+the great quarry in the morning before we started again for Scandor. And
+he showed us, as the darkness descended about us, a marvellous
+phenomenon. Standing on the roof of his house, we looked up the mountain
+side to the immense opening forced in its flank, and it had become a
+great surface of palpitating, rising and falling light. The waves of
+glorious soft radiance bathed the village about us, the waters of the
+canal, and the arid crusts of rock beyond, the circle of encompassing
+darkness straining like a great black wall, on its spent edges.
+
+"Song and music closed the day, and after eating the wine-soaked cakes
+of Pintu, we made our way to the white and simple bedchamber and waited
+for the morning.
+
+"It came, fresh and splendid. The air of this latitude of Mars is so
+pure, vivid and dustless! My strength and power and vitality seemed
+boundless. And as in the broad mirror of my bedchamber I viewed my
+reflection, I leaped with wonder to see the youth I had been, formed
+anew in lineaments, fairer than Earth's. My son, I have become younger
+than yourself, age has vanished, and all the restraint of differing
+years between has vanished with it.
+
+"Alca, Chapman and myself, as is the Martian habit, walked to the quarry
+mouth, up a winding and hard stone road. This dreary and desolate region
+seemed to have a charm. Its expanse of rigid waves of stone, pimpled
+with sharp excrescences, and as deeply pitted with cavernous grottoes,
+where no life seemed able to survive, save a stunted herbage, sparsely
+assembled in vagrant groups, or gathered in thirsty lines around the lip
+of the still pools, was full of scenic interest, but more deeply
+eloquent of great geological convulsions.
+
+"Chapman and Alca were in front of me, speaking the Martian tongue,
+while I stood looking backward every few steps, delighted to trace the
+broad river of the canal winding through the desolation for miles
+beyond. Then I noticed how rapid and effortless is motion in Mars.
+Volition is so easy and penetrating, the body becomes a mere plaything
+for the mind. Every function, every part is swayed into vitality by the
+mind. There is the apparent motion of the limbs, but really the whole
+frame sweeps on as by an intangible process of translation, and the body
+is transferred to the point the mind desires it to reach almost without
+fatigue. This gives strength exactly proportioned to Will, and the shorn
+powers of disease and Time proceed from the creative faculty of thought.
+The disabling of the body in Mars by weakness or disease, or accident or
+age, sprang front a mental discord, an emotional dissonance. Here was
+the explanation of those disorders that still cling to the Martian life.
+In this lay also the secret of crime.
+
+"I looked upward to Chapman, who was then peering with hand raised to
+his eyes at some object before him which the Superintendent had pointed
+out, and I felt sorrowful that he should be in disagreement with this
+life. It boded ill. I had begun to love Chapman, and the first sense of
+suffering I had felt seemed now awakened at the thought of harm coming
+to him.
+
+"But there was no time for meditation. Chapman and Alca were looking
+backward and shouting. They beckoned with their arms, and as I gazed I
+saw between them, and ahead of them a great black object, about which a
+number of the little workmen were running excitedly like a swarm of
+ants. I leaped to their position. Chapman exclaimed: 'You remember the
+meteor we saw. Well, there it is.'
+
+"Extended like a gigantic and deformed missile lay an iron meteorite
+before us, the same thing as the Siderites that appear in your Museums
+on Earth. It was yet warm, a crevice spread down into its interior, and
+it had apparently rolled from the spot of its first impact, since a
+hammered side, abraded and worn on the hard rock, lay uppermost. It bore
+the significant pits, thumb-marks and depressions of the terrestrial
+objects, while streaming striations spread from its front breast where
+the iron in melting had run like tears over its surface. It measured
+some four feet in length, and must have weighed many tons.
+
+"Then a curious thing happened, or seemed to happen. Alca, the
+Superintendent, advanced to it, and bending against it with
+outstretched arm, muttered a few words, frowned as if in concentrated
+thought, and--was it credible--the iron object moved. I looked aghast at
+Chapman, who turned away with what I dismally interpreted was an
+expression of disgust. I pressed up close to him, and he murmured, 'Was
+that a miracle? If it was I should like to get back to common sense and
+jack-screws.'
+
+"We continued upward, and now the terrific gulf piercing the ground for
+over two terrestrial miles yawned at our feet. The steep precipice, lost
+in a twilight dusk below, was disconcerting. The blocks of stone were
+hoisted from the gigantic pit by hoists worked by hand. Here is one of
+the anomalies of this existence in Mars. Electrical science and its
+application is understood, great stores of mechanical experience and
+wisdom can be drawn on, and yet in most of the mechanical work, hand
+work, the toilsome method of the Pharaohs of Egypt prevails. There are
+no railroads or trolleys or steam vehicles. The boats are driven by
+explosive engines, and there are electric carriages of velocity and
+power. But the latter are infrequent. The canals are numerous,
+especially about Scandor, and the great trunk canals are broad avenues
+of traffic.
+
+"The intense swift motion of the Martians meets their needs in most
+cases. Where hard labor on a mammoth scale is necessary, the little race
+of _prehistorics_ serves all their purposes. The canals are their great
+engineering feats, and the wonderful telescopes, their triumphs in
+applied science, their knowledge of the transmutation of the
+elements,--their greatest intellectual victory,--and Scandor, the City
+of Glass, their architectural gem and miracle.
+
+"We stood in a line gazing upon the receding roof of the great cavern,
+the heavy walls left like buttresses to hold up the overlying mountain
+ridge, and the tiny figures dimly swarming on the distant floor.
+
+"The quarry extends far in under the ridge. Much barren rock is taken
+out, for the Phosphori rock occurs variously in masses, layers,
+lenticles, and almond shaped inclusions in the igneous matrix.
+
+"We were to descend, but before we did so the Superintendent led us to
+the summit of the ridge. From here, with a superb hand telescope, we
+gazed up a distant land beyond the volcanic area we had surmounted,
+occupied by farms and villages. It was the North country where the
+prehistorics dwelt. It seemed peaceful and attractive. Beyond this again
+we just discerned the shimmering surface of the Great Glacier, the
+superb train of ice, that comes southward in the winter, and encroaches
+even upon some of the exposed margins of the land of the prehistorics.
+Its retreat is rapid in the warm season, and its broad tract is broken
+by emergent backs of rocks and land, that are seamed with wild flowers.
+The Martians travel to these oases in the Ocean of Ice, and it is from
+these flowers that an entrancing perfume is extracted, of which the
+Martians are extremely fond.
+
+"We lingered on this pinnacle of rock and surveyed a prospect on either
+side of contrasted and great interest. The land of the Zinipi north of
+us resembled the fertile hill and valley country of the Genesee River in
+western New York, the great region south of us a combination of the
+Snake River country in Idaho, and the fissured ranges of the Silverton
+Quadrangle in Colorado.
+
+"Between these rose this high partition of castellated rock.
+
+"We descended again to the mouth of the quarry, and, led by the
+Superintendent, were swung far out from its dizzy sides into the lake of
+air between them upon a platform, used for an aerial elevator. Chapman
+clung nervously to me, and complained of a light nausea and dread. I
+felt only a tonic exhilaration, and as we slowly sank through the shaft
+of air, crossed by sunlight for some distance, and then passed into the
+cooler shadows of its deeper parts, where the yet level sun failed to
+penetrate, I cried aloud with delight, and the abyss around us shouted
+its salutation back.
+
+"Still we descended, and soon saw back in the deep prolongations of the
+tunnel the shining walls of this phosphorescent cave. The light glowed
+so effulgently that it seemed a soft radiant haze, through which came
+the sound of voices, and in it black figures moved incessantly.
+
+"The method of quarrying is not unlike that of the marble quarries on
+the earth. Drilling long holes in and under the stone, which from
+pressure has assumed a rudely cubical cleavage, separates the rock into
+heavy pieces. These holes are wedged, and the rocks forced off into
+useful blocks. All is done by hand, and the picture of activity, with
+workers constantly engaged at their various duties made a singular
+scene. We walked far into the ever deepening womb of the mountain, while
+on either hand lateral tunnels, or rather avenues had been pushed,
+penetrating rich segregations wherever they had been traced, and where
+also glowed the welcome glow of this lithic lamp.
+
+"The Superintendent explained that the stone was quite unequal in
+quality, and he told us how the illuminating power of the stone was
+actually tested in what on the Earth we would call candle powers, but
+is known on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinum
+wire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see the
+varying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixture
+of impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, were deprived of all
+luminousness.
+
+"Returning, it seemed as if in the sharp convulsions of the crust a
+flood of light had been somehow absorbed by the rock, and then this
+light-saturated rock had been overwhelmed and buried out of sight, only
+to be painfully restored to its first home, in the open skies, by the
+labor of men.
+
+"But time was pressing. Chapman must reach Scandor, his envoy's errand
+was important, and bidding the kind Alca good-bye, which the Martians
+execute by a kiss and an embrace, we came out again into the deep well,
+and gazed upward past the glistening precipices, irregular with little
+ledges, and over-reaching cavities, to the distant sky.
+
+"And now a terrible calamity befell us. The Superintendent pointed out a
+narrow path that led circuitously around the great crags of rock to the
+top. It was a narrow winding ledge, rising by a mild incline, and
+circling the pit before it finally reached its brim. In parts it was
+quite unprotected, but the extraordinary nerves of the men made the
+achievement of passing out or in the quarry by this means a very simple
+test of endurance. Even as the Superintendent alluded to its use, a file
+of dark figures was just above us, with soldierlike precision marching
+down to the level we occupied. Chapman banteringly asked me to try it,
+and I accepted the challenge, urging him to follow.
+
+"We started up. At first the ascent was simple, and the view backward
+just a little exciting. We continued, and I noticed that the path
+contracted, and nervously looking on ahead, was startled to find it
+broken with short gaps, which must be crossed by jumping. I had felt the
+vague premonitions about Chapman increasing, and somehow, by that
+intuition which becomes prophetic, in this semi-etherealized
+constitution of our bodies and minds, in Mars, I knew an impending blow
+hung over us.
+
+"I looked back and saw Chapman gravely following me. The cheer and
+laughter had disappeared from his face, the jesting gayety had fled, and
+he seemed enfeebled. I hastened to him, and he raised his face with a
+reassuring smile.
+
+"'Dodd,' he said, 'I am dizzy. I feel strangely here,' and he felt his
+forehead. 'I wonder that it is so. But come! Don't be frightened. It
+will pass over.' He pushed me from him. For an instant we stood and
+gazed around us. Far up we saw the outer sunlight beating on the barren
+exposures of the mountain, around us was black excavated rock, and below
+the shining walls, faintly blue and pink.
+
+"'Chapman,' I said, 'let us go back. The hoists will take us out.'
+'Folly,' was the answer. 'I shall be all right. Why, a Martian has no
+physical weakness or dread. Come, Dodd, you have not yet acquired the
+Martian defiance of accident, disease, or death. You are sneaking back
+under the cover of fear for me.'
+
+"His voice seemed peevish. I looked at him with wonder. He leaped past
+me, with a forced agility, and sprang on upward. I followed with
+lightness born of thought, with which the true Martians move.
+
+"On, on, we sped. The narrowing path carried us up until one of those
+gaps I had noticed came in view. Chapman stopped, and then hearing my
+approaching steps, ran forward and jumped. His calculation and strength
+were yet secure and adequate. He safely passed the first break in the
+pathway, and, as I crossed it with a wide leap, we both still sped on
+upon an even narrower shelf, which also was more steeply inclined
+about the jutting prominences of the rocky cliff.
+
+"The next gap was reached, and now the edge of the succeeding length of
+pathway was not only farther away, but higher up. Chapman, I could see
+imperfectly, because of a slim projection in my way, had reached the
+lower side, and, hesitatingly, drew backward. It was his preparation for
+the leap. He launched forward. I rushed precipitately upward, feeling
+the air about me vibrating, it seemed, with an impending disaster.
+Chapman had landed on the further side of the break, but the cruel,
+treacherous rock crumbled beneath his impact, and I saw his staggering
+form turning backward. Another instant and his descending body was below
+me, plunging to the floor of the abyss. I turned, and then, my son, I
+felt the marvel of the mind's creative power over matter. I wished
+myself at the bottom of the quarry where Chapman had fallen, and
+although the movement of the translation down the pathway seemed
+apparent, yet I was scarcely parted from him an instant before I was
+standing and leaning over him in a group of astonished workmen, at the
+very spot where he lay. He was conscious, but gravely injured. I knelt
+beside him, and as I raised his head upon my knee, he looked up, and his
+lips moved; at first he was inarticulate, but soon his words became
+audible and intelligent.
+
+"'Dodd,' he said, 'this ends me for Mars. Take the papers to the Council
+at Scandor. They are in the cabin in my desk. They are sealed. I know
+there is a celestial runaway that is going to strike this planet. I
+overheard that much at the Patenta. And its direct path, the point of
+impingement, will be at Scandor. The fires ascending from Scandor are
+signals that they, too, have divined the disaster. I think so at least!
+Hurry on! You may see the strangest phenomenon eyes have ever seen. But,
+Dodd, enough of that. I am turned down for this world. I was not in
+agreement, as the philosophers call it, and the true mental Martian
+immunity from accident was not in me. I am injured mortally.'
+
+"He groaned and tried to rise, but his crushed body was incapable. The
+Superintendent, Alca, had hurried to the spot where the crowding men
+stood around us ejaculating their amazement. Alca tore open the garment
+about Chapman, and placing his forehead on the body, poured out as it
+were, the full tide of his mental sympathy and power.
+
+"I could see the struggle between the mortality of Chapman, born of
+doubt, and his unfittedness and apathy, and the spiritual power of the
+brave Superintendent. The flame of life in Chapman would be stimulated
+or excited, and then flicker and die down. These alterations lasted but
+a short time. Soon Chapman passed into stupor, and then death
+supervened, and the strange and seldom known circumstance of death among
+the supernaturals in Mars was realized.
+
+"Alca kept the body of Chapman, which would be sent back to the City of
+Light, and cremated in the Temple of Glorification--which I have not
+seen. He intended to accompany it. He sent me on to Scandor. I had now
+learned enough of the Martian language to speak, imperfectly. That
+mental facility, which is the amazing and most wonderful thing in Mars,
+was perhaps more slowly roused in me. But daily I became known, and more
+alert and inflamed with thought and the eager intuition of the Martians.
+
+"We started from the great Quarry of Sinsi, and I was alone with the
+Martians on the porcelain boat, now made by this tragic fate the
+ambassador from the City of Light to the Council in Scandor.
+
+"The sterile, sinister and yet marvellous region of lava beds, dikes and
+conic craters suddenly was passed, and the canal moved into the huge
+forest lands of the Ribi wood.
+
+"This is a beautiful land. Mountain ranges rising from four to six
+thousand feet cross it, holding broad valleys and plains, or elevated
+plateaus between them; lakes and rivers pass through it, and villages
+and towns with a mixed population of the supernaturals and the
+prehistorics are frequent. The canals cross the great region in many
+directions. The trunk line I followed was carried up and down by systems
+of locks of astounding magnitude and perfection. Great lakes were made
+convenient feeders, and rivers were also tapped to keep the water levels
+constant in the canals. The weather was that of a semi-tropical
+paradise, and the late flowers of the Ribi filled the air with
+fragrance.
+
+"Quickly we approached Scandor. It was a clear, calm day when we emerged
+from the Ribi country, and the pilot pointed out to me the distant
+hills, almost purple in a twilight haze, which encircled the Valley of
+the City of Scandor. The country we had entered was a fertile farm
+country, where great plantations of the Rint, and vineyards of the Oma
+grapes were established, and where great flocks of the Imilta dove,
+almost the only meat eaten by the Martians, are raised. The enormous
+flocks of this snow-white bird were strangely beautiful. They made
+clouds in the air, and their purring notes when they settled in white
+blankets over the fields, were heard pulsating over long distances.
+
+"Finally we came to the last tier of locks at the summit of which my
+curiosity was to be satisfied by a view of the great City of Scandor,
+the City of Glass.
+
+"It was night when our china boat floated upon the waters of the last
+lock that completed the ascent, and immediately below the observatory
+Station or Settlement of Scandor. I was standing on the deck of the
+boat, watching impatiently the slowly rising tide upon which we were
+borne upward. I could at first see as we ascended the towers of the
+observatory station. Above me, looking at us with interest, on the walls
+of the lock, was a company of Martians. The night was cloudy, and the
+lights of the hastening satellites were but intermittently evident.
+Gradually my head passed upward beyond the obstructing interference of
+wall and gate and fence, and the glorious and unimaginable splendor of
+the City of Scandor, like some monstrous continental opal, lay before me
+in the immediate valley.
+
+"The glistening panes of water below me marked the places of the
+descending line of locks. Around me were the buildings of the Scandor
+Observatory, and to the right and left swept the forested slopes of a
+circular range which, as I later saw, ranged about in one
+amphitheatrical circuit the, great vale of Scandor. But only an
+instant's glance could be spared for this detail. The divine City
+glowing below me seemed to magnetize attention, and control, through its
+wonderfulness each wavering attitude of interest. My son, the eye of man
+never beheld so astonishing a picture. Imagine a city reaching twenty
+miles in all directions built of glass variously designed, interrupted
+by tall towers, pyramids, minarets, steeples, light, fantastic and
+beautiful structures, all aflame, or rather softly radiating a variously
+colored glory of light.
+
+"Imagine this great area of building, penetrated by broad avenues,
+radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a center where rose upward to
+the sky a colossal amphitheatre. Imagine these roads, delineated to the
+eye by tall chimneys or tubes of glass through which played an electric
+current, converting each one into a lambent pillar. Imagine between
+these paths of greenish opalescence the squares of buildings of domed,
+arched and castellated roofs, pierced and starred, and spread in lines
+and patterns of white electric lamps. The noble proportions of the
+larger buildings, the graceful outlines of turreted or campanulate
+erections, and the smaller houses were all defined. I could see canals
+or rivers of water winding through the City spanned by arches of flame,
+and even the symmetrical disposition of the dark-leaved trees was
+visible.
+
+"But the night was still further turned to day, for above the City, high
+in the velvet black empyrean were suspended thousands of glass balloons,
+each emitting the Geissler-like illumination that marked the lines of
+streets. So full and opulent was the flood of light, that the summit I
+had reached, the encircling hills, and the farther side of the
+saucer-shaped valley where Scandor lay, were bathed in an equally
+diffused radiation.
+
+"But, as if the heavenly marvel might still further startle and amaze
+and charm me, from the City rose the swelling chords of choruses;
+billows of sound, softened by distance, beat in melodious surges on the
+high encompassing lands.
+
+"I stood mute and transfixed. It seemed a beatific vision. If the very
+air had been filled with ascending choruses of angels, if the dark
+zenith had opened and revealed the throne of the Almighty, it would have
+seemed but a congruous and expected climax.
+
+"Long I gazed, and slowly, very slowly became conscious of the great
+numbers of people about me, and that they were being augmented by new
+arrivals. The porcelain barge I had come in from the City of Light, was
+moored now to the side of the lock. I had disembarked, carrying almost
+mechanically in my hand, the chest in which the communications from the
+Patenta to the Council were locked.
+
+"It was perhaps only a short interval before the pilot woke me from my
+trance, saying in Martian: 'This is the Observation Hill of Scandor.
+These are Scandor's Observatories. I hear there is seen by the observers
+some approaching danger in the heavens. These citizens of Scandor are
+crowding from the City to hear the latest reports. There is a messenger
+from the Council here waiting on the observers. I will bring him to you,
+and you and the messenger can at once be conveyed to the Council.'
+
+"I looked at him speechless, yet unable to again realize I lived and
+breathed in another world. It seemed as if a sudden motion, a cry, a
+whisper even, would break the chrysalis of sleep about me, and plunge me
+into void and nothingness.
+
+"The pilot left me, and I saw him thread his way amongst the lines of
+people, moving toward the dark walls of the observatory that covered the
+hill. At long intervals rockets rose from the opposite rim of the great
+circular ridge around the City, scarring the deep, inky vault about us
+with lines of fire. They ascended to an enormous distance. Almost
+instantly these were apparently answered by similar rockets in other
+colors from the hill I stood on.
+
+"There was a sudden movement about me. The pilot had returned. With him
+came the messenger. I flung my absorption from me. I was a Martian. The
+light of recognition came back again to my eyes--my tongue was loosened,
+my senses accommodated themselves to the stupendous circumstances about
+me. I spoke first.
+
+"'Mindo,' (the name of the pilot), 'I am ready to accompany my guide to
+the City. Will you go with us?'
+
+"'No! Heboribimo,' (your excellency), 'I must stay at the locks. I shall
+descend to the City in the boat to-morrow. This man will bring you to
+the canal. I advise haste. There is great excitement and dread in
+Scandor. Mars is in the path of a comet.'
+
+"I turned to my guide, a beautiful youth, not dressed as the citizens of
+the City of Light, but clothed in a tight fitting doublet of a creamy
+blue, with short trunks of yellow, and on his feet were sandals. He
+saluted me, and together we descended the broad boulevard between the
+widely separated lustres that became more crowded as they massed like a
+progressive deepening of color into the eddying splendors of the City
+itself.
+
+"Again I realized how swift is motion in Mars. We wished to reach the
+City, and we glided to it by the rapid propulsion of desire. The broad
+way was filled with lines and groups of peoples clustering to the
+hilltop--and over the far-reaching slopes I could see the awaiting
+throngs. My guide pointed to the constellation of Perseus, and I could
+discern a nebulous mass of considerable diameter from which proceeded a
+wisp-like exhalation, just a phantasmal fan of phosphorescence, behind
+it.
+
+"The glory of the City fell around us now; we were in its broad streets
+beneath the towering pillars of light that framed them in a fence of
+splendor. On we pressed, but I glanced from side to side, noting the
+great glass houses and buildings, here colonnades of translucent
+opalescent beauty, made up of hollow tubes of glass holding an interior
+illumination, and clambered over by vines whose expanding leaves formed
+a tracery of silhouettes upon their sides.
+
+"Still on, past porticos and under arches, through open forum-like
+squares, from which were elevated the great glass globes I have
+described, which hung lamp-like in the sky,--past palaces and arcades,
+blocks of low stores in iridescent tints, and long, straight fronts of
+white opaque buildings, through occasional tunnels into which we
+plunged as into a sea of radiance, and on, out, past a few squares of
+black umbrageous trees that seemed like dead coals laid on the heat
+quivering hearth of a furnace, past minarets of curling, entwined
+filagrees of glass threads, past dull or darker areas where the huge
+glass factories were built, their forges glowing like Cyclops' eyes in
+the night, and from which was produced the colossal sum of manufacture,
+which this great City embodied.
+
+"It was a strange bewilderment of marvels, and from it all, as if it
+were its interior motive and cause, sprang light. It was electric in
+origin, conveyed in some peculiar manner from a great source of power,
+in the high falls of Zenapa, near the City. But this I learned later.
+
+"I divined that we were approaching the center of the city. Soon,
+indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I had
+descried from the hill of Observation at the locks. Here it is, that the
+great plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of the
+Pan-Tan are held. It was a seraphic, astounding picture. It rose in the
+midst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light,
+purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. How
+wonderful! I stopped. For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upon
+a miracle of constructive and decorative art. One hundred columns of red
+glass rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green glass
+arches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire. From the
+pillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets,
+carrying gorgeous chandeliers of a red bronze; the largest chandeliers
+were at the very upper edge of the building, and the cascade of light
+thus shed upon the splendid fabric was indescribably magnificent.
+
+"But there was small time for wonder or examination. We swept on through
+the shadowy gardens about it, and my guide quickly brought me to the
+Hall of the Council, a low, inconspicuous building of yellow brick, one
+of the few discordant architectural notes in the whole city.
+
+"The doors of the single chamber, which embraced all the interior space,
+swung open, and I stood on the threshold of a shallow, rectangular
+depression, surrounded on all sides with benches, and holding in its
+central area a long table, at which, beneath tall lamps, sat, perhaps, a
+dozen men and one woman. Opposite to my point of view, in a niche upon
+the further wall, was the colossal figure of the Deity I had seen in the
+Patenta at the City of Light.
+
+"The faces of the twelve men turned to us as we entered. The herald
+announced my errand with the customary salutation of 'Hebori bimo.' I
+was invited to descend to the central table. I advanced, and laying
+Chapman's chest, with its sealed communications upon the table, spoke:
+
+"'I am a stranger. I have come to your world from the Earth. I bring
+news, celestial news, from the astronomers of the City of Light. I had a
+companion to whom all this was entrusted.' He was killed in the quarries
+of Tiniti. I came on, bidden so to do by Alca, the Superintendent. The
+papers of the Wise Men of the Patenta are here.'
+
+"I laid the chest upon the table. My speech was yet unformed, and
+perhaps upon the delicate and intellectual faces before me, there dwelt,
+with the transient influence of a passing thought, a smile of sympathy
+or amusement. Then a young being at the head of the table exclaimed in
+Martian:
+
+"'Welcome, stranger. All who come to us are soon made one with
+ourselves. The Martian spirit is that of salutation and friendship. We
+have heard of the discoveries in the new commotions in planetary space.
+Our own astronomers have announced them. This great City of Scandor, the
+product of many centuries' toil and invention, is apparently doomed. It
+lies in the path, certainly defined and determined by observers, of a
+small cometary mass, which will plunge upon it a rain of rock and iron.
+Even now this approaching body grows more and more visible in the sky.
+The astronomers are working at the problem, hoping some deflection, some
+interpositional mercy will carry off this disturbing incidence. But if
+we are to be destroyed, if there is no escape from the singular fortune
+of annihilation by an inrushing stream of meteoric bodies, then warning,
+through proclamation, shall be made, and our citizens will move out of
+the city to Asco, and the islands of Pinit.'
+
+"He ceased; upon him the expectant faces of the others, assembled about
+the table, were fixed, and a visible tremor of dismay and grief seemed
+to convulse them. A few covered their faces with their hands, others
+stood up and gazed at the benignant colossus in bronze at the end of the
+room, while others, motionless, still maintained their attitude of
+attention.
+
+"The presiding officer, with a slight inclination of the body, raised
+his hand, and addressing me, said: 'You shall be the guest of our City,
+and if it must be that this great capital of Mars must succumb to this
+mysterious invasion, if this place, so long a marvel of beauty, shall
+be succeeded by a heap of burning stones, then you shall be our
+companion in pilgrimage. Remain with us until the end of this strange
+circumstance is known.'
+
+"As he finished, a noise of indescribable lamentation from a multitude
+of voices broke upon our ears--the sound of running feet and sharp cries
+of amazement, crashed in upon the half ominous silence about us.
+
+"I turned instinctively to my guide. He stood statue-like beside me,
+with a stealing pallor crossing his face, and then, the doors of the
+apartment swung open, and loud voices were heard crying, 'The Peril
+comes. Stand forward. To the Hills!'
+
+"Panic, that nameless associated mental terror of the unknown and the
+impending, which on Earth spreads fever-like through multitudes, had
+arisen amongst the Martians, and hurrying crowds were hastening in a
+wild retreat from the City to the hills.
+
+"All thought of the Council, of my errand, or of the new relation I had
+been graciously accorded, disappeared from my mind. Frightened by the
+sudden premonition of destruction, bewildered by the torrent of new
+sensations, and even yet only half confident that my existence in the
+new world was altogether real, I was impelled to spring forward.
+Reaching the doors, hands shot out around me, and I was swept in the
+tide of running forms.
+
+"It was a living stream of manifold complexity. Only for one moment did
+I lose consciousness. The next I was struggling to escape from the
+spreading tentacles of this involved current. I leaped to the projection
+of a low pedestal, upon which an unfinished construction or group of
+statues was in progress. Holding my exposed position for an instant, I
+wrenched myself clear of the pulsating throngs, and succeeded in gaining
+the low summit above me. Here I was free to look around me. My guide was
+gone, the Council House was lost to view; I was alone. Below passed the
+surging crowd, made up of youths and girls, with few older men or women,
+many beautiful, all expressing the Martian distinction, but now
+strangely bewildered and uncontrolled. It was a reversed emotional
+picture from that buoyant, frenzied throng that a few weeks ago carried
+me into the Hall of the Patenta.
+
+"Faces were turned toward the sky, and hands, as if in ejaculation, were
+waved up and down, or thrust in significant indices toward that fatal
+blurred blot of splendor in the heavens. I followed their direction. The
+approaching nebula had grown sensibly since an hour ago. It glittered,
+the size of a shield, and a light coruscation seemed emanating from its
+edges. The faces of the multitude were justified. The mass above us was
+a train of celestial missiles, hurling toward Mars. Its contact seemed
+more and more imminent. I felt a nameless terror. The thought of
+isolation in this new world, the unknown awfulness of this planetary
+disturbance, the sudden extinction of the hopes that were feeding my
+heart with a new life, and the forecasting of the impossible agonies of
+universal death in this great, strange place I had so wonderfully
+entered, overcame me. I fell sobbing to the glassy floor on which I was
+standing. It was again a new proof of my assumption of the ecstatic
+nature of these children of light and music, impulse and inspiration.
+
+"The convulsion passed. I felt stronger, and was quickened with a keenly
+prudent determination to escape from the city, find my way back to the
+Hill of Observation, and if possible, send you, my son, my last
+experience before all had become silence.
+
+"I could see the regular ascent of the rockets from the distant hill. I
+found the streets about me almost emptied, the white, lustrous river of
+life had passed. I descended to the pavement. The way past the splendid
+Amphitheatre was easily found, and then I hastened, guided by a dumb
+instinct of direction, toward the still ascending rockets. I came to
+the broad Boulevard which led to the Hill of Observation, and went on,
+now plainly controlled by the sweeping avenue of lamps about, and in
+front of me.
+
+"I shall not pause to recount the success of my application to the
+astronomers to use the transmitters of the wireless telegraphy, which
+are as fully perfected here as at the City of Scandor.
+
+"As my message ends, the dawn ascends from the wide margins of the Ribi
+country. I am stunned with drowsiness. The Sun's rays have extinguished
+the scintillant peril in the skies. But the order has gone forth to
+leave the City, to camp upon the hills, the City of Scandor is doomed,
+and the area of destruction it embraces is the diametral measure of
+the----"
+
+I heard no more. Overcome with fatigue, exposure and increasing
+pulmonary weakness, of which I had had painful premonitions, I fainted
+at the table, and fell to the floor of the damp and inclement room.
+
+My assistants aver that the transmission ceased almost the next moment
+upon my collapse, and the unfinished sentence of my father's message can
+be readily understood as implying that the foreign body, or Swarm,
+which was destined to strike Mars, had been determined as having about
+the amplitude of the City of Scandor.
+
+Days lengthened into weeks, weeks to months, but though unflinchingly
+watched by night and day, no further message was received. I had become
+weaker, pale and lifeless. The terrible malady made its inroads upon a
+frame unable to meet its savage or insidious attacks. This weakness was
+aggravated by the excitement produced by the singular experience I had
+passed through. My nerves had undergone a strain quite unusual, and the
+interior sense of elation, reacting its fits of extreme mental
+despondency dislocated my system, and accelerated the gliding virus of
+disease inundating the capillaries of circulation and breaking down the
+tissues with fever and consumption.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Miss Dodan came more and more frequently to see me. The thought of my
+physical depression, the revulsion of hopelessness over my changing
+lineaments made the love I bore her more painful and enervating. I tried
+hard to conceal my fears over my condition. But Miss Dodan had been
+observant. Her developing affections became daily more tender and
+delicate, and her solicitude evinced itself in many charming, thoughtful
+ways that added only a more poignant sadness to my sufferings.
+
+I was, indeed, tortured by the conflicting aims life seemed to furnish
+me. On the one hand was the necessity of continuing, if I could, my
+communications with my father; on the other, the duty I owed myself to
+abandon all for the woman I truly loved, and to renovate and establish
+my health so that I might woo and win, and marry her.
+
+It was, in a sense, an ethical question, but it was quite as hard to
+determine by ordinary arguments whether I could have any permission to
+violate my promise to my father, as it was to estimate the exact measure
+of my obligations to myself and Miss Dodan. An incident occurred that
+dissipated this dilemma, sent Miss Dodan to England, and left me at
+Christ Church to receive the last message from my father before the
+sickness had fully developed that now has laid its searching and
+remorseless veto upon any further life or happiness for me in this
+world.
+
+Miss Dodan and myself were seated together upon a bench drawn up in the
+sunshine at the foot of the Observatory, watching with delight the
+distinct changing sea, the plumes of smoke from diminished steamers, and
+the white glory of full-rigged ships. It was the autumn of the southern
+country, and the dreamy spell of the declining days fell softly upon the
+material tissues of nature, as well as on the acquiescent spirit of man.
+
+"Father," said Miss Dodan, uncertainly, while she formed her hand into
+an improvised tube, and looked through it on the peaceful scene at our
+feet, "has been telling me of my birthplace in Devonshire. It must be
+very beautiful, more beautiful than it is here. But there is no sea, and
+it seems to me now that I should die without it; it is the very soul and
+voice, too, of all this picture!" She spread out her arms, and half
+willfully threw back the one nearest me, until it swept over my head,
+and I caught and kissed the opened palm.
+
+"Yes," I replied, "the sea relieves everything about or near it, from
+the humiliation of commonness. The stamp of distinction rests on its
+printless waves. It was the first surface of the earth, and its primal
+regency has never been lost or forfeited;" a suspicion crossed my mind:
+"How was it your father spoke of Devonshire. I never knew before that
+you came from that pearl of the countries of England. Would you like to
+see it?"
+
+My voice half sank, and the hitherto unsuspected fact that Mr. Dodan had
+observed my physical danger, and now was planning to interrupt his
+daughter's intimacy and hallucination for a poor, failing man,
+struggling with an impossible problem, and a mortal malady, seemed
+suddenly understood by me. I turned to her a face of questioning
+concern. Her eyes were still fixed upon the distant, pulsating sea.
+"No," she answered, half nonchalantly. "I suppose not, and yet--why not!
+I have only known this country; to cross the great ocean, to see the
+capital of the world, to learn the great wonders of its palaces and
+temples, to see its multitudes, to see the Queen. Ah! to see the Queen!"
+
+Her hands folded tightly together across her brow, she looked the very
+embodiment of reverent expectation, and the blushing roses on her
+cheeks, the lovelight in her eyes seemed to deepen for an instant, and
+then pale slightly, as she turned to me only to see me bury my head in
+my hands, holding back the cry of stifled hope that often before had
+leaped to my lips, but never had before so nearly passed them.
+
+"Oh, Bradford," she cried, "would you mind so much! I would soon be back
+again. And then, you know, this awful telegraphic work would be over,
+and we could be happy together without a thought of that cold, far-away
+Mars!"
+
+We talked on together till the dusky night had begun to gather its
+shadows about us, and Mars, that marvellous spot of light from whose
+untouched continents the waves of magnetic oscillation might even then
+be starting on their pathless transit across the abyss of space,
+destined for my ear, began to shine above us.
+
+It was clear to me now that Mr. Dodan had been carefully nursing in his
+daughter a desire to see England and the Queen, and her own little
+birthplace, and that he had formed a resolution to separate us, for his
+daughter's best interests, as he thought.
+
+I suffered from a very proud, sensitive nature, perhaps unwholesomely
+intensified by the lonely life I had led, and a peculiar sense of my
+difference from other people.
+
+This revelation, so unwelcome, so fraught with painful anticipations,
+roused my pride to a sharp climax of revolt, disdain and defiance. Miss
+Dodan should go,--I should urge it. I would applaud and hasten it, there
+would be no weakness, no supplication, no obstacles on my part. Let
+death write his inerrant claim to me, let it be recognized; Mr. Dodan
+need not be disturbed as to my absolute self-control.
+
+The very acerbity of my coming misery, through Miss Dodan's absence,
+fully realized by me, seemed now only to add a desperation of assumed
+indifference and gayety to all my actions. I argued against delay, and
+dwelt with excellent effect upon the charms of the visit. I assumed that
+Miss Dodan needed the change, that the educational value of such an
+experience would be incalculable.
+
+Mr. Dodan was frankly surprised and pleased. This unexpected support and
+enthusiastic commendation of his plan was something he gratefully
+accepted, and he assumed a new manner toward me. He ascribed to me a
+power of self-renunciation which won his ardent approval and admiration.
+
+The day was at last fixed. Miss Dodan, young, appreciative, and
+curious, was elated at the prospect of the voyage, and, momentarily, at
+least, forgot her first reluctance to desert me. The preparations were
+all completed. I need not dwell upon all the detail of that last week.
+It was a cruel ordeal for me, but no one would have suspected my real
+anguish. I seemed the most thoughtful of all, the most naturally buoyant
+and hopeful for the success of the trip. I forgot nothing. The telegraph
+station was not, however, neglected. I watched at night, and during the
+hours of my absence my assistant was persistently present in the tower.
+
+At last the steamer sailed away from the wharf at Port Littelton. The
+last moments I passed alone with Miss Dodan were sacred, sweet memories;
+all that I have now.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Dodan and Miss Dodan were waving their handkerchiefs from
+the deck as I turned sorrowfully back to Christ Church. I realized that
+I had seen Miss Dodan for the last time, and that when she returned to
+New Zealand, she would only find me gone. There was but one duty now. To
+resume, if possible, the communications with my father, and prepare the
+story of my experience and discoveries, and leave it to the world.
+
+I went back to the Observatory. I was again alone. A reaction of
+despondency overwhelmed me, and it was coincident with a hemorrhage,
+which left me weak and nervous. I resumed my watching at the station. I
+seemed to anticipate a new message. I endured peculiar and excruciating
+excitement, a tense suspense of desire and prevision that deprived me of
+appetite and sleep, and accelerated the ravages of the disease, that
+now, victorious over my weakened, nervous force, began the last stages
+of its devastating advance.
+
+It was a clear, cold night of exquisite severity and beauty--May 20,
+1894, that the third message came from my father. It was announced, as
+had been all the others, by the sudden response of the Morse receiver. A
+few nights before, grasping at a vague hope that I might again reach him
+with the magnetic waves at my command, I had launched into space the
+single sentence: "Await me! Death is very near." The message that now
+startled my ears began with an exact answer to that trans-abysmal
+despatch:
+
+"My son, the thought of your death fills me with happiness. Surely you
+will come to this wonderful and unspeakable world, you will see me
+again, and I you, but under such new circumstances! My heart yearns for
+you immeasurably. Come! Come quickly! To press you to my heart, to speak
+with you, to teach you the new things, and Oh! more than all, to bring
+you to your mother. For, Tony, she is found; my search is ended. I have
+discovered her whom the cruel mystery of Death on earth so sharply
+removed from us, in youth and radiance. I have not yet revealed myself.
+The joy of anticipation surpasses thought or words. I have hastened back
+from seeing her, whom to leave in this paradise imparts the one pang I
+have known in this new life, hastened again to the Hill of Observation
+that now looks on the cruel ruin, the emptiness of desolation, where
+once was the City of Scandor. Let me tell you all:
+
+"When I sent you my last message I was at the Tower of Observation. As
+the last wave was emitted from the transmitter, the hand of
+Superintendent Alca, whom I met at the mines, was laid upon my shoulder.
+I looked up in surprise. He answered my questioning glance: 'I did not
+return with Chapman. There was no need of it. A barge going to the City
+of Light took the body. I explained everything in a letter to the
+Council. I was distressed over the news I had received of the approach
+of the cometary mass, which I have detected myself, and I hurried after
+you in my own kil-chow (the name of the little porcelain steamers),
+anxious to see this terrible thing. Let us go out and watch the wonder.
+Whatever happens we shall remain together. I am from Scandor myself,
+and though I might have been safer at the mines, I could not stay there
+in the crisis.'
+
+"We descended to the ground and walked out over the hillside. The
+encircling range of high country about Scandor is, perhaps, one thousand
+feet high. Its crest is a low swell, that beyond the city falls away in
+broken, irregular slopes to the country of the Ribi on one side, and to
+far outstretched plains on almost every other side. This dome was
+covered with the people of Scandor, fleeing from the doomed city. The
+long lines of moving figures were issuing from the city through its
+numerous boulevards, and crowding the spaces on the hilltops. The
+astronomers knew exactly now the nature of the approaching mass, its
+orbit, spacial extent and weight. Their proclamation had been prepared
+and pasted all over the city, announcing its certain destruction, but
+that the area of devastation would only embrace the city, that the
+cometary visitor was a narrow train or procession of meteors of stone
+and iron, that the force of impact would be considerable, enough to
+crush to the ground the glassy splendor of the beautiful city, and that
+beyond its limits there would be almost no falls.
+
+"Beautiful, indeed, was Scandor in the morning light. It lay before us
+shining with a hundred hues. How can I tell you of its exquisite
+perfection! Its arrangement expressed a color scheme simple and
+effective. The amphitheatre rose in the center, an opalescent yellow;
+the boulevards spaced with trees, stretched out in radiating lines from
+it, defined by the blue lines of ornamental metal pillars which held the
+lamps; from point to point, piercing the air from the shady peaks or
+squares shot up also the needles of metal holding the curious electric
+globes, while at regular intervals blue domes like gigantic azure
+bubbles interrupted the streets of square and colonnaded houses, that
+began around the amphitheatre, with pale saffron tones, and grew in
+intensity until the edges of the huge populous ellipse were laid like a
+deep orange rim upon the green country side. The light falling upon this
+reflected, refracted and dispersed, seemed to convert it into a liquid
+and faintly throbbing lake of color, cut up into segments by the dark
+lanes or streets of trees.
+
+"And this was to be crushed and crumbled to the ground. The houses and
+all the constructions are built of glass bricks laid in courses, as with
+you on the earth, a soluble glass forming the cement that holds them in
+contact and together. The huge glass factories making this formed a
+black circle in one part of the City.
+
+"It was now day, and the meteoric nebula was invisible. All day the
+people came crowding to the hills. At last, as we gazed in bewildered
+admiration at the strange multitudes about us, the sound of distant
+music, the organ-like swell of a titanic chorus approaching was heard.
+Far away down the boulevard, on whose apex we stood, we saw a marching
+retinue of men and women surrounding a platform borne on the shoulders
+of men. The platform held the upright figures of the Council amongst
+whom, distinguished by a blue chalcal tunic bound about him by yellow
+cords, was the noble being I had seen in the Council chamber on the
+night of my arrival in Scandor.
+
+"How marvellous it all seemed. The sense of unreality, of dreamland
+again overpowered me, a wild horror like some mad possession seized me.
+I shook convulsively, and covered my face in my hands, stricken through
+and through with a nameless repining misery of doubt, of apprehension,
+of dismay. It was the last struggle of readjustment between my memories
+of earth, my identity as a man on the earth, and this new life I had
+entered. Alca caught me affectionately and placed the acrid bean I had
+tasted in the City of Light in my mouth. The black suffocation passed,
+and as I slowly returned to realization and serenity I opened my eyes
+upon the city, now dead and silent, but blazing with all its lights,
+awaiting desolation, dressed in its sumptuous glory like some princely
+captive on whom the doom of immolation, before an unappeasable deity,
+had suddenly fallen. It was night fall.
+
+"Suddenly a flash, a short piercing note, a loud report, and the sky
+above us seemed crowded with glowing missiles. The impact from the first
+arrivals of the cometary body upon the outer envelopes of the Martian
+atmosphere had begun. A loud shout of attention, surprise and half
+extemporized terror rose from the multitudes about us. It was a
+breathless moment. The oncoming shoals shot forward in rapid jets of
+fire now clouded together in igneous masses, now separated in disjointed
+streaks and radiant clusters of snapping, shining bolts.
+
+"As yet the material rushing in upon us failed, in most instances, to
+reach the ground in solid forms. It was burned up in the air. The
+spectacle was surpassingly strange. The air before us was weaved with
+crossing shafts, threads, and traces of phosphorescent light. Behind
+this veil still shone with responsive beauty the great city, while
+rising occasionally in bursts of color, we could see the alarm rockets
+from the opposite hills penetrate the entering flood of light with
+frivolous and extinguished protests.
+
+"About half an hour after the glory reached us, and as on all sides the
+country shone in spectral illumination, a great mass, decrepitating with
+minute explosions along its oncoming side, plunged down upon the noble
+amphitheatre of glass. A dreadful sound of crashing stone followed, and
+then, rapidly fired from the aerial batteries, came still more of the
+dark, half ignited bodies, bathed in hurrying streams of evanescent
+blades, and splinters of light.
+
+"And now the destructive bombardment had really begun. The celestial
+downpour increased, the valley below us sent upward the detonations of
+exploding meteorites and the harsh reverberating crash and overthrow of
+glass fabrics. The lights of the city were brokenly extinguished and the
+pitiless hail of ruin continued with increasing fierceness.
+
+"It was an awful, glorious scene. The vault of the sky emptying itself
+in an avalanche of flame, while from within the wide stream of
+projectiles, collisions caused by some accident of deflection originated
+interior spots of sudden blazing light. The irregular and separated
+shocks of sound from the falling city now ran together in a continuous
+roar of dislocated and broken walls, towers, parapets and citadels.
+Coruscations sprang out from the yet heated masses, accumulating on the
+ground, as they became incessantly struck by new accessions. The ground
+trembled with ceaseless fulminations and impingement, the atmosphere
+seemed saturated with sulphurous odors, and the panoramic flow of
+fluctuating splendor shed a day-like brightness upon the upturned faces
+of the startled and stupefied multitude.
+
+"All night long the invasion continued. The area of destruction, exactly
+as the astronomers had defined it, was confined to the long elliptical
+basin in which Scandor lay. Beyond it hardly a branch upon the trees was
+broken, though occasional erratic bombs shot over us and fell miles away
+along the borders of the canals.
+
+"As the morning dawned, the shower discontinued, a few laggards fell in
+scattering confusion over the prostrate city, and the sun climbing the
+eastern sky sent its peaceful reassuring light upon a cairn-like heap of
+desolation. The chilled surface of the fallen meteorites were broken up
+by areas of glowing cinder-like surfaces. The glittering and opaline
+city of glass, the City of Scandor, capital of the Martian world, was
+buried beneath the scorching and stony fragments of a minor comet, or
+some diminished and wandering meteor train which suddenly issuing from
+the unknown depths of space had descended with mathematical precision
+upon the treasure city of the planet.
+
+"The Martian legions remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent. The
+awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their
+spirit, and they looked into each other's faces with bewilderment.
+
+"I had stayed with Alca throughout the night, and I now turning to him
+said:
+
+"'Let us go! What can we do here? Let us walk away for awhile. I am
+dizzy with terror.'
+
+"'Yes,' he answered, and tears seemed filling his eyes, 'we will go. We
+will walk out into the hill and river country beyond the canal. Many are
+wandering over the country now. The farmers will harbor us and the
+beauty of the lanes will bring us cheerfulness.'
+
+"And so we went away, hastening with the Martian velocity of motion
+until as the sun hung in the zenith, we had reached a hillside sloping
+upon a meadow space through which passed the clear but sluggish waters
+of a wide stream. A tulip-like grass was distributed in the heavy
+luxuriant growth of the meadow, which bore upon pendant threads a blue
+bell-like flower. A gentle wind, rising and falling, swept over them,
+lifting and blowing out the cups as it passed off to the surface of the
+water and printed it with plashes of ripples. A piece of wood pushed out
+from the hillside, the trees that formed it struggling out into the
+meadow in a broken succession of individuals like a line of men. Here,
+leaning against the last tree trunk that stood quite alone in advance of
+its companions, was a young woman, her arms folded above the cap--like
+the Grecian cassos--that imperfectly held her hair, and dressed in a
+yellow tunic and the half seen leggings of meshed chalcal thread--a
+lovely picture of meditation.
+
+"I caught Alca's arm in a sudden wave of desire and excitement. It was
+the impulse of love, the first burning of its sacred fire I had known in
+Mars, and it was the intense certainty of recognition that made it so
+impetuous. My Son, your Mother was before me!
+
+"The same glorious beauty I had known on earth covered her, and like a
+mystic light shone from her face and person. I was myself again, young,
+and she was the same. The impelling sense of a superhuman Destiny
+bringing us together again in this new world, forced from me an
+ejaculation of thankfulness. The cry was not loud, but audible to her
+ears, and she turned toward us. Yes! it was Martha, as I knew her in
+those raptured days of love on the banks of the Hudson before disease
+and weakness and age had stolen the bloom from her cheeks, the light
+from her eyes, and the fair presentiment of charm and perfection from
+her body. She did not see me perhaps clearly. Certainly she did not
+recognize me. An instant's scrutiny and her face turned again to the
+open exposure of hill and field, stream and cloud-flecked sky.
+
+"Alca had observed my gestures of delight, and, perhaps reading my
+thoughts by that intuition of mind so wonderful in the Martians, pushed
+me toward her gently and moved away from us toward the brink of the
+river.
+
+"I stood for a moment hesitating, overwhelmed with the marvel of this
+new thing. I stole on, and finally pushing aside the high grown grass,
+was at her side--at the side of the very form and feature of the woman
+who had taught me on earth the worth of living and the meaning and the
+glory of rectitude.
+
+"She was breathing fast, her bosom rising and falling with quick
+respirations, and her cheeks flushed with color, made a delicious foil
+to the pearly tone of her face, concealed on her neck and forehead by
+the escaping tresses of her dark hair.
+
+"I drew back, trembling with anticipation, my heart beating, and my
+clasped hands folded on my breast in an agony of restraint. She was
+talking, talking to herself in the low musical voice of the Martians.
+The wind had ceased, a dark shadow from a crossing cloud moved toward us
+from the river over the blue sprinkled field, a haze stole upward from
+the farther view, and, bending at the margin of the water the figure of
+Alca bathed in light, seemed to watch us like some calm incarnate
+response to my own hopes and prayers.
+
+"'How beautiful, how wonderful it is!' her arms dropped from her head,
+the body bent forward to the earth, she knelt; 'but must it always be as
+it is! Shall not the companion of my days come to this dear place? The
+light of sun and moon and stars seems as it always seemed on Earth, but
+there does not come to me the divine touch of affection, that intimate
+feeling of oneness and self-surrender that was mine with Randolph on the
+Earth. A strength unknown to me before, a power of enjoyment, a motion
+that is ecstacy, thought, feeling, language, all strong, radiant,
+supreme, but yet loneliness! Memory of the things of Earth hardly
+remains, except where love prints its firm expression. Randolph, my
+husband, and Bradford, my boy, to me are deathless. Why can it not be
+that they should be here also? Can the purposes of divine love be
+fulfilled by this separation? Shall all the powers of this new life,
+this beautiful and sinless Nature be wasted for the want of love which
+holds both Nature and the soul in place, in harmony, in adoration of the
+One enduring Thought?
+
+"'How the long years have rolled by since I have left the Earth, and
+how, amid all the pleasurable things of this serene and hopeful life,
+the hidden loneliness has denied it the last completing touch of joy!
+Only as I still dare to believe, that the flight of years must end his
+aging days on Earth, and that the eternal destiny of married souls is an
+eternal union, and that his reincarnation here shall bring us into a new
+and better, richer, deeper harmony of mind and tastes and thoughts; only
+as the belief grows stronger with passing time, can I, so surrounded
+with peace and happiness, in this countryside of quiet work and gentle
+cares, bear longer this awful isolation, the nights of prayerful hope,
+the days of still enduring hope.
+
+"'How beautiful it is to live, to watch the changing seasons in this
+strange new world untouched by sickness or death or sin. And yet,' she
+convulsively clasped her face, 'what beauty, what peace, what
+sinlessness can replace the only life--the Life of Love?
+
+"'And then my boy! Can it be possible that I may see him! Why, now he
+will seem only a brother in this new youth in which I have been born,
+and yet--and yet--the mother feeling is unchanged; the old yearning,
+just as when I left him a boy upon the Earth seems as great as ever.
+
+"'Oh! when shall this waiting all end in our reunion--father, mother,
+son--and all strong and glad in youth and hope?'
+
+"She rose and stretched out her arms toward some phantasy of thought or
+fancy in the air above her, and then a song of recall from a distance
+floated along the meadow and the river's banks, a sweet, joyous,
+beckoning melody, that compelled the ear to listen, and the feet to
+follow.
+
+"Martha half turned--I was dazed with wonder--I did not wish to speak. I
+could not then have revealed myself. It was all too marvellous, too hard
+to comprehend. The old doubts of my reality, of the realness of
+everything I had seen, surged up again, and swept over me in a tide of
+disillusion.
+
+"Was I dreaming; in the death from Earth had I passed into a wild
+phantasmagoria of mental pictures, some endless dream where the lulled
+soul encountered again, as visions, all it may have hoped for, all its
+unconscious cerebration had limned on the interior canvases of the mind,
+to be reviewed, as in a sleep, where every detail met the test of
+curiosity--except that last test--waking? Should I awake?
+
+"I sprang forward and beat myself, in a sort of fury of doubt against
+the trees about me. The resistance was secure and certain. Pain--it
+seemed a kind of bliss, as the guarantee of my flesh and blood
+existence--came to me and in my paroxysms the torn skin of my body bled.
+I looked at the red stains with exultation. I felt the aches of physical
+concussion, with a real rapture.
+
+"This life was real, was dual--body and mind--as on Earth, and the woman
+hastening before me along the marge of the rippling stream--I listened
+in a kind of feverish anticipation of its silence, for the low cadence
+of water passing over pebbles--was Martha! It must be true! What agency
+of superhuman cruelty could thus deceive me? No! my eyes were faithful,
+and the air, thrilling with the distant song, brought nearer to my ears
+the answering call of my wife!
+
+"She was far distant. I ran from tree to tree in the wooded back ground
+and traced her to a little hamlet where a group of Martians awaited her.
+They turned up a narrow lane singing, and I lost them.
+
+"I returned to Alca, pensively standing on the hill we had first
+descended, and said nothing of the strange revelation. I contrived to
+learn from him the name of the little village, and the nature of its
+inhabitants. He called it Nitansi, and said it had been one of the old
+spots where migrating souls from other worlds once entered Mars.
+
+"'A few,' he added, 'come there now, though rarely, and the people
+cultivate flowers in great farms, and formerly sent them to Scandor. I
+think I saw them moving now along the fields at the riverside. We must
+go back. I shall go down the canal to Sinsi. I know the Council of
+Scandor will resolve to rebuild the city.'"
+
+The message closed. I rose and staggered backward into the arms of
+Jobson. A severe hemorrhage ensued, and slowly thereafter the darkening
+doors of life began to close upon me. Disease had won its way against
+all the force of life.
+
+It has been my task during these last weeks of life to write this
+account of these wonderful experiences, and to leave them to the world
+as an assurance--to how many will it give a new delight in living, to
+how many will it remove the bitterness of living, to how many may it
+bring resignation and hope--that the blight of Death is only an incident
+in a continuous renewal of Life.
+
+   (End of Mr. Dodd's MS.)
+
+
+
+
+Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan.
+
+
+Mr. Dodd died January 20, 1895. He never recovered from the severe shock
+caused by hemorrhage, after receiving the second message from his father
+and recorded above. He appreciated the imminence of death acutely, and
+struggled to complete, as he has, the narrative of his life. My daughter
+was not again seen by Mr. Dodd, though he received several letters from
+her, which were found beneath his pillow after his demise.
+
+I was with Mr. Dodd constantly during the latter days of his illness,
+and then promised him that I should secure the publication of his
+remarkable story.
+
+I am not willing to hazard any conjecture as to the more extraordinary
+features of this narrative. I can very positively, however, affirm my
+complete confidence in Mr. Dodd's honesty. I knew both his father and
+himself very well, and through a long intimacy found them both
+consistently conforming to a very high type of character, courage, and
+intellectual integrity.
+
+The MS. of Mr. Dodd was handed to me by himself, and I recall with a
+pathetic interest his smile of appreciative gratitude as I received it,
+and gave him my earnest assurance that it should be printed, and that
+the world would be made acquainted with his experiments and their
+results.
+
+Mr. Dodd was the residuary legatee of his father, and his own will made
+during his last sickness, appointed me as his executor. My daughter was
+made his sole heir, with two exceptions; small amounts in favor of his
+assistants--Jeb Jobson and Andrew Clarke were mentioned in his will--and
+these sums have been paid by myself to each.
+
+A series of extraordinary misfortunes, for which I am myself measurably
+to blame, resulted in the complete disappearance of the fortune
+inherited by my daughter. Her own death and that of my wife, following
+upon this disaster, though in no way connected with it, obliterated--and
+here again I admit a very grievous culpability--the remembrance of the
+MS. of Mr. Dodd and my own promises as to its publication.
+
+I found the MS. of Mr. Dodd carefully wrapped up at the bottom of a
+trunk of papers, and confess that I opened the package it formed with a
+bitter sense of self-reproach. Mr. Dodd had expected to publish this
+paper in New York, and had requested that it should be forwarded to that
+city. I have at last complied with his wishes, and the MS. leaves my
+hands, absolutely unchanged, consigned through the kind intervention of
+a friend, to a publishing house in that western metropolis. I am unable
+to add anything more to this statement, which, in itself, I fear conveys
+considerable censure to the undersigned.
+
+            August Bixby Dodan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Note by the Editor.
+
+The MS. alluded to by Mr. Dodan in the preceding paragraphs was safely
+brought to New York in 1900, and after a very careful examination,
+repeatedly rejected by the prominent publishers to whom it was
+submitted.
+
+Through a peculiar accident connected with some negotiations pertaining
+to a scientific work, contemplated by the writer, the MS. came into his
+hands, and he has been encouraged to publish it, influenced by the
+favorable comments of friends upon its intrinsic interest. He also has
+added to the work as an appendix, which cannot fail to attract the
+attention of many, the views of the great astronomer Schiaparelli upon
+the present physical condition of Mars, being the reproduction of an
+article by that distinguished observer translated from _Nature et Arte_
+for February, 1893, by Prof. William H. Pickering and published in the
+Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution
+for 1894, published here by permission of "Astronomy and Astro-Physics,"
+in which journal it first appeared in Vol. XIII., numbers 8 and 9, for
+October and November, 1894. In this report also appeared Schiaparelli's
+Map of Mars in 1888, which the Editor has not reproduced in this
+connection.
+
+The introduction to-day of the wireless telegraphy, assuming a daily
+increasing importance, furnishes some reasonable hope that the
+marvellous statements given in Mr. Dodd's narrative may be more widely
+verified in the future, and point the way to a realization of the daring
+and thrilling conception of interplanetary communication.
+
+
+
+THE PLANET MARS.
+
+BY GIOVANNI SCHIAPARELLI.
+
+
+
+THE PLANET MARS.
+
+BY GIOVANNI SCHIAPARELLI.
+
+
+Many of the first astronomers who studied Mars with the telescope had
+noted on the outline of its disk two brilliant white spots of rounded
+form and of variable size. In process of time it was observed that while
+the ordinary spots upon Mars were displaced rapidly in consequence of
+its daily rotation, changing in a few hours both their position and
+their perspective, the two white spots remained sensibly motionless at
+their posts. It was concluded rightly from this that they must occupy
+the poles of rotation of the planet, or at least must be found very near
+to them. Consequently they were given the name of polar caps or spots.
+And not without reason is it conjectured that these represent upon Mars
+that immense mass of snow and ice which still to-day prevents navigators
+from reaching the poles of the earth. We are led to this conclusion not
+only by the analogy of aspect and of place, but also by another
+important observation....
+
+As things stand, it is manifest that if the above-mentioned white polar
+spots of Mars represent snow and ice they should continue to decrease in
+size with the approach of summer in those places and increase during the
+winter. Now this very fact is observed in the most evident manner. In
+the second half of the year 1892 the southern polar cap was in full
+view; during that interval, and especially in the months of July and
+August, its rapid diminution from week to week was very evident even to
+those observing with common telescopes. This snow (for we may well call
+it so), which in the beginning reached as far as latitude 70 degrees and
+formed a cap of over 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) in diameter,
+progressively diminished, so that two or three months later little more
+of it remained than an area of perhaps 300 kilometers (180 miles) at the
+most, and still less was seen in the last days of 1892. In these months
+the southern hemisphere of Mars had its summer, the summer solstice
+occurring upon October 13. Correspondingly the mass of snow surrounding
+the northern pole should have increased; but this fact was not
+observable, since that pole was situated in the hemisphere of Mars
+which was opposite to that facing the earth. The melting of the northern
+snow was seen in its turn in the years 1882, 1884 and 1886.
+
+These observations of the alternate increase and decrease of the polar
+snows are easily made even with telescopes of moderate power, but they
+become much more interesting and instructive when we can follow
+assiduously the changes in their more minute particulars, using larger
+instruments. The snowy regions are then seen to be successively notched
+at their edges; black holes and huge fissures are formed in their
+interiors; great isolated pieces many miles in extent stand out from the
+principal mass and, dissolving, disappear a little later. In short, the
+same divisions and movements of these icy fields present themselves to
+us at a glance that occur during the summer of our own arctic regions,
+according to the descriptions of explorers.
+
+The southern snow, however, presents this peculiarity: The center of its
+irregularly rounded figure does not coincide exactly with the pole, but
+is situated at another point, which is nearly always the same, and is
+distant from the pole about 300 kilometers (180 miles) in the direction
+of the Mare Erythraeum. From this we conclude that when the area of the
+snow is reduced to its smallest extent the south pole of Mars is
+uncovered, and therefore, perhaps, the problem of reaching it upon this
+planet is easier than upon the earth. The southern snow is in the midst
+of a huge dark spot, which with its branches occupies nearly one-third
+of the whole surface of Mars, and is supposed to represent its principal
+ocean. Hence the analogy with our arctic and antarctic snows may be said
+to be complete, and especially so with the antarctic one.
+
+The mass of the northern snow cap of Mars is, on the other hand,
+centered almost exactly upon its pole. It is located in a region of
+yellow color, which we are accustomed to consider as representing the
+continent of the planet. From this arises a singular phenomenon which
+has no analogy upon the earth. At the melting of the snows accumulated
+at that pole during the long night of ten months and more the liquid
+mass produced in that operation is diffused around the circumference of
+the snowy region, converting a large zone of surrounding land into a
+temporary sea and filling all the lower regions. This produces a
+gigantic inundation, which has led some observers to suppose the
+existence of another ocean in those parts, but which does not really
+exist in that place, at least as a permanent sea. We see then (the last
+opportunity was in 1884) the white spot of the snow surrounded by a
+dark zone, which follows its perimeter in its progressive diminution,
+upon a circumference ever more and more narrow. The outer part of this
+zone branches out into dark lines, which occupy all the surrounding
+region, and seem to be distributary canals by which the liquid mass may
+return to its natural position. This produces in these regions very
+extensive lakes, such as that designated upon the map by the name of
+Lacus Hyperboreus; the neighboring interior sea called Mare Acidalium
+becomes more black and more conspicuous. And it is to be remembered as a
+very probable thing that the flowing of this melted snow is the cause
+which determines principally the hydrographic state of the planet and
+the variations that are periodically observed in its aspect. Something
+similar would be seen upon the earth if one of our poles came to be
+located suddenly in the center of Asia or of Africa. As things stand at
+present, we may find a miniature image of these conditions in the
+flooding that is observed in our streams at the melting of the Alpine
+snows.
+
+Travellers in the arctic regions have frequent occasion to observe how
+the state of the polar ice at the beginning of the summer, and even at
+the beginning of July, is always very unfavorable to their progress.
+The best season for exploration is in the month of August, and September
+is the month in which the trouble from ice is the least. Thus in
+September our Alps are usually more practicable than at any other
+season. And the reason for it is clear--the melting of the snow requires
+time; a high temperature is not sufficient; it is necessary that it
+should continue, and its effect will be so much the greater, as it is
+the more prolonged. Thus, if we could slow down the course of our season
+so that each month should last sixty days instead of thirty, in the
+summer, in such a lengthened condition, the melting of the ice would
+progress much further, and perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to
+say that the polar cap at the end of the warm season would be entirely
+destroyed. But one cannot doubt, in such a case, that the fixed portion
+of such a cap would be reduced to a much smaller size, than we see it
+to-day. Now, this is exactly what happens to Mars. The long year, nearly
+double our own, permits the ice to accumulate during the polar night of
+ten or twelve months, so as to descend in the form of a continuous layer
+as far as parallel 70 degrees, or even farther. But in the day which
+follows, of twelve or ten months, the sun has time to melt all, or
+nearly all, of the snow of recent formation, reducing it to such a
+small area that it seems to us no more than a very white point. And
+perhaps this snow is entirely destroyed; but of this there is at present
+no satisfactory observation.
+
+Other white spots of a transitory character and of a less regular
+arrangement are formed in the southern hemisphere upon the islands near
+the pole, and also in the opposite hemisphere whitish regions appear at
+times surrounding the north pole and reaching to 50 degrees and 55
+degrees of latitude. They are, perhaps, transitory snows, similar to
+those which are observed in our latitudes. But also in the torrid zone
+of Mars are seen some very small white spots more or less persistent;
+among others one was seen by me in three consecutive oppositions
+(1877-1882) at the point indicated upon our chart by longitude 268
+degrees and latitude 16 degrees north. Perhaps we may be permitted to
+imagine in this place the existence of a mountain capable of supporting
+extensive ice fields. The existence of such a mountain has also been
+suggested by some recent observers upon other grounds.
+
+As has been stated, the polar snows of Mars prove in an incontrovertible
+manner that this planet, like the earth, is surrounded by an atmosphere
+capable of transporting vapor, from one place to another. These snows
+are, in fact, precipitations of vapor, condensed by the cold, and
+carried with it successively. How carried with it if not by atmospheric
+movement? The existence of an atmosphere charged with vapor has been
+confirmed also by spectroscopic observations, principally those of
+Vogel, according to which this atmosphere must be of a composition
+differing little from our own, and above all, very rich in aqueous
+vapor. This is a fact of the highest importance because from it we can
+rightly affirm with much probability that to water and to no other
+liquid is due the seas of Mars and its polar snows. When this conclusion
+is assured beyond all doubt another one may be derived from it of not
+less importance--that the temperature of the Arean climate
+notwithstanding the greater distance of that planet from the sun, is of
+the same order as the temperature of the terrestrial one. Because, if it
+were true, as has been supposed by some investigators, that the
+temperature of Mars was on the average very low (from 50 degrees to 60
+degrees below zero), it would not be possible for water vapor to be an
+important element in the atmosphere of that planet nor could Water be an
+important factor in its physical changes, but would give place to
+carbonic acid, or to some other liquid whose freezing point was much
+lower.
+
+The elements of the meteorology of Mars seem, then, to have a close
+analogy to those of the earth. But there are not lacking, as might be
+expected, causes of dissimilarity. From circumstances of the smallest
+moment nature brings forth an infinite variety in its operations. Of the
+greatest influence must be different arrangement of the seas and the
+continents upon Mars and upon the earth, regarding which a glance at the
+map will say more than would be possible in many words. We have already
+emphasized the fact of the extraordinary periodical flood, which at
+every revolution of Mars inundates the northern polar region at the
+melting of the snow. Let us now add that this inundation is spread out
+to a great distance by means of a network of canals, perhaps
+constituting the principal mechanism (if not the only one) by which
+water (and with it organic life) may be diffused over the arid surface
+of the planet. Because on Mars it rains very rarely, or perhaps even it
+does not rain at all. And this is the proof.
+
+Let us carry ourselves in imagination into celestial space, to a point
+so distant from the earth that we may embrace it all at a single glance.
+He would be greatly in error who had expected to see reproduced there
+upon a great scale the image of our continents with their gulfs and
+islands and with the seas that surround them which are seen upon our
+artificial globes. Then without doubt the known forms or parts of them
+would be seen to appear under a vaporous veil, but a great part (perhaps
+one-half) of the surface would be rendered invisible by the immense
+fields of cloud, continually varying in density, in form, and in extent.
+Such a hindrance, most frequent and continuous in the polar regions,
+would still impede nearly half the time the view of the temperate zones,
+distributing itself in capricious and ever varying configurations. The
+seas of the torrid zone would be seen to be arranged in long parallel
+layers, corresponding to the zone of the equatorial and tropical calms.
+For an observer placed upon the moon the study of our geography would
+not be so simple an undertaking as one might at first imagine.
+
+There is nothing of this sort in Mars. In every climate and under every
+zone its atmosphere is nearly perpetually clear and sufficiently
+transparent to permit one to recognize at any moment whatever the
+contours of the seas and continents, and, more than that, even the minor
+configurations. Not indeed that vapors of a certain degree of opacity
+are lacking, but they offer very little impediment to the study of the
+topography of the planet. Here and there we see appear from time to time
+a few whitish spots, changing their position and their form, rarely
+extending over a very wide area. They frequent by preference a few
+regions, such as the islands of the Mare Australe, and on the continents
+the regions designated on the map with the names of Elysium and Tempe.
+Their brilliancy generally diminishes and disappears at the meridian
+hour of the place, and is re-enforced in the morning and evening with
+very marked variations. It is possible that they may be layers of clouds
+because the upper portions of terrestrial clouds where they are
+illuminated by the sun appear white. But various observations lead us to
+think that we are dealing rather with a thin veil of fog instead of a
+true nimbus cloud, carrying storms and rain. Indeed, it may be merely a
+temporary condensation of vapor under the form of dew or hoar frost.
+
+Accordingly, as far as we may be permitted to argue from the observed
+facts, the climate of Mars must resemble that of a clear day upon a high
+mountain. By day a very strong solar radiation, hardly mitigated at all
+by mist or vapor; by night a copious radiation from the soil toward
+celestial space, and because of that a very marked refrigeration. Hence
+a climate of extremes, and great changes of temperature from day to
+night, and from one season to another. And as on the earth at altitudes
+of 5,000 and 6,000 meters (17,000 to 20,000 feet) the vapor of the
+atmosphere is condensed only into the solid form, producing those
+whitish masses of suspended crystals which we call cirrus clouds, so in
+the atmosphere of Mars it would be rarely possible (or would even be
+impossible) to find collections of cloud capable of producing rain of
+any consequence. The variation of the temperature from one season to
+another would be notably increased by their long duration, and thus we
+can understand the great freezing and melting of the snow which is
+renewed in turn at the poles at each complete revolution of the planet
+around the sun.
+
+As our chart demonstrates, in its general topography Mars does not
+present any analogy with the earth. A third of its surface is occupied
+by the great Mare Australe, which is strewn with many islands, and the
+continents are cut up by gulfs, and ramifications of various forms. To
+the general water system belongs an entire series of small internal
+seas, of which the Hadriacum and the Tyrrhenum communicate with it by
+wide mouths, whilst the Cimmerium, the Sirenum, and the Solis Lacus are
+connected with it only by means of narrow canals. We shall notice in
+the first four a parallel arrangement, which certainly is not
+accidental, as also not without reason is the corresponding position of
+the peninsulas of Ausonia, Hesperia, and Atlantis. The color of the seas
+of Mars is generally brown, mixed with gray, but not always of equal
+intensity in all places, nor is it the same in the same place at all
+times. From an absolute black it may descend to a light-gray or to an
+ash color. Such a diversity of colors may have its origin in various
+causes, and is not without analogy also upon the earth, where it is
+noted that the seas of the warm zone are usually much darker than those
+nearer the pole. The water of the Baltic, for example, has a light,
+muddy color that is not observed in the Mediterranean. And thus in the
+seas of Mars we see the color become darker when the sun approaches
+their zenith, and summer begins to rule in that region.
+
+All of the remainder of the planet, as far as the north pole is occupied
+by the mass of the continents, in which, save in a few areas of
+relatively small extent, an orange color predominates, which sometimes
+reaches a dark red tint, and in others descends to yellow and white. The
+variety in this coloring is in part of meteorological origin, in part it
+may depend on the diverse nature of the soil, but upon its real cause
+it is not as yet possible to frame any very well grounded hypothesis.
+Nevertheless, the cause of this predominance of the red and yellow tints
+upon the surface of ancient Pyrois is well known.[A] Some have thought
+to attribute this coloring to the atmosphere of Mars, through which the
+surface of the planet might be seen colored, as any terrestrial object
+becomes red when seen through red glass. But many facts are opposed to
+this idea, among others that the polar snows appear always of the purest
+white, although the rays of light derived from them traverse twice the
+atmosphere of Mars under great obliquity. We must then conclude that the
+Arean continents appear red and yellow because they are so in fact.
+
+Besides these dark and light regions, which we have described as seas
+and continents, and of whose nature there is at present scarcely left
+any room for doubt, some others exist, truly of small extent, of an
+amphibious nature, which sometimes appear yellowish like the continents,
+and are sometimes clothed in brown (even black in certain cases), and
+assume the appearance of seas, whilst in other cases their color is
+intermediate in tint, and leaves us in doubt to which class of regions
+they may belong. Thus all the islands scattered through the Mare
+Australe and the Mare Erythræum belong to this category; so, too, the
+long peninsula called Deucalionis Regio and Pyrrhae Regio, and in the
+vicinity of the Mare Acidalium the regions designated by the names of
+Baltia and Nerigos. The most natural idea, and the one to which we
+should be led by analogy, is to suppose these regions to represent huge
+swamps, in which the variation in depth of the water produces the
+diversity of colors. Yellow would predominate in those parts where the
+depth of the liquid layer was reduced to little or nothing, and brown,
+more or less dark, in those places where the water was sufficiently deep
+to absorb more light and to render the bottom more or less invisible.
+That the water of the sea, or any other deep and transparent water, seen
+from above, appears more dark the greater the depth of the liquid
+stratum, and that the land in comparison with it appears bright under
+the solar illumination, is known and confirmed by certain physical
+reasons. The traveler in the Alps often has occasion to convince himself
+of it, seeing from the summits the deep lakes with which the region is
+strewn extending under his feet as black as ink, whilst in contrast with
+them even the blackest rocks illumined by the sunlight appeared
+brilliant.[B]
+
+Not without reason, then, have we hitherto attributed to the dark spots
+of Mars the part of seas, and that of continents to the reddish areas
+which occupy nearly two-thirds of all the planet, and we shall find
+later other reasons which confirm this method of reasoning. The
+continents form in the northern hemisphere a nearly continuous mass, the
+only important exception being the great lake called the Mare Acidalium,
+of which the extent may vary according to the time, and which is
+connected in some way with the inundations which we have said were
+produced by the melting of the snow surrounding the north pole. To the
+system of the Mare Acidalium undoubtedly belong the temporary lake
+called Lacus Hyperboreus and the Lacus Niliacus. This last is ordinarily
+separated from the Mare Acidalium by means of an isthmus or regular dam,
+of which the continuity was only seen to be broken once for a short time
+in 1888. Other smaller dark spots are found here and there in the
+continental area which we may designate as lakes, but they are certainly
+not permanent lakes like ours, but are variable in appearance and size
+according to the seasons, to the point of wholly disappearing under
+certain circumstances. Ismenius Lacus, Lunae Lacus, Trivium Charontis,
+and Propontis are the most conspicuous and durable ones. There are also
+smaller ones, such as Lacus Moeris and Fons Juventae, which at their
+maximum size do not exceed 100 to 150 kilometers (60 to 90 miles) in
+diameter, and are among the most difficult objects upon the planet.
+
+All the vast extent of the continents is furrowed upon every side by a
+network of numerous lines or fine stripes of a more or less pronounced
+dark color, whose aspect is very variable. These traverse the planet for
+long distances in regular lines that do not at all resemble the winding
+courses of our streams. Some of the shorter ones do not reach 500
+kilometers (300 miles), others, on the other hand, extend for many
+thousands, occupying a quarter or sometimes even a third of a
+circumference of the planet. Some of these are very easy to see,
+especially that one which is near the extreme left-hand limit of our map
+and is designated by the name of Nilosyrtis. Others in turn are
+extremely difficult, and resemble the finest thread of spider's web
+drawn across the disk. They are subject also to great variations in
+their breadth, which may reach 200 or even 300 kilometers (120 to 180
+miles) for the Nilosyrtis, whilst some are scarcely 30 kilometers (18
+miles) broad.
+
+These lines or stripes are the famous canals of Mars, of which so much
+has been said. As far as we have been able to observe them hitherto,
+they are certainly fixed configurations upon the planet. The Nilosyrtis
+has been seen in that place for nearly one hundred years, and some of
+the others for at least thirty years. Their length and arrangement are
+constant, or vary only between very narrow limits. Each of them always
+begins and ends between the same regions. But their appearance and their
+degree of visibility vary greatly, for all of them, from one opposition
+to another, and even from one week to another, and these variations do
+not take place simultaneously and according to the same laws for all,
+but in most cases happen apparently capriciously, or at least according
+to laws not sufficiently simple for us to be able to unravel. Often one
+or more become indistinct, or even wholly invisible, whilst others in
+their vicinity increase to the point of becoming conspicuous even in
+telescopes of moderate power. The first of our maps shows all those that
+have been seen in a long series of observations. This does not at all
+correspond to the appearance of Mars at any given period, because
+generally only a few are visible at once.[C]
+
+Every canal (for now we shall so call them) opens at its ends either
+into a sea, or into a lake, or into another canal, or else into the
+intersection of several other canals. None of them have yet been seen
+cut off in the middle of the continent, remaining without beginning or
+without end. This fact is of the highest importance. The canals may
+intersect among themselves at all possible angles, but by preference
+they converge toward the small spots to which we have given the name of
+lakes. For example, seven are seen to converge in Lacus Phoenicis,
+eight in Trivium Charontis, six in Lunae Lacus, and six in Ismenius
+Lacus.
+
+The normal appearance of a canal is that of a nearly uniform stripe,
+black, or at least of a dark color, similar to that of the seas, in
+which the regularity of its general course does not exclude small
+variations in its breadth and small sinuosities in its two sides. Often
+it happens that such a dark line opening out upon the sea is enlarged
+into the form of a trumpet, forming a huge bay, similar to the estuaries
+of certain terrestrial streams. The Margaritifer Sinus, the Aonius
+Sinus, the Aurorae Sinus, and the two horns of the Sabæus Sinus are thus
+formed, at the mouths of one or more canals, opening into the Mare
+Erythraeum or into the Mare Australe. The largest example of such a gulf
+is the Syrtis Major, formed by the vast mouth of the Nilosyrtis, so
+called. This gulf is not less than 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) in
+breadth, and attains nearly the same depth in a longitudinal direction.
+Its surface is little less than that of the Bay of Bengal. In this case
+we see clearly the dark surface of the sea continued without apparent
+interruption into that canal. Inasmuch as the surfaces called seas are
+truly a liquid expanse, we cannot doubt that the canals are a simple
+prolongation of them, crossing the yellow areas or continents.
+
+Of the remainder, that the lines called canals are truly great furrows
+or depressions in the surface of the planet, destined for the passage of
+the liquid mass and constituting for it a true hydrographic system, is
+demonstrated by the phenomena which are observed during the melting of
+the northern snows. We have already remarked that at the time of melting
+they appear surrounded by a dark zone, forming a species of temporary
+sea. At that time the canals of the surrounding region become blacker
+and wider, increasing to the point of converting at a certain time all
+of the yellow region comprised between the edge of the snow and the
+parallel of 60 degrees north latitude into numerous islands of small
+extent. Such a state of things does not cease until the snow, reduced to
+its minimum area, ceases to melt. Then the breadth of the canals
+diminishes, the temporary sea disappears, and the yellow region again
+returns to its former area. The different phases of these vast phenomena
+are renewed at each return of the seasons, and we were able to observe
+them in all their particulars very easily during the oppositions of
+1882, 1884, and 1886, when the planet presented its northern pole to
+terrestrial spectators. The most natural and the most simple
+interpretation is that to which we have referred, of a great inundation
+produced by the melting of the snows; it is entirely logical and is
+sustained by evident analogy with terrestrial phenomena. We conclude,
+therefore, that the canals are such in fact and not only in name. The
+network formed by these was probably determined in its origin in the
+geological state of the planet, and has come to be slowly elaborated in
+the course of centuries. It is not necessary to suppose them the work of
+intelligent beings, and, notwithstanding the almost geometrical
+appearance of all of their system, we are now inclined to believe them
+to be produced by the evolution of the planet, just as on the earth we
+have the English Channel and the channel of Mozambique.
+
+It would be a problem not less curious than complicated and difficult to
+study the system of this immense stream of water, upon which perhaps
+depends principally the organic life upon the planet, if organic life is
+found there. The variations of their appearance demonstrated that this
+system is not constant. When they become displaced or their outlines
+become doubtful and ill defined, it is fair to suppose that the water is
+getting low or is even entirely dried up. Then, in place of the canals
+there remains either nothing or at most stripes of yellowish color
+differing little from the surrounding background. Sometimes they take on
+a nebulous appearance, for which at present it is not possible to assign
+a reason. At other times true enlargements are produced, expanding to
+100, 200 or more kilometers (60 to 120 miles) in breadth, and this
+sometimes happens for canals very far from the north pole, according to
+laws which are unknown. This occurred in Hydaspes in 1864, in Simois in
+1879, in Ackeron in 1884, and in Triton in 1888. The diligent and minute
+study of the transformations of each canal may lead later to a knowledge
+of the causes of these effects.
+
+But the most surprising phenomenon pertaining to the canals of Mars is
+their germination, which seems to occur principally in the months which
+precede and in those which follow the great northern inundation--at
+about the times of the equinoxes. In consequence of a rapid process,
+which certainly lasts at most a few days, or even perhaps, only a few
+hours, and of which it has not yet been possible to determine the
+particulars with certainty, a given canal changes its appearance and is
+found transformed through all its length into two lines or uniform
+stripes more or less parallel to one another, and which run straight and
+equal with the exact geometrical precision of the two rails of a
+railroad. But this exact course is the only point of resemblance with
+the rails, because in dimensions there is no comparison possible, as it
+is easy to imagine. These two lines follow very nearly the direction of
+the original canal and end in the place where it ended. One of these is
+often superposed as exactly as possible upon the former line, the other
+being drawn anew; but in this case the original line loses all the small
+irregularities and curvature that it may have originally possessed. But
+it also happens that both the lines may occupy opposite sides of the'
+former canal and be located upon entirely new ground. The distance
+between the two lines differs in different germinations and varies from
+600 kilometers (360 miles) and more down to the smallest limit at which
+two lines may appear separated in large visual telescopes--less than at
+intervals of 50 kilometers (30 miles). The breadth of the stripes
+themselves may range from the limit of visibility, which we may suppose
+to be 30 kilometers (18 miles), up to more than 100 kilometers (60
+miles). The color of the two lines varies from black to a light red,
+which can hardly be distinguished from the general yellow background of
+the continental surface. The space between is for the most part yellow,
+but in many cases appears whitish. The gemination is not necessarily
+confined only to the canals, but tends to be produced also in the
+lakes. Often one of these is seen transformed into two short, broad,
+dark lines parallel to one another and traversed by a yellow line. In
+these cases the gemination is naturally short and does not exceed the
+limits of the original lake.
+
+The gemination is not shown by all at the same time, but when the season
+is at hand it begins to be produced here and there, in an isolated,
+irregular manner, or at least without any easily recognizable order. In
+many canals (such as the Nilosyrtis, for example), the gemination is
+lacking entirely, or is scarcely visible. After having lasted for some
+months, the markings fade out gradually and disappear until another
+season equally favorable for their formation. Thus it happens that in
+certain other seasons (especially near the southern solstice of the
+planet) few are seen, or even none at all. In different oppositions the
+gemination of the same canal may present different appearances as to
+width, intensity, and arrangement of the two stripes; also in some cases
+the direction of the lines may vary, although by the smallest quantity,
+but still deviating by a small amount from the canal with which they are
+directly associated. From this important fact it is immediately
+understood that the gemination cannot be a fixed formation upon the
+surface of Mars and of a geographical character like the canals. The
+second of our maps will give an approximate idea of the appearance which
+these singular formations present. It contains all the geminations
+observed since 1882 up to the present time. In examining it it is
+necessary to bear in mind that not all of these appearances were
+simultaneous, and consequently that the map does not represent the
+condition of Mars at any given period; it is only a sort of
+topographical register of the observations made of this phenomenon at
+different times.[D]
+
+The observation of the gemination is one of the greatest difficulty, and
+can only be made by an eye well practiced in such work, added to a
+telescope of accurate construction and of great power. This explains why
+it is that it was not seen before 1882. In the ten years that have
+transpired since that time, it has been seen and described at eight or
+ten observatories. Nevertheless, some still deny that these phenomena
+are real, and tax with illusion (or even imposture) those who declare
+that they have observed it.
+
+Their singular aspect, and their being drawn with absolute geometrical
+precision, as if they were the work of rule or compass, has led some to
+see in them the work of intelligent beings, inhabitants of the planet. I
+am very careful not to combat this supposition, which includes nothing
+impossible. (Io mi guarderò bene dal combattere questa supposizione, la
+quale nulla include d'impossibile.) But it will be noticed that in any
+case the gemination cannot be a work of permanent character, it being
+certain that in a given instance it may change its appearance and
+dimensions from one season to another. If we should assume such a work,
+a certain variability would not be excluded from it; for example,
+extensive agricultural labor and irrigation upon a large scale. Let us
+add, further, that the intervention of intelligent beings might explain
+the geometrical appearance of the gemination, but it is not at all
+necessary for such a purpose. The geometry of nature is manifested in
+many other facts from which are excluded the idea of any artificial
+labor whatever. The perfect spheroids of the heavenly bodies and the
+ring of Saturn were not constructed in a turning lathe, and not with
+compasses has Iris described within the clouds her beautiful and regular
+arch. And what shall we say of the infinite variety of those exquisite
+and regular polyhedrons in which the world of crystals is so rich? In
+the organic world, also, is not that geometry most wonderful which
+presides over the distribution of the foliage upon certain plants, which
+orders the nearly symmetrical, star-like figures of the flowers of the
+field, as well as of the sea, and which produces in the shell such an
+exquisite conical spiral that excels the most beautiful masterpieces of
+Gothic architecture? In all these objects the geometrical form is the
+simple and necessary consequence of the principles and laws which govern
+the physical and physiological world. That these principles and these
+laws are but an indication of a higher intelligent Power we may admit,
+but this has nothing to do with the present argument.
+
+Having regard, then, for the principle that in the explanation of
+natural phenomena it is universally agreed to begin with the simplest
+suppositions, the first hypotheses of the nature and cause of the
+geminations have for the most part put in operation only the laws of
+inorganic nature. Thus, the gemination is supposed to be due either to
+the effects of light in the atmosphere of Mars, or to optical illusions
+produced by vapors in various manners, or to glacial phenomena of a
+perpetual winter, to which it is known all the planets will be
+condemned, or to double cracks in its surface, or to single cracks of
+which the images are doubled by the effect of smoke issuing in long
+lines and blown laterally by the wind. The examination of these
+ingenious suppositions leads us to conclude that none of them seem to
+correspond entirely with the observed facts, either in whole or in part.
+Some of these hypotheses would not have been proposed had their authors
+been able to examine the geminations with their own eyes. Since some of
+these may ask me directly, "Can you suggest anything better?" I must
+reply candidly, "No."
+
+It would be far more easy if we were willing to introduce the forces
+pertaining to organic nature. Here the field of plausible supposition is
+immense, being capable of making an infinite number of combinations
+capable of satisfying the appearances even with the smallest and
+simplest means. Changes of vegetation over a vast area, and the
+production of animals, also very small, but in enormous multitudes, may
+well be rendered visible at such a distance. An observer placed in the
+moon would be able to see such an appearance at the times in which
+agricultural operations are carried out upon one vast plain--the
+seed-time and the gathering of the harvest. In such a manner also would
+the flowers of the plants of the great steppes of Europe and Asia be
+rendered visible at the distance of Mars--by a variety of coloring. A
+similar system of operations produced in that planet may thus certainly
+be rendered visible to us. But how difficult for the Lunarians and the
+Areans to be able to imagine the true causes of such changes of
+appearance without having first at least some superficial knowledge of
+terrestrial nature! So also for us, who know so little of the physical
+state of Mars, and nothing of its organic world, the great liberty of
+possible supposition renders arbitrary all explanations of this sort and
+constitutes the gravest obstacle to the acquisition of well-founded
+notions. All that we may hope is that with time the uncertainty of the
+problem will gradually diminish, demonstrating if not what the
+geminations are, at least what they cannot be. We may also confide a
+little in what Galileo called "the courtesy of nature," thanks to which
+a ray of light from an unexpected source will sometimes illuminate an
+investigation at first believed inaccessible to our speculations, and of
+which we have a beautiful example in celestial chemistry. Let us
+therefore hope and study.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote A: Pyrois I take to be some terrestrial region, although I
+have not been able to find any translation of the name.--Translator.]
+
+[Footnote B: This observation of the dark color which deep water
+exhibits when seen from above is found already noted by the first author
+of antique memory, for in the Iliad (verses 770-771 of Book V) it is
+described how "the sentinel from the high sentry box extends his glance
+over the wine-colored sea, [Greek: _oinopa phonton_]." In the version of
+Monti the adjective indicating the color is lost.]
+
+[Footnote C: In a footnote the author refers to a drawing of Mars made
+by himself, September 15, 1892, and says, ... "At the top of the disk
+the Mare Erythraeum and the Mare Australe appear divided by a great
+curved peninsula, shaped like a sickle, producing an unusual appearance
+in the area called Deucalionis Regio, which was prolonged that year so
+as to reach the islands of Noachis and Argyre. This region forms with
+them a continuous whole, but with faint traces of separation occurring
+here and there in a length of nearly 6,000 kilometers (4,000 miles). Its
+color, much less brilliant than that of the continents, was a mixture of
+their yellow with the brownish gray of the neighboring seas." The
+interesting feature of this note is the remark that it was an unusual
+appearance, the region referred to being that in which the central
+branch of the fork of the Y appeared. Since no such branch was
+conspicuously visible this year, it would therefore seem from the above
+that it was the opposition of 1892 that was peculiar, and not the
+present one.--Translator.]
+
+[Footnote D: This map may be found also in La Planète Mars, by
+Flammarion, page 44.--Translator.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars
+by L. P. Gratacap
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13289 ***
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+Project Gutenberg's The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars, by L. P. Gratacap
+
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+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+Title: The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars
+
+Author: L. P. Gratacap
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13289]
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FUTURE LIFE IN MARS ***
+
+
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+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charlene Taylor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
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+
+The Certainty
+of a Future
+Life in Mars
+
+
+
+_Being the Posthumous Papers of_
+
+BRADFORD TORREY DODD
+
+EDITED BY
+L.P. GRATACAP
+
+
+BRENTANO'S
+1903
+
+PARIS
+CHICAGO
+WASHINGTON
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE BY EDITOR.
+
+
+The extraordinary character of the story here published, which some
+peculiar circumstances have fortunately, I think, put into my hands,
+will excite a curiosity as vivid as the incidents of the narratives are
+themselves astonishing and unprecedented. To satisfy, as far as I can, a
+few natural inquiries which must be elicited by its publication, I beg
+to explain how this unusual posthumous paper came into my possession.
+
+It was written by Bradford Torrey Dodd, who died at Christ Church, New
+Zealand, January, 1895, after a lingering illness in which consumption
+developed, which was attributed to the exposure he had experienced in
+receiving some of the wireless messages his singular history details. I
+was not acquainted with Mr. Dodd, but some information, acquired since
+the reception of his manuscript, has completely satisfied me, that,
+however interpreted, Mr. Dodd did not intend in it the perpetration of
+a hoax. His scientific ability was undoubtedly remarkable, and the facts
+that his father and himself worked in an astronomical station near
+Christ Church; that his father died; that his acquaintance with the
+Dodans was a reality; that he did receive messages at a wireless
+telegraphic station; that he himself and his assistants fully accredited
+these messages to extra-terrestrial sources, are, beyond a doubt, easily
+verified.
+
+A mutual friend brought me Mr. Dodd's papers, which I looked over with
+increasing amazement, culminating in blank incredulity. On rereading
+them and considering the usefulness of giving them to the public, I have
+been influenced by two motives, the desire to satisfy the fervently
+expressed wish of the writer himself and the reasonable belief that if
+they are preposterously improbable their publication can only furnish a
+new and temporary and quite harmless diversion, and that if Mr. Dodd's
+experiment shall be in some future day successfully repeated his claims
+to distinction as the first to open this marvelous field of
+investigation will have been honorably and invincibly protected.
+
+L.P. GRATACAP.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd
+
+Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan
+
+Note by the Editor
+
+The Planet Mars--By Giovanni Schiaparelli
+
+
+
+POSTHUMOUS PAPERS
+
+OF
+
+BRADFORD TORREY DODD.
+
+
+
+
+THE CERTAINTY
+
+OF
+
+A FUTURE LIFE IN MARS.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+In the confusion of thought about a future life, the peculiar facts
+related in the following pages can certainly be regarded as helpful.
+Spiritualism, with its morbid tendencies, its infatuation and deceit,
+has not been of any substantial value in this inquiry. It may afford to
+those who have experienced any positive visitation from another world a
+very comforting and indisputable proof. To most sane people it is a
+humiliating and ludicrous vagary.
+
+At the conclusion of a life spent rather diligently in study, and in
+association especially with astronomical practice and physical
+experiments, I have, in view of certain hitherto unpublished facts,
+decided to make public almost incontrovertible evidence that in the
+planet Mars the continuation of our present life, in some instances, has
+been discovered by myself. I will not dwell on the astonishment I have
+felt over these discoveries, nor attempt to describe that felicity of
+conviction which I now enjoy over the prospect of a life in another
+world.
+
+My father was the fortunate possessor of a large fortune, which freed
+him of all anxieties about any material cares, and left him to pursue
+the bent of his inclination. He became greatly interested in physical
+science, and was also a patron of the liberal arts. His home was stored
+with the most beautiful products of the manufacturer's skill in fictile
+arts, and on its walls hung the most approved examples of the painter's
+skill. The looms of Holland and France and England furnished him with
+their delicate and sumptuous tapestries, and the Orient covered his
+floors with the richest and most prized carpets of Daghestan and
+Trebizond, and of Bokhara.
+
+But even more marked than his love for art was his passion for physical
+science. His opportunities for the indulgence of this taste were
+unlimited, and the reinforcement of his natural aptitude by his great
+means enabled him to carry on experiments upon a scale of the most
+magnificent proportions. These experiments were made in a large
+building which was especially built for this object. It contained every
+facility for his various new designs, and in it he anticipated many
+advances in electrical science and in mechanical devices, which have
+made the civilization of our day so remarkable. I recall distinctly as a
+boy his ingenious approximation to the telephone, and even the recent
+advances in wireless telegraphy, which has been the instrumentality by
+which my own researches in the field of interplanetary telegraphy have
+been prosecuted, had been realized by himself.
+
+It was in the midst of a life almost ideally happy that the blow fell
+which drove him and myself, then a boy and his only child, into a
+retirement which resulted in the discoveries I am about to relate. My
+father's devotion to my mother was an illustration of the most beautiful
+and tender love that a man can bear toward a woman. It was adoration.
+Though his mind was employed upon the abstruse questions of physics
+which he investigated, or edified by new acquisitions in art, all his
+knowledge and all his pleasure seemed but the means by which he
+endeavored to gain her deeper affection. She indeed became his companion
+in science, and her own just and well regulated taste constantly
+furnished him new motives for adding to his wide accumulations of art.
+
+I can recall with some difficulty the day when with my father in a room
+immediately below the bedroom in which my mother was confined he awaited
+the summons of the doctors to see his wife for the last time. It was a
+rainy day, the clouds were drifting across a dull November sky. Through
+an opening in the trees then leafless, the Hudson was visible, even then
+flaked with ice, while an early snow covered the sloping lawn and
+whitened the broad-limbed oaks. I remember indistinctly his leading me
+by the hand through the hallway up the stairs, and softly whispering to
+me to be quite still, entered the large room dimly lit where my mother,
+attended by a nurse and a doctor, lay on the white bed. I remember being
+kissed by her and then being led from the room by the nurse. My father
+doubtless lingered until all was over, and the dear associate of his
+life, whose tenderness and charity had made all who approached her
+grateful, whose genial and appreciative mind had supplied the stimulus
+of recognition he needed for his own studies, passed away. After that I
+seemed dimly to recall a period of extreme loneliness when I was left in
+charge of a private instructor, while my father, as I later learned,
+bewildered by his great loss, and temporarily driven into a sort of
+madness, wandered in an aimless track of travel over the United States.
+
+On his return the sharp recurrence to the scenes of his former happiness
+renewed the bitterness of his spirit, and he reluctantly concluded to
+abandon his home. His own thoughts had not as yet clearly formed any
+decision in his mind as to where he would go or what he would do. It was
+inevitable, however, that he should revert to his scientific
+investigations. He found in them a new solace and distraction, but even
+then his passion for research would not have sufficed to adequately meet
+his desperate desire to escape his grief, if in a rather singular manner
+there had not come to him an intimation of the possibilities of some
+sort of communication with my mother through these very investigations
+in electricity and magnetism in which he had been engaged.
+
+I had become quite inseparable from him. He found in me many suggestions
+in face and manner of my mother, and particularly he was interested in
+my peculiar lapses into meditation and introspection which in many ways
+suggested to him a similar habit in her. On one occasion when, as was
+his wont, before we finally left the old home at Irvington, he had taken
+me in the summer evenings to the top of the observatory, then situated
+about half a mile west of the Albany road, we had both been silently
+watching the sun sink into a bank of golden haze, and the black band of
+the Palisades passing underneath like a velvet zone of shadow, I turned
+to my father and in a sudden access of curiosity said:
+
+"Father, if mother had gone to the Sun, would she speak to us now with a
+ray of light?"
+
+My father smiled patiently, half amused, and then standing and looking
+at the sun's disk, disappearing behind the Jersey hills, said, "My son,
+it was a curious thought of a well-known French writer, Figuer, who lost
+his son, who was very dear to him, that his soul with armies and hosts
+of other souls, had departed to the sun and that they made the light and
+heat of this great luminary, and this wise man felt some comfort in the
+thought that the heat and light of the sun as he felt himself bathed in
+radiance and warmth were emanations from his boy, and his eyes and body
+seemed then in a figurative, and yet to him, very real way,
+communicating with his boy. You smile. I know it is with interest. Let
+me read to you from Figuer's singular book what he has written about
+it."
+
+He disappeared and left me also standing and looking upward at a faint
+wreath of cloud, tinged in rosiness, which floated almost in the
+zenith. I was then about eleven years old, precocious for my years and
+gifted with a sympathy for occult and difficult subjects that became
+only intensified through the peculiar concentrated companionship I had
+from day to day, and month to month enjoyed with my father.
+
+This narrative may be inadvertently classed with those ephemeral
+fictions in which the reader is constantly conscious that the dialogue
+and the incidents are veritable creations. It may here be asked how
+could I recall with any literalness the conversations and events of a
+time so long past. I do not pretend or wish it to be thought that these
+interviews with my father are here literally related. That, of course,
+is beyond the limits of reasonable probability. But I do insist that in
+the following pages the occurrences described are very faithful
+transcripts of those connected with the peculiar inquiry and experiments
+my father and myself began, and brought to a startling conclusion.
+Although conducted in the form of an imaginative story the reader is
+importuned to give them his most implicit credence.
+
+My father soon returned with the small volume of Figuer and read, I
+imagine, that passage which runs as follows in Chapter XIII:
+
+"Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe; since it is, as
+we have shown, the origin of life, of feeling, of thought; since it is
+the determining cause of all organized life on the earth--why may we not
+declare that the rays transmitted by the sun to the earth and the other
+planets are nothing more or less than the emanations of these souls?
+that these are the emissions of pure spirits living in the radiant star
+that come to us, and to dwellers in the other planets, under the visible
+form of rays?
+
+"If this hypothesis be accepted, what magnificent, what sublime
+relations may we not catch a glimpse of, between the sun and the globes
+that roll around him; between the Sun and the planets there would be a
+continual exchange, a never broken circle, an unending 'come and go' of
+beamy emissions, which would engender and nourish in the solar world
+motion and activity, thought and feeling, and keep burning everywhere
+the torch of life.
+
+"See the emanations of souls that dwell in the Sun descending upon the
+earth in the shape of solar rays. Light gives life to plants, and
+produces vegetable life, to which sensibility belongs. Plants having
+received from the Sun the germ of sensibility transmit it to animals,
+always with the help of the Sun's heat. See the soul germs enfolded in
+animals develop, improve little by little, from one animal to another,
+and at last become incarnated in a human body. See, a little later, the
+superhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains of
+ether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that will gradually
+lead him to the highest round of the ladder of spiritual growth, where
+all material substance has been eliminated, and where the time has come
+for the soul thus exalted, and with essence purified to the utmost, to
+enter the supreme home of bliss and intellectual and moral power; that
+is the Sun.
+
+"Such would be the endless circle, the unbroken chain, that would bind
+together all the beings of Nature, and extend from the visible to the
+invisible world."
+
+From that moment, moved more and more by the strangeness of the fancy,
+which evidently fascinated him, he buried himself in the indulgence of
+the thought of the possibility of some sort of communication with his
+wife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to the
+fruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliating
+intercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men and
+women almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated in thought
+with themselves.
+
+In 1881 electrical science had well advanced toward those perfected
+triumphs which give distinction to this century. Electric lighting was
+well understood, the Jablochkoff and Jamin lamps were then in use, the
+incandescent and Maxim light, or arc light were employed, and indeed the
+panic caused by Edison's premature announcement of the solution of the
+incandescent system of lighting had then preceded by two years, the
+excellent results of Mr. Swan in England in the same field. Edison's
+first carbon light and his original phonograph were exhibited toward the
+end of 1880 in the Patent Museum at South Kensington.
+
+The daily News of New York in April of 1881 published the victory of the
+Edison Electric Lighting Company over the Mayor's veto in words that may
+be read to-day with considerable interest. It said "the company will
+proceed immediately to introduce its new electric lamps in the offices
+in the business portion of the city around Wall Street. It consists of a
+small bulbous glass globe, four inches long, and an inch and a half in
+diameter, with a carbon loop which becomes incandescent when the
+electric current passes through. Each lamp is of sixteen candle power
+with no perceptible variation in intensity. The light is turned on or
+off with a thumb screw. Wires have already been put into forty
+buildings."
+
+My father had anticipated the incandescent light in its fuller later
+development and had used, before it was announced by Prof. Avenarius of
+Austria, a method of dividing the electric current, by the insertion of
+a polariser in a secondary circuit connected with each lamp, a method,
+it need not be said to electricians, now utterly obsolete.
+
+The rooms of our physical laboratory at Irvington were almost all lit by
+electric lamps constructed somewhat on the principle of Edison's, but
+using platinum wires, and the old residents of that village may recall
+the singular, lonely house half hidden in broad sycamores, sending out
+its electric radiance late at night while my father and frequently
+myself, then a boy of thirteen years, worked at experimental problems in
+physics.
+
+My father gave my precocity for science a very successful impetus and
+left me at his death fully in possession of the ideas and projects he
+cherished. Amongst these projects, one partially realized, was the
+acceleration of plant growth by means of electric light, and heating by
+electricity.
+
+Dr. Siemens of England, it may be recalled, had very ingeniously
+experimented upon the influence of the electric light upon vegetation.
+In a paper read by that distinguished man before the Society of
+Telegraph Engineers in June, 1880, he referred to his conclusion that
+"electric light produces the coloring matter, chlorophyll, in the leaves
+of plants, that it aids their growth, counteracts the effects of night
+frosts, and promotes the setting and ripening of fruit in the open air."
+
+I find in an old note book of my father's, dated 1879, "chlorophyllous
+matter in leaves encouraged by electric energy, presumably by the blue
+rays." In heating and cooking by electricity my father had made some
+progress though he had not in 1880 employed his time in this direction.
+
+Perhaps more remarkable than anything else presenting my father's great
+scientific ingenuity was his improvements of the dynamo and the
+invention of a new successful small traction engine.
+
+In 1880 the complete distinction between alternating and direct currents
+had not been made, and the device of a successful converter, for the
+change of the former comparatively inert to the latter's dynamic
+condition, only dreamed of. Yet in my father's notebook I find this
+suggestive sentence: "It seems possible to devise an apparatus which
+would deliver from an alternating circuit a direct current to a direct
+current circuit."
+
+I have dwelt somewhat upon my father's scientific acquirements and
+genius in order to impress upon the reader the strictly legitimate
+training I received in scientific procedure, and I have instanced
+somewhat the status of his scientific development in 1880, because it
+was at that time that he concluded to leave Irvington and locate his
+laboratory and observatory elsewhere. And for the sake of his
+astronomical interests he determined to find some place peculiarly well
+fitted, on account of its atmospheric advantages, for astronomical
+observations. It is necessary likewise to recall some of the facts then
+known to astronomers and my father's own theories, in order to weave
+into a logical sequence the incidents leading up to my positive
+demonstration of a future life for some of our race in the planet Mars.
+
+Astronomy had a great charm for my mother. Her enthusiasm was soon
+communicated to my father who found his wealth was a requisite in
+establishing the observatory he had erected at Irvington and in its
+equipment. Telescopes are expensive playthings.
+
+The Lick Observatory was begun in 1880 and my father through
+correspondence with the directors of the University of California had
+learned many of the details pertaining to this great project. Influenced
+by the splendid prospects of this undertaking my father determined if
+possible to surpass it. He wrote to Fiel of Paris and expected to be
+able to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of the
+Lick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterly
+abortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leaving
+Irvington examining the various possible locations for his new
+observatory. The requisites were nearness to the equator, an equable
+climate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During this year my father
+heard that Prof. Hertz of Berlin had generated waves of magnetism and
+that it was hoped that these might ultimately prove efficacious as a
+means of direct communication between distant points without the
+introduction of wire conductors.
+
+This thought of communicating with distant points without fixed
+conductors greatly impressed my father and led him along a line of
+speculation upon which finally rested my own success in securing the
+messages detailed in this book from the planet Mars.
+
+I recall that one evening in the winter of 1881 while he was yet engaged
+in making preparations for his departure from the United States to New
+Zealand, which he finally chose for the erection of his laboratories,
+and especially his observatory, I heard him read with the greatest
+satisfaction of the attempt made in the siege of Paris to bring the
+besieged French into telegraphic communication with the Provinces by
+means of the River Seine.
+
+It was proposed to send powerful currents into the River Seine from
+batteries near the German lines and to receive in Paris upon delicate
+galvanometers, such an amount of their current as had not leaked away in
+the earth. Profs. Desains, Jamin, and Berthelot were interested in these
+experiments, although the suggestion had been made by M. Bourbouze, and
+after some interruptions when the attempt was to be carried out, the
+armistice of Jan. 14, 1871, brought their preparations to a close.
+
+How often my father spoke of these attempts, and half smilingly on one
+occasion as we watched the starry skies "thick inlaid with patterns of
+bright gold" said to me: "It seems to me within the reach of possibility
+to attain some sort of connection with these shining hosts. If we must
+assume that the disturbances on the Sun's surface effect magnetic storms
+on ours, it is quite evident that a fluid of translatory power or
+consistency exists between the earth and the sun, then also between all
+the planetary inhabitants of space, and I cannot see why we may not hope
+some day to realize a means of communication with these distant bodies.
+How inspiring is the thought that in some such way upon the basis of an
+absolutely perfect scientific deduction we might be brought into
+conversational alliance with these singular and orderly creations, and
+actually look upon their scenes and lives and history, and bring to
+ourselves in verbal pictures a presentation of their marvellous
+properties."
+
+I think it was on this occasion that my father expressed his thought
+upon some form of interplanetary telegraphy in a manner that left it in
+my own mind a very impressive and majestic idea. He had read at some
+length the address of Sir William Armstrong before the British
+Association in 1863, when that distinguished observer speaks of the
+sympathy between forces operating in the sun, and magnetic forces in the
+earth and remarks the phenomenon seen by independent observers in
+September, 1859. The passage, easily verified by the reader, was to this
+effect:
+
+"A sudden outburst of light, far exceeding the brightness of the sun's
+surface was seen to take place, and sweep like a drifting cloud over a
+portion of the solar surface. This was attended by magnetic disturbances
+of unusual intensity and with exhibitions of aurora of extraordinary
+brilliancy. The identical instant at which the effusion of light was
+observed was recorded by an abrupt and strongly marked deflection in the
+self-registering instruments at Kew."
+
+My father then pausing and walking impetuously across the room
+declaimed, as it were, his views:
+
+"Here we are, a group of limited intelligent beings circumscribed by a
+boundless space, and placed upon a speck of matter which is whirled
+around the sun in an endless captivity, bound by this inexorable law of
+gravitation, like a stone in a sling. About us in this ethereal ocean
+floats a host of similarly made orbs, perhaps, in thousands of cases,
+inhabited by beings throbbing with the same curiosity as our own to
+reach out beyond their sphere, and learn something of the nature of the
+animated universe which they may dimly suspect lies about them in the
+other stars. Why must it not be part of this immeasurable design which
+brought us here, that we shall some day become part of a celestial
+symposium; that lines of communication, invisible but incessant, shall
+thread in labyrinths of invisible currents these dark abysses, and bring
+us in inspiring touch with the marvels and contents of the entire
+universe."
+
+He turned to me and gazing intently at my upturned face which I am sure
+reflected his own in its enthusiasm and delight, continued: "You, my
+son, and I, will put this before us as a possible achievement and work
+incessantly for that end. Prof. Hertz has generated these magnetic
+waves; we will; and by means of some sort of a receiver endeavor to find
+out a clue to _wireless telegraphy_." These closing remarkable words
+were actually used by my father, and in view of the marvellous
+realization of Marconi's hopes in that direction, as well as my own
+stupendous success in reaching the inhabitants of Mars, was a distinct
+prophecy.
+
+It was a few months later that my father completed all of his
+arrangements in regard to the disposition of his investments, and
+perfected the necessary arrangements for being constantly supplied with
+funds by his bankers in New York. He also had agreed upon the apparatus
+to be forwarded, expecting to be largely supplied at Sydney in new South
+Wales, as it was from this point he intended to sail or steam to New
+Zealand. Much of the equipment for his observatory was to come from
+Paris, and he relied upon intelligent assistance both in Sydney and
+Christ Church, in New Zealand, for the erection and furnishment of his
+various houses.
+
+He finally concluded to place his station on Mount Cook at an elevation
+of 1,000 feet upon a well protected plateau, which was described to him
+by a Mr. Ashton who had extensive acquaintance and some five years'
+experience in New Zealand. We found this position ideal, and in the
+perfection of all the conditions necessary for our experiments possessed
+by it, made the realization at that time utterly unsuspected by either
+of us, of our final designs, commensurately more simple.
+
+I left New York with my father filled with a curious expectancy. I
+seemed to cherish no regret at leaving my childhood's home. I only felt
+a vague wondering delight to go abroad and see strange and new things.
+My seclusion with my father had developed in me a singular inaptitude
+for companionship with boys of my own age, and furthermore from the
+influence of his rather poetic and dreaming nature, I began to show a
+half wistful intensity of interest in things occult, mysterious and
+difficult. We left New York in 1882, and it was then that I read for
+diversion in my long ride to California, Colonel Olcutt's Esoteric
+Buddhism.
+
+The whole central fancy of reincarnation affected me deeply. But I
+modified the idea as displayed by Blavatsky and Theosophists generally.
+From a long familiarity with the stars, in conjunction with the
+inevitable creative and anthropomorphic sensibility of youth, I began to
+think that this reincarnation did not occur on the earth, but had its
+stages of transmutation placed elsewhere. In short, I amused myself
+incessantly with placing the poets in one star, the novelists in
+another, the scientists in a third, the mechanicians in a fourth, and in
+each I imagined a Utopia. A very little mature thought and the most
+ordinary observation of plain men, men who at 20 have far more practical
+sense than I possess to-day, would have demonstrated the hopelessness of
+this arrangement, and the deplorable social chaos it would have led to.
+
+I think, however, that along this line of feeling I grew more and more
+in sympathy with my father's dimly expressed hopes to achieve something
+tangible in the way of interstellar or planetary communication. So that
+gradually he, by reason of a desire that slowly invaded every emotional
+recess of his being, and I, through the vagaries of an imaginative mind
+reached successively an intense conviction that we should work in this
+direction.
+
+There was much in our scientific work also that encouraged a certain
+high mindedness and liberty of speculation, a careless audacity before
+the most difficult tasks. The resolution of matter into a phase of
+energy, the interpretation of light as an electric phenomenon, the
+mysteries of the electric force itself, the peculiar hypotheses about
+the force of gravitation, lead men, studying these subjects, and endowed
+with speculative tendencies to conceive, moved also by a quasi
+sensational desire to reach new results, that the most extravagant
+achievements are possible to science.
+
+With us, regarding the physical universe as a unit, recognizing the
+notes of intelligence of a deep coercive and comprehensive plan involved
+throughout, feeling that our human intelligence was the reflex or
+microcosmic representation of the planning, upholding mind, that if so,
+no conceivable limitation could be placed upon its expansion and
+conquests, that further it would be incomprehensible that the colonizing
+(so to speak) of the central mind occurred only on one sphere, when it
+doubtless might be embodied in other beings, on hundreds or thousands or
+millions of other spheres; that continuance of life after death was a
+truth; feeling all this, their concomitant influence was to make us
+positive that the human mind in an intelligent, satisfactory,
+self-illuminating way some day would reach mind everywhere in all its
+specific forms; and that the abyss of space would eventually thrill with
+the vibrations of conscious communion between remote worlds.
+
+With feelings of this sort excited and reinforced by my father's
+passionate hope to learn something of his wife's life after death we
+reached Christ Church, New Zealand, in June, 1883.
+
+I may now revert to the line of suggestions that led my father and
+myself to locate in Mars the scene, at least, as we surmised in part, of
+those phases of a future life which I am now able to reveal with, I
+think, positive certainty.
+
+The planet Mars as being the next orb removed from the Sun after our own
+world in the advance outward from our solar center, has always attracted
+attention. At perihelion, when in opposition with the earth, it is 35
+millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known from
+the drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli,
+Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation of
+land and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions,
+such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of its
+occupation by rational beings as altogether possible.
+
+During the opposition of Mars in 1879-80, Prof. Schiaparelli at Milan
+determined for the second time the topography of this planet. The
+topography revealed the curious long lines or ribbons, commonly called
+canals, which seamed the face of our neighboring planet. In 1882 this
+observation was enormously extended. He then showed that there was a
+variable brightness in some regions, that there had been a progressive
+enlargement since 1879 of his _Syrtis Magna_, that the oblique white
+streaks previously seen, continued, and, more remarkable, that there was
+a continuous development day after day of the doubling of the canals
+which seemed to extend along great circles of the sphere. In 1882
+Schiaparelli expected at the evening opposition in 1884 to confirm and
+add to these observations.
+
+My father had read Schiaparelli's announcements with absorbed interest.
+They fed his burning fancies as to the extension of our present life,
+and offered him a sort of scientific basis (without which he was
+inclined to view all eschatology as superficial) for the belief that we
+may attain in some other planet an actual prolonged second existence.
+
+His great reverence for Sir William Herschell was indisputable. He
+quoted Herschell's own words with appreciation. These pregnant sentences
+were as follows:
+
+"The analogy between Mars and the earth is perhaps by far the greatest
+in the whole solar system. Their diurnal motion is nearly the same, the
+obliquity of their respective ecliptics not very different; of all the
+superior planets the distance of Mars from the sun is by far the
+nearest, alike to that of the earth; nor will the length of the Martial
+year appear very different from what we enjoy when compared to the
+surprising duration of the years of Jupiter, Saturn and the Georgian
+Sidus. If we then find that the globe we inhabit has its polar region
+frozen and covered with mountains of ice and snow, that only partially
+melt when alternately exposed to the sun, I may well be permitted to
+surmise that the same causes may probably have the same effect on the
+globe of Mars; that the bright polar spots are owing to the vivid
+reflection of light from frozen regions; and that the reduction of these
+spots is to be ascribed to their being exposed to the sun."
+
+"In the light of these larger analogies," my father would continue, "why
+are we not further permitted to conclude that there is a more intimate
+and minute correlation. Why can not we predicate that under similar
+climatic and atmospheric vicissitudes, with a very probably similar or
+identical origin with our globe, this planet Mars, now burning red in
+the evening skies, possesses life, an organic retinue of forms like our
+own, or at least involving such primary principles as respiration,
+assimilation and productiveness, as would produce some biological
+aspects not extremely differing from those seen in our own sphere.
+
+"If we imagine, as we are most rationally allowed to, that Mars has
+undergone a progressive secularization in cooling, that contraction has
+acted upon its surface as it has on ours, that water has accumulated in
+basins and depressed troughs, that atmospheric currents have been
+started, that meteorological changes in consequence have followed, and
+that the range of physical conditions embraces phases naturally very
+much like those that have prevailed in our planet, how can it be
+intelligently questioned that from these very identical circumstances,
+an order of life has not in some way arisen."
+
+My father had an interesting habit of snapping his fingers on both hands
+together over his head when he declaimed in this way, always circling
+about the room in a rapid stride. I remember he stopped in front of me
+and continued in a strain something like this:
+
+"For myself I am convinced that there has been an evolution in the order
+of beings from one planet to another, that there is going on a stream of
+transference, from one plane of life here to planes elsewhere, and that
+the stream is pouring in as well as out of this world, and that it may
+be, in our case, pouring both ways, that is, we may be losing
+individuals into lower grades of life as well as emitting them to
+higher. See, what economy!
+
+"Instead of wasting the energies of imagination to account for the
+destinations of millions upon millions of human beings, the countless
+host that has occupied the surfaces of this earth through all the
+historic and prehistoric ages, we can, upon this assumption, reduce the
+number of individuals immensely, allowing that spirits are constantly
+arriving, constantly departing, and that the sum total in the solar
+system remains perhaps nearly fixed, just as in the electrolysis of
+water we have hydrogen rising at one electrode and oxygen at the other
+by transmission of atoms of hydrogen and atoms of oxygen toward each
+electrode through the water itself, in opposite directions, while for a
+sensible time the mass of water remains unchanged.
+
+"Let us suppose that in Mercury some form of mental life exists, that it
+is individualized, that it expresses the physical constants of that
+globe, that its mentality has reached the point where it can make use of
+the resources of Mercury, can respond to its physical constants so far
+as they awaken poetry or art or religion or science. Suppose that this
+life is one of extreme forcefulness, of stress and storm, like some
+prehistoric condition on our globe, but invested with more intellectual
+attributes than the same ages on our earth required or possessed,
+perhaps reaching a permanent condition not unlike that depicted in the
+Niebelungen Lied or the Sagas of the North. It might be called the
+_brawn_ period. Then the spirits born upon our planet or on any other
+planet in an identical condition, would find after death their
+destination in Mercury, where they could evolve up to the point where
+they might return to as, or to some other planet fitted for a higher
+life.
+
+"Then Venus, we may imagine, succeeding Mercury, carries a higher type,
+an emotional life, though of course I am not influenced by her
+accidental name, in suggesting it. Here in Venus, a period perchance
+resembling a mixture of the pagan Grecian life and the troubadour life
+of Provence may prevail and again to it have flown the spirits which in
+our planet only touch that development, which from Venus flow to us,
+those adapted for the religious or intellectual phase we present. This
+Venus life might be called the _sense_ period.
+
+"And now our world follows, with its scientific life which probably
+represents its normal limit. Beyond this it will not go. As we have
+developed through a _brawn_ and _sense_ period to our present stage, so
+in Mercury and Venus, ages have prevailed of development which
+eventuated in their final fixed stages at brawn and sense. In Venus,
+too, the brawn stage preceded the sense period. In us both have preceded
+the scientific stage. There has been, may we not think, constant
+interchanges between these planets of such lives as survive material
+dissolution, and they have found the _nidus_ that fits them in each.
+Souls leaving us in a brawn _epoch_ have fled to Mercury, souls leaving
+us in a _sense_ epoch have fled to Venus, and all souls in Mercury or
+Venus, ready for reincarnation in a _scientific_ epoch, have come to us.
+
+"But there is an important postulate underlying this theory. It is, that
+upon each planet the possibilities of development just attain to the
+margin of the next higher step in mental evolution. That is, that on
+Mercury the period of brawn develops to the possibility of the period of
+sense without fully exemplifying it, so in Venus the period of sense
+develops to the possibility of the period of science without attaining
+it, and in our world the period of science develops to the period of
+_spirit_, without, in any universal way, exhibiting it.
+
+"These are steps progressively represented, I may imagine, in the
+planets. And, in the further progress outward, we reach the planet Mars.
+Let us place here the period of spirit. On Mars is accomplished in
+society, and accompanied by an accomplishment in its physical features,
+also, of those ideals of living which the great and good unceasingly
+labor to secure for us here and unceasingly fail to secure. O my child,
+if we could learn somehow to get tidings from that distant sphere, if
+only the viewless abyss of space between our world and Mars might be
+bridged by the _noiseless and unseen waves of a magnetic current_."
+
+We reached Christ Church in June, in 1883, and for one year were most
+busy in completing the station we had selected, in receiving apparatus,
+getting our observatory built and a useful, but not large telescope
+mounted.
+
+The position taken by us was attractive. It was upon a high hill, a
+glacial mound which had been smoothed upon its upper surface into a long
+and broad plain. The prospects from this position were exceedingly
+beautiful. Christ Church was some ten miles distant and the irregular
+shores northward outlined by ribbons of breaking waves lay upon the
+seaward margin of our vision, while the broken intermediate landscape,
+with interrupted agricultural domains and forests was in front of us and
+far above us rose the grander peaks of the New Zealand Alps, a constant
+charm through the changing atmosphere, now brought near to us through
+the optical refraction of the clear air, and again veiled and shadowed
+and removed into spectral evanescent forms. The picture was intensely
+interesting and like all commanding views where the most expressive
+elements of scenery are combined, the remote sea, reflecting every mood
+of light and color, and the snowy peaks carrying to us the opaline
+glories of rising or setting sun was a comparison that stimulated and
+controlled the spectator with its wonderful charm and strength and
+poetic changes.
+
+To me whose emotional nature, inherited from a mother gifted with
+delicate tastes and a refined enthusiasm for the beautiful had been
+curiously discouraged by association with my father's scientific
+pursuits, this lively panorama constantly fed my dreams with pleasing
+pictures.
+
+My life has been an isolated and repressed one, except for the one
+incident I am about to bequeath to posterity. I had not enjoyed the play
+of youthful companions except in a fugitive way, I had not gone to
+school nor passed three years of muscular and buoyant activity in the
+usual pastimes and pleasures of childhood. I had a precocious nature and
+it had been unfolded in an atmosphere of strictly intellectual ideas. My
+mother had been a constant joy to me during the short years of her life
+on earth, but somehow by reason of sickness I had not enjoyed even her
+endearment as I might have.
+
+So in my father and his aspirations, and the later hopes of his excited
+and passionate longing to regain some trace of my mother, my life from
+four years of age was actually and potentially concentrated. My father
+cherished me with a great consuming love. He saw in me the
+representation in face and partially in temperament of his wife. He
+lavished on me every care. Yet because of his eager affection, and his
+complete suspense from social connections I was made too largely
+dependent on him alone. I lived in his companionship only. My
+conversation became prematurely advanced in terms and principles, and my
+childish confidence was nurtured by nothing less wonderful than books
+and theories, experiments and dissertations.
+
+The wonderful beauty of our new surroundings, the strangeness of our
+sudden removal from America, the long distances travelled, awoke in me
+new thoughts and I readily surrendered myself at times to the incoherent
+struggles of my nature, to find someone, something, more responsive to
+my young feelings than essays on magnetism, and a man, father though he
+was, immersed in demonstrations and problems. It was then that this
+distant picture in the days of the fragrant and reviving springtime,
+filled me with unutterable and touching ecstacy.
+
+My father, as I had said, fully intended to arrive at some definite
+conclusions as to the possibilities of wireless telegraphy. At one end
+of the grassy plain I have alluded to, our chief stations were erected
+and, at the distance of two miles, almost at the other extremity, we
+placed a smaller station. Our whole work was to achieve telegraphic
+communication between these points without wires. At night my father
+bent his telescopic gaze upon the heavens, and as the earth approached
+opposition to Mars in 1884 I remember his eagerness and his repeated
+adjurations that if we failed in the task in his lifetime I should
+devote my life, separated from all other occupations and indulgences, to
+carrying on his designs.
+
+At first he only dimly intimated his great ambition, the union of our
+world with others by magnetic waves, but as it slowly assumed a
+theoretical certainty he talked more and more boldly of this portentous
+and transforming possibility.
+
+I cannot refrain from noticing another important scientific activity of
+my father's. It was the use of photography in stellar measurement. As is
+well known to photographers, in 1871 Dr. R.L. Maddox used gelatine in
+place of collodion from which innovation rose the present system of dry
+plate photography. My father had always felt the greatest interest in
+the use of photography in astronomy. He was acquainted with the splendid
+work done by Chapman for Rutherford, New York, in his careful and
+exquisite photographs of the moon. As early as 1850 Whipple of Boston
+made photographs of the stars.
+
+It was, however, the incomparable advantages, furnished in speed, by
+the dry plate photography which made my father realize early as anyone,
+the boundless possibilities thus opened in human attainment for the
+penetration of the Sidereal firmament. He had made a great number of
+photographs at Irvington, and the photographic laboratory was a charming
+illustration of my father's ingenuity and precision. At Mt. Cook we
+enjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere for work of this sort, and
+amongst the first thoughts of my father was to provide the most
+satisfactory means for the continuance of our stellar photography.
+Besides our visual telescope we had a photographic telescope which was
+used, instead of connecting the visual lens on one and the same
+instrument, as in the Lick Observatory.
+
+The innovations introduced by photography have revolutionized the
+processes of stellar measurement. Instead of the laborious task of
+measuring the stars through the telescope, the photographic plate can be
+studied at ease as a correct and identical chart of the heavens and the
+results thus obtained placed at the disposal of astronomers. My father
+appreciated this and amongst his numerous projects of scientific
+usefulness the preparation of photographs of the stars fully occupied
+his mind.
+
+We had no Meridian Circle, as it was less in the direction of the
+determination of the position of stars than in the elucidation of the
+surfaces of planets, that my father's astronomical predilections lay.
+Our telescope was a refractor and had an objective of two feet diameter.
+It was firmly supported on a trap rock pedestal. The eye piece
+adjustment was unusually successful, and the remarkable freedom of the
+objective from any traces of spherical or chromatic aberration gave us
+an image of surprising clearness. The photographic results were
+admirable. I imagine few more satisfactory photographs of the face of
+Moon have been made than those we secured, so far at least as definition
+is concerned, and the detail within the limits of our powers of
+magnification.
+
+The telescope was very slowly installed and it was well in 1885 before
+we were able to use it for either observation or photography.
+
+As the surprising messages detailed in the following pages came by means
+of wireless telegraphy, I will dwell for an instant for the benefit of
+the non-scientific reader, upon the investigations made by my father and
+myself in this subject.
+
+The installation of a wireless telegraphic station is not necessarily
+difficult. The progress made since my father and myself began these
+experiments has been, of course, considerable, and yet so far as I am
+able to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largely
+anticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which the
+interception of messages is prevented was certainly forestalled by us,
+though in the communications with Mars herein detailed the ordinary
+[_non-syntonic_.--Editor] receiver was employed.
+
+We employed an induction coil, emitted a wave by a spark, and had a wire
+rod [_antenna_.--Editor] which was in turn part of an induction coil.
+This was the sender (transmitter) and we could regulate the wave length
+so that a receiving wire adjusted for such a wave could only receive it.
+[There seems to be implied in these words an arrangement known as the
+Slaby-Arco system, which American readers have had described for them by
+M.A. Frederick, Collins, Sci. Amer., March 9 and Dec. 28,
+1901.--Editor.] The receiver consisted of iron filings in which later
+carbon particles were added.
+
+My father died in 1892 and we had not at the time of his death learned
+of Popoff's microphone-coherer in which steel filings were mixed with
+carbon granules. The magnetic waves received at first by us presumably
+from Mars, and later, as the communications indisputably show, from that
+planet, were taken upon a Marconi receiver, or what was practically
+that.
+
+My father became more and more interested in the direction of
+interplanetary research by means of the magnetic wave. He argued
+vehemently, buoyed up by his increasingly augmented hopes as our own
+experiments improved, that the electric wave through space moving in an
+ethereal fluid of the extremest purity would progress more rapidly than
+in our atmosphere, that the tension of such waves would be greater, that
+they could be so "heaped up" as he expressed it--(_In the Slaby-Arco
+system an apparatus is employed consisting of a Ruhmkorff coil with a
+centrifugal mercury interrupter, by which a steeper wave front of the
+disruptive discharge is secured_.--Editor)--that their reception over
+the almost impassable distances of space would be made possible.
+
+This idea of piling up the waves was suggested by purely physical
+analogies. The enormous waves generated by severe storms upon the ocean
+travel farther than the smaller waves, and are less consecutively
+dissipated by the resistance of the water, the traction of its molecules
+and the occasional diversion of cross disturbances from other centers.
+
+Again some experiments made invacuo upon a limited scale seemed to show
+the accuracy of his predictions. Through a glass tube one foot in
+diameter and ten feet long we sent magnetic waves both when the tube
+was filled with air and when it was exhausted. Our means of measuring
+the time required in both cases were quite inadequate--perhaps there was
+no appreciable difference--but the records in the latter case, secured
+upon a Morse register, were unmistakably more vigorous and audible.
+
+At last our various results had reached a point where we felt justified
+in extending the limits of our investigations. We had up to this time
+only tried our messages between the two stations upon the plateau of Mt.
+Cook. My father now proposed that I go to Christ Church, install a
+sender (transmitter) and send messages to him at the observatory. I did
+so and the experiment was convincing. The day before I was ready to
+transmit a message I had attended an attractive church service--it was
+toward the close of Lent in the year 1889--and as my father was entirely
+unprepared for the account I proposed to give him of the function, I
+thought its correct transmission would afford an indubitable proof of
+our success. I wrote out the description. It was received by my father
+with only ten imperfect interpretations in a list of 1,000 words.
+
+From this time forward our plans for erecting a receiver in the
+observatory were pushed to a completion. We had discovered the
+necessity of elevation for the senders (transmitters) and receivers for
+long distance work, and a tall mast, fifty feet in height, was put up at
+the observatory, which--needlessly I think--was to serve as the
+terrestrial station for the reception of those viewless waves which my
+father thought might be constantly breaking unrecorded upon the
+insensitive surfaces of our earth.
+
+The eventful night came. It was August, 1890. Mars was then in
+opposition. The evening had been extremely beautiful. Nature united in
+her mood the most transporting contradictions of temperament. It was
+August and the day had been marked by changes of almost tropical
+severity, although, as we were south of the equator (the latitude of
+Christ Church is S. 44 degrees) August was, with us, mid-winter. A
+thunderstorm had broken upon us in the morning, itself an unusual
+meteorological phenomenon, and the downpour of black rain, shutting off
+the views and enclosing us in a torrential embrace of floods, had lasted
+an hour when it passed away, and the Sun re-illumined the wide
+glistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remote
+shore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, and
+islands, was readily seen; the northern Alps shone in their ermine
+robes, greatly lengthened and deepened by the season's snows, the washed
+country side below us was a patch work of rocks and fields and denuded
+forestland. Christ Church like a vision of whiteness sprang out to the
+west upon our vision, and immediately about us the mingling rivulets
+poured their musical streams through and over the icy banks of half
+consolidated snow.
+
+As night came up, the stars seemed almost to pop out in their
+appropriate places, like those stellar illusions that appear so
+appropriately upon the theatrical stage, and the low lying moon sent its
+flickering radiance over the yet unsubdued waters. It was the time of
+the opposition of Mars which brings that planet nearest to us. As is
+well known to astronomers, the perihelion of Mars is in the same
+longitude in which the earth is on August 27; and when an opposition
+occurs near that date, the planet is only 35 millions of miles from the
+earth, and this is the closest approach which their bodies can ever
+make.
+
+Our magnetic receiver had been placed in position, the Morse register
+was attached; the whole apparatus was in one of the upper rooms of the
+observatory, in proximity with the telescope through whose glass for
+days we had watched the approach of our sister planet. As the night
+settled down upon us we had taken our seats for a few instants at a
+table in a lower room engaged in one of those innumerable desultory
+talks upon our project and their, even to us, somewhat problematic
+character. Everything connected with that evening, apart from its having
+been carefully recorded in my diary and notebooks, is very distinctly
+remembered by me. I recall my father reading from a letter to Nature,
+May 15, 1884, by Mr. W.F. Denning, discussing "The Rotation Period of
+Mars." From my note-book I find the passage literally transcribed:
+
+It read--"Notwithstanding his comparatively small diameter and its slow
+axial motion, the planet Mars affords especial facilities for the exact
+determination of the rotation period. Indeed, no other planet appears to
+be so favorably circumstanced in this respect, for the chief markings on
+Mars have been perceptible with the same definiteness of outline and
+characteristics of form through many succeeding generations, whereas the
+features, such as we discern on the other planets, are either temporary,
+atmospheric phenomena, or rendered so indistinct by unfavorable
+conditions as to defy measurement and observation. Moreover, it may be
+taken for granted that the features of Mars are permanent objects on the
+actual surface of the planet, whereas the markings displayed by our
+telescopes on some of the other planetary members of our system are mere
+effects of atmospheric changes, which, though visible for several years
+and showing well defined periods of rotation cannot be accepted as
+affording the true periods. The behavior of the red spot on Jupiter may
+closely intimate the actual motion of the sphere of that planet, but
+markings of such variable, unstable character can hardly exhibit an
+exact conformity of motion with the surface upon which they are seen to
+be projected. With respect to Mars' case, it is entirely different. No
+substantial changes in the most conspicuous features have been detected
+since they were first confronted with telescopic power and we do not
+anticipate that there will be any material difference in their general
+configurations.
+
+"The same markings which were indistinctly revealed to the eyes of
+Fontana and Huyghens in 1636 and 1659 will continue to be displayed to
+the astronomers of succeeding generations, though with greater fullness
+and perspicuity owing to improved means. True, there may possibly be
+variations in progress as regards some of the minor features, for it has
+been suggested that the visibility of certain spots has varied in a
+manner which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on ordinary
+grounds. These may possibly be due to atmospheric effects on the planet
+itself, but in many cases the alleged variations have doubtless been
+more imaginary than real. The changes in our own climate are so rapid
+and striking, and occasion such abnormal appearances in celestial
+objects that we are frequently led to infer actual changes where none
+have taken place; in fact, observers cannot be too careful to consider
+the origin of such differences and to look nearer home for some of the
+discordances which may have become apparent in their results."
+
+It was just as he finished reading this extract that the shrill
+fluttering call of the maxy bird was heard from the bare branches of a
+poplar near the station, and in the next instant, in that intense quiet
+that succeeds sometimes a sudden unexpected and acute accent, the Morse
+register was audible above us, clicking with a continuity and evident
+_intention_ that, weighted as we were with vague sensational hopes, drew
+the blood from our faces, and seemed almost like a voice from the red
+orb then glowing in the southeastern sky. We sprang together up the
+stairs to the operating-room and saw with our eyes the moving lever of
+the little Morse machine. We had made ourselves familiar with the
+ordinary telegraphic codes, the international Telegraphic Code and that
+in use in Canada and the United States. They were useless. The
+succession of short or long intervals was entirely different and the
+message, if message it was, defied our persistent efforts at
+translation. The disturbance of the register continued some three hours,
+and though we were unmistakably in communication with some external
+regulated and _intentional_ source of magnetic impulses we were
+hopelessly confused as to their meaning.
+
+I can never forget our excitement. We were certainly the recipient of
+exact careful conscious messages. Their terrestrial origin, strange and
+incredible as it might appear, did not seem likely, for the two codes so
+generally in use were not represented in it. Could it be--the thought
+seemed to stop the beating of our hearts--could it be that we had indeed
+received an extra-terrestrial communication? The register of the dots
+and dashes cannot be all reproduced here, though a very long record of
+them, indeed almost complete, was made by myself. During the whole time
+that the register moved hardly a word of conversation escaped our lips.
+We were fixed in mute amazement. We were full of unexpressed imaginings,
+which were told, however in my father's face, so flushed with eagerness,
+as with half-parted lips he bent over the instrument or interrupted his
+attention by walking to the window and gazing far out into the heavens.
+
+The record we obtained is here reproduced, in part, as the whole would
+occupy altogether too much space. I am interested in giving it as it may
+effectually remain a proof of my sincerity in this matter, and will, I
+have the firm conviction, be repeated in the future, not exactly or at
+all, as I have written it, but some message similarly received will
+corroborate the statement here made, and the still further marvellous
+facts I am yet to relate.
+
+The record I will select for reproduction is as follows:
+
+. . . - . . .-- . . . - - - . - - . . . - . . .
+. . - - - - . . . . . - - - . . . . . . . . . .
+- - . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - -
+- - . . . - - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - -
+- . . - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - - . -
+. . . . - - - . . . - - - - - - - - - -
+- - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - -
+- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
+- . . . - . . . - - - . . . - . . . - . . .
+- - - - - . . . . - - - . . . . - - - -
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+As I now know there is a Martian language, if this communication came
+from that planet, which was my own and my father's deepest conviction,
+it would be impossible to interpret the foregoing record with any
+certainty, or indeed, in any way. Absolute ignorance of that language,
+except the brief mention in my father's communications, received by
+myself from that body--whose publication before I die is the sole
+purpose of this manuscript--make it quite certain that it is in the main
+a vowel language, consisting of short vocalic syllables. In such a case
+it is probable that some abbreviation has been used, and the problem of
+its resolution simply is placed out of the question. I may here
+partially forestall the facts communicated to me by my father from Mars.
+In those unparalleled messages he has told me of the desire of the
+Martians to communicate with the earth, and as the Martians themselves
+are largely made up of transplanted human spirits, the possibility of
+doing so would have been completely expected. But the singular
+evanescence of memory amongst these humans which absolutely displaces
+details of strictly mnemonic acquirements, except in certain directions
+of art and invention, has apparently precluded this.
+
+We remained at the register almost the entire night taking turns in our
+tireless vigil. But no more disturbances occurred. My father was deeply
+moved and I scarcely less so. Accustomed as we had become to the thought
+that wireless telegraphy would place us more readily in touch with the
+sidereal universe than with distant points upon our earth, presuming
+indeed, that, except for the intervening envelopes of atmosphere
+attached to our or any neighboring planet, the path of transmission of
+messages through space would be inconceivably swift, we saw nothing
+really impossible in the impression that we had that night received
+communications from extra-terrestrial sources.
+
+The thought was none the less stupendous, and it seemed almost
+impossible for us to allude to the subject without a peculiar sense of
+reverential self-suppression, at least for a week or so. Examination and
+inquiry showed us no contiguous source of the message and it seemed most
+improbable that it had come to us from any distant part of the earth, as
+we had become acquainted with the difficulty or impossibility of
+bridging our very great distances with the resources then at human
+command, and with the unavoidable exigence of the earth's convexity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a few months after this that my father, returning from a climb in
+the neighboring hills, complained of great weariness and a sort of mild
+vertigo. I had become exceedingly endeared to him. I found him a most
+unusual companion, and unnaturally separated as I had been from more
+ordinary associations, our lives had assumed an almost fraternal
+tenderness.
+
+I was greatly troubled to see my father's illness, and begged him to
+take rest; indeed, to leave the observatory for a while; to visit Christ
+Church. We had made some very congenial acquaintances in Christ Church.
+A family of Tontines and a gentleman and his daughter by the name of
+Dodan had often visited us, and while we had become somewhat a subject
+of perennial curiosity, and were more or less visited by curiosity
+hunters and others, actuated by more intelligent motives, the Tontines
+and the Dodans remained our only very intimate friends.
+
+Indeed, Miss Dodan had come to me, buried in scientific speculations and
+denied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light through
+a sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almost
+irksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedly
+enthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories was
+boundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescope
+adjusting everything with--oh! such exquisite precision--and then
+sometimes discovered my hand resting upon hers, or my head touching
+those silken brown curves of hair that framed her white brow and
+reddening cheeks, the throbbing pleasure was so sweet, so unexpected, so
+strange, that I felt a new desire rise in my heart, and the newness of
+life lifted me for a moment out of myself, and started those fires of
+ambition and hope that only a lovely woman can awaken in the heart of a
+man. I mention this circumstance that led to the fatal train of
+occurrences that led to my father's death.
+
+I urged my father to go to Christ Church and stay with the Dodans. Mr.
+Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her
+cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to
+his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness,
+which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home
+and scenes of his former happiness.
+
+He at last consented, and in October, 1891, accompanied by the Dodans,
+whom he had summoned from Christ Church, he went down the steep hillside
+that slanted from our plateau to the lowlands, and was soon lost from
+view in a turn of the road, which also robbed me of the sight of a
+waving, small white handkerchief, floating in front of a half-loosened
+pile of chestnut hair.
+
+A few days later I received a visit from Miss Dodan. I was then working
+at some photographs in the dark room. My assistant told me of her
+arrival. I hurried to our little reception room and library, where a few
+of my father's "Worthies of Science" decorated the walls, which for the
+most part were covered with irregular book cases, while a long square
+covered table occupied the center of the room, littered with charts,
+maps, journals and daily papers.
+
+Miss Dodan sat near the wide window looking toward Christ Church and the
+quickly descending road over which only a few days ago my father had
+journeyed. I caught in her face, as I entered, an anxious and disturbed
+glance, and I felt almost instantly an intimation of disaster. She
+turned to me as I came into the room and with a quick movement advanced.
+
+"Mr. Dodd, your father is ill. I hardly know what is the matter with
+him. He is quite strange; does not know us when we talk to him, and
+wanders in a talk about 'magnetic waves' and 'his wife' and 'different
+code.' Won't you come to see him? You may help him greatly."
+
+The kind, clear eyes looked up into mine and the impulse of real
+sympathy as she pressed my hand seemed unmistakable. I asked a few
+questions and was convinced that my father was the victim of some sort
+of shock, perhaps precipitated by the continuous excitement caused by
+our unaccountable experience in the observatory.
+
+I was but a few moments getting ready for the drive to Christ Church. I
+remember the cold, crisp air, the rapid motion, and can I ever forget
+it--the nearness and touch of Miss Dodan's person, perhaps only a
+hurried brushing past me of her arm, the stray touch of her floating
+hair, or the accidental stubbing of her foot against my own. It seemed a
+short, delicious drive. I fear my heart was almost equally divided
+between apprehension for my father's health and the joy of simple
+nearness to the woman I loved. At last we reached Christ Church. The
+Dodans lived in the suburbs in a pretty villa on a high hill, from whose
+top the city lay spread before them in its modest extent with its
+neighboring places and Port Lyttelon eight miles away.
+
+I found my father better, but it required my own zeal and affection to
+thoroughly restore him, and bring him back to his characteristic
+interest and alertness, which made him so original and delightful a
+companion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan and
+myself were frequently together, becoming more and more attached to each
+other, my father renewed his wonted studies, and strongly desired to
+return to the "plateau."
+
+I almost regretted, harsh as the thought may seem, our return. Such
+incidents are now a kind of sweet sadness to recall, for as I write
+these words, I hear nearer and nearer the summons that must put me also
+in the spirit world, while she, in whose heart my own trustingly lived,
+has been taken away, I think wisely and prudently, to live with her
+father's people in a charming, rustic village of Devonshire. But oh! so
+far away! and this picture which daily I draw from beneath the pillow of
+my sick couch must alone serve to replace the companionship of her face
+and voice.
+
+I can permit myself in this last record of an unrecoverable past to
+describe a treasured incident just before I left the Dodan home with my
+father. I was coming out of my room when I found Miss Dodan also
+emerging from her own bedroom at the opposite end of an upper hall. We
+met and I said: "Miss Dodan, it is a treacherous confession, but I wish
+you were going back with us, or that my father would stay a little
+longer here. I shall miss you."
+
+"Yes," she answered. "Aren't you a good nurse?"
+
+"Oh, I think you need not misunderstand me," I insisted.
+
+"Misunderstanding is rather an English trait, you Americans say," she
+retorted.
+
+"But in this case," I continued, "I hoped any disadvantages of that sort
+would be overcome by your own feelings."
+
+She blushed and looked quite dauntlessly into my eyes: "You mean," she
+inquired, "that you are sorry to leave me?"
+
+My face was very red, I knew, and I felt a puzzling sensation in my
+throat, but I did not hesitate: "Of course, I am sorry to leave you,
+more sorry than I can say, but I fear more, that leaving you may mean
+losing you."
+
+This time confusion seemed struggling with a pleased mirth in her face,
+and with a laugh and a quick movement toward the stairway she exclaimed:
+"Well, Americans, they say, never lose what they really care to win."
+
+I darted forward, but she was too quick for me and the chase ended in
+the lower hall in a group of people--her parents, my father, visitors
+and servants--and I saw her disappear with a backward glance, in which,
+I could swear, I saw two pouting lips.
+
+My father was overjoyed to return to our really very comfortable
+quarters on "Martian Hill," as Mr. Dodan, in reference to my father's
+infatuation over his imaginary (?) population of Mars, was accustomed to
+call our professional home.
+
+It was, I think, only a few weeks after this that my father called me to
+his room. He was standing in his morning apparel, a strange garb which
+he sometimes affected, made up of a black velvet gown brought together
+at the waist by a stout yellow cord, a bright red skull cap, a sort of
+sandal shoe, picked out with silver ornaments, his arms covered with
+loose, puckered sleeves of lace, dotted with black extending up to the
+close fitting sleeves of the velvet gown which only descended to his
+elbow. Beneath the gown, when he was thus theatrically attired, he wore
+a shirt of pale blue silk with a flat collar, over which came a black
+vest meeting his black trunks and blue hose.
+
+My father was a really striking and beautiful picture in his incongruous
+habiliment. His strong and thoughtful face, over which yet clustered the
+curly hair of boyhood, just touched with gray, lit up by his earnest,
+sad eyes, seemed--how distinctly I recall it--almost ideally lovely that
+morning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola,
+only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I came
+in, and as his eyes encountered mine, I detected the traces of tears
+upon his cheeks. My heart was full of love for my father, or childlike
+adoration it might have been called. I hurried to him and embraced him.
+The tenderness overcame his habitual self-restraint and he seemed to
+fall sobbing in my arms.
+
+"My son," he finally whispered, "my days are drawing very fast to a
+close. The shock I experienced at Christ Church prepared me to believe I
+would die in some attack of paralysis. A slight aphasia occurred this
+morning. It, too, as suddenly disappeared. But these warnings cannot be
+neglected. I and you must at once make preparations for that future
+colloquy which we must endeavor to establish between ourselves, when I
+have left this earth and you yet remain upon it.
+
+"I have been thinking a good deal on this subject and my reflections
+have resulted in this conclusion."
+
+His voice had now resumed its usual melody and power, and we sat down
+while he turned the pages of Prof. Bain's little work entitled "Mind and
+Body." He read (I marked at the time the passage): "The memory rises
+and falls with the bodily condition; being vigorous in our fresh moments
+and feeble when we are fatigued or exhausted. It is related by Sir Henry
+Holland that on one occasion he descended, on the same day, two mines in
+the Hartz Mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second mine he
+was so exhausted with inanition and fatigue, that his memory utterly
+failed him; he could not recollect a single word of German. The power
+came back after taking food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs the
+memory in ninety-nine men out of a hundred."
+
+My father then continued: "It seems to me quite clear that our memory,
+at any rate, however little of our other mental attributes is engaged in
+matter, is quite constructed in a series of molecular arrangements of
+our nervous tissues. No doubt there is memory also in that subtle fluid
+that survives death, but, inasmuch as memory is so closely expressed in
+physical or material units or elements, does it not seem plain that as
+spirits we shall probably lose memory?
+
+"The material structure in which it existed, which in a sense was memory
+itself, is dissipated by death. Memory disappears with it. But perhaps
+not wholly. Some shadow of itself remains. What will most likely be
+treasured then? The strongest, deepest memories only. Those which are
+so subjectively strong as to leave even in the spirit _flesh_ an
+impression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs:
+'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuing
+in the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the original
+agent, and of recalling them at after-times by purely mental forces, I
+shall remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed impressions. It
+must be considered as almost beyond a doubt that the _renewed feeling
+occupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the original
+feeling_, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can be
+assigned.'
+
+"It seems to me, my son, in view of all this, that, as the fondest hope
+of my life is to send back to you from wherever I may be, a message, and
+as we both believe the means must be something like this wireless
+telegraphy, I must imbed in my mind the whole system we have developed,
+and especially make myself almost intuitively familiar with the Morse
+alphabet. Beating, beating, beating upon my brain substance this
+ceaselessly reiterated mechanical language, it will become so
+incorporated, that even in the surviving mind I shall find its traces
+and be able to use it.
+
+"So I have concluded to put aside almost everything else and think and
+live in the thought only of this coming experience. You understand me?
+You sympathize in this? Yes, yes, I shall get ready for this supreme
+experiment which may at last, to a long waiting world, bring some
+reasonable assurance that death does not end all. As I think of it, as I
+look forward to meeting your mother, the whole prospect of death grows
+wonderfully interesting and sublimely welcome. And yet, my son, you, you
+who have been so patient, so kind, giving up your life for my
+convenience and pleasure, I dread to leave you. But I will speak to you!
+Watch! wait! and at that instrument upstairs, which I know responded to
+some waves of magnetism crossing the oceans of space, I shall be heard
+by you in English words, opening up the mysteries of other worlds!"
+
+He stopped in sheer exhaustion with his whole face charged with almost
+frantic ecstacy. It seemed to me so natural, nurtured in the same
+impossible dreams, that I saw nothing ludicrous in his hopes.
+
+From that day on we gave ourselves up to telegraphing from our two
+stations, while my father again and again consulted models of our
+transmitters and receivers. This excitement lasted a long time and it
+did seem psychologically certain that in any disembodied condition my
+father would be likely to recall some important parts or all of this
+well learned lesson.
+
+For years my father, as I mentioned before, in his astronomical studies,
+had limited himself to the study, photography and drawing of the
+surfaces of our planetary neighbors. Mars particularly fascinated him,
+for he had, by some illusion or accident of thought fixed his belief
+firmly that Mars represented his future post mortem home.
+
+The progress of study of the physical features of Mars had been
+considerable. With these results my father and I were very familiar, had
+been in correspondence with certain astronomical centers with regard to
+them, and had even contributed something toward the elucidation of the
+problems thus presented.
+
+In 1884, before the Royal Society, some notes on the aspect of Mars, by
+Otto Baeddicker, were read by the Earl of Rosse. They were accompanied
+by thirteen drawings of the planet and showed many features represented
+on the Schiaparelli charts. W.F. Denning in 1885, remarked upon "the
+seeming permanency of the chief lineaments on Mars, and their
+distinctiveness of outline." Schiaparelli confirmed his previous
+observations upon the duplications of the canals and Mr. Knobel
+published some sketches.
+
+In 1886, M. Terby presented to the Royal Academy of Belgium notes on
+drawings made by Herschell and Schroeter, indicating the so-called
+Kaiser Sea. M. Perrotin at the Nice Observatory was able to redetect
+Schiaparelli's canals, which elicited the remark that "the reality of
+the existence of the delicate markings discovered by the keen-sighted
+astronomer of Brera seems thus fully demonstrated, and it appears highly
+probable that they vary in shape and distinctness with the changes of
+the Martial seasons."
+
+These observations of M. Perrotin were detailed at length in the
+_Bulletin Astronomique_, and the distinguished observer called attention
+to the fact that these markings varied but slightly from Schiaparelli's
+chart, and indicated a state of things of considerable stability in the
+equatorial region of Mars. M. Perrotin recorded changes in the Kaiser
+Sea (Schiaparelli's _Syrtis Major_). This spot, usually dark, was seen
+on May 21, 1886, "to be covered with a luminous cloud forming regular
+and parallel bands, stretching from northwest to southeast on the
+surface, in color somewhat similar to that of the continents but not
+quite so bright." These cloud-like coverings were later more distributed
+and on the three following days diminished greatly in intensity. They
+were referred by Perrotin to clouds.
+
+In March and April of the year 1886 a study was made of the surface of
+Mars by W.F. Denning in England. Mr. Denning's drawings corroborated the
+charts of Green, Schiaparelli, Knobel, Terby and Baeddicker. He found
+the surface of Mars one of extreme complexity, a multitude of bright
+spots in places, but with a general fixity of character which led him to
+believe that the appearances were not atmospheric. He indeed attributed
+to Mars an attenuated atmosphere and thought that some of the vagaries
+in its surface characters were due to variations in our own atmosphere
+He did not find the Schiaparelli canals as distinct in outline as given
+by that ingenious observer. He noted many brilliant spots on Mars and
+indicated the disturbing influences of vibrations produced by winds on
+the surface of our earth in connection with changes in the earth's
+atmospheric envelope.
+
+In 1888 M. Perrotin continued his observations on the channels of Mars
+and noted changes. The triangular continent (Lydia of Schiaparelli) had
+disappeared, its reddish white tint indicating, or supposed to indicate,
+land, was then replaced by the black or blue color of the seas of Mars.
+New channels were observed, some of them in "direct continuation" with
+channels previously observed, amongst these an apparent channel through
+the polar ice cap. Some of these seemed double, running from near the
+equator to the neighborhood of the North Pole. The place called Lydia
+disappeared and reappeared. A strange puzzling statement was made that
+the canals could be traced straight across seas and continents in the
+line of the meridian. M. Terby confirmed many of these observations.
+Later the so-called "inundation of Lydia," observed by M. Perrotin, was
+doubted. Schiaparelli himself, Terby, Niesten at Brussels, and Holden at
+the Lick Observatory, failed to remark this change. These observers did
+not double the canals satisfactorily, but all agreed upon the striking
+whiteness and brightness of the planet.
+
+M. Fizeau (1888) argued that the Schiaparelli canals were really glacial
+phenomena, being ridges, crevasses, rectilinear fissures, etc., of
+continental masses of ice. Again (Bulletin de l'Academie Royale de
+Belgique, June) M. Nesten averred that the changes on the surface of
+Mars were periodic.
+
+In 1889, Prof. Schiaparelli reviewed what had been observed upon the
+surface of the planet in a continued article in _Himmel und Erde_, a
+popular astronomical journal published by the Gesellschaft Urania and
+edited by Dr. Meyer.
+
+Some remarkable photographs taken by Mr. Wilson in 1890 were commented
+on by Prof. W.H. Pickering in the "Sidereal Messenger." They showed the
+seasonal variations in the polar white blotches.
+
+In 1889 there reached us from Chatto and Windus of London a most
+entertaining book by Hugh MacColl, entitled "Mr. Stranger's Sealed
+Packet." It was a work of fancy, ingeniously constructed upon scientific
+principles. It described a hypothetical machine, a flying machine, which
+was made up of a substance more than half of whose mass had been
+converted into repelling particles. Such a fabric would leave the earth,
+pass the limits of its attraction with an accelerating velocity and move
+through space. In such a way Mr. Stranger reached Mars. He found it
+inhabited by a people--the Marticoli--happy in a state of socialism, and
+with abundance of food manufactured from the elements, oxygen, hydrogen,
+carbon and nitrogen, with electric lights, phonetic speech, but without
+gunpowder or telescopes.
+
+Its inhabitants had been derived from the earth by a most delightful
+scientific fabrication. A sun and its satellites in its course around
+some other center draws the earth and Mars so together that on some
+parts of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome that
+of the earth and gently suck up to itself inhabitants from the earth,
+who would not suffer death from loss of air, as the atmosphere of both
+bodies would be mingled.
+
+These observations and this last scientific myth have some interest in
+view of the actual knowledge now vouchsafed to the world through my
+father's messages. I have very briefly reviewed them.
+
+My father's premonitions were fully realized. He grew sensibly weaker as
+the months of 1891 passed. His mind became eager with the cherished
+expectation which grew day by day into a sort of a mild possession. It
+seemed to me that there was a moderate aberration involved in his deeply
+seated convictions, and when sometimes I saw him walking past the
+windows on the plateau with his head thrown back, his arms outstretched
+as if he were inviting the stars to take him and his murmuring voice,
+repeating some snatches of song, I felt awed and frightened.
+
+My father was stricken with paralysis on September 21, 1892, became
+speechless the following day, but for a day thereafter wrote on a pad
+his last directions. Some of these were quite personal, and need not be
+detailed here. It was indeed pathetic to see his strenuous and repeated
+efforts to assure me that he remembered all the parts of the telegraphic
+apparatus, and his smile of saddened self-depreciation when he
+hesitated over some detail. At last he sank into a torpor with the usual
+stertorous breathing, flushed face and gradually chilled extremities.
+His last words were scrawled almost illegibly by his failing
+hand--"Remember, watch, wait, I will send the messages."
+
+Miss Dodan came to the plateau and was helpful; to me especially. She
+kept up my breaking spirits, and her womanly tenderness, her brave
+grace, and the joy my loving heart felt in seeing her, enabled me to go
+through the trial of death and separation.
+
+All was finished. My father was buried in Christ Church cemetery by his
+own request, although thus separated by a hemisphere from his wife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year had passed. I had received nothing. Mr. and Miss Dodan came to
+the observatory. They both were acquainted with the singular
+prepossessions which controlled both myself and my father, and I think
+Mr. Dodan was himself, though he admitted nothing, most curious and
+interested in the whole matter. Miss Dodan frankly said she was. But I
+know, to Miss Dodan's fresh, healthy, human life there was something
+weirdly repellent in this thought of communication with the dead. She
+thought of it with a nervous dread and excitement. It just kept me in
+her thoughts a little shrouded in mystery and superiority and closed a
+little the avenues of absolute confidence and peaceful self-surrender.
+
+I had forgotten nothing, although at first an overwhelming sense of the
+uselessness of the attempt, the almost grotesque absurdity of expecting
+to hear from beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere any word
+transmitted through a mechanical invention, upon the earth's crust, made
+me feel somewhat ashamed of my preparations, yet I arranged every
+portion of the receiver and exercised my best skill to give it the most
+delicate adjustment.
+
+Whenever I had occasion to rest I either sent an assistant to the post,
+or kept on my pillow, adjusted to my ear, a telephone attachment to the
+Morse register, so that its signals might instantly receive attention.
+At length as time wore on I arranged a bell signal that might summon us
+to the register.
+
+On the occasion of this visit by the Dodans I was in the loft at the
+receiver which was in a room to one side of that we called "the
+equatorial," where the telescope was suspended. I was as usual waiting
+for a message that never came, and my failing hopes, made more and more
+transitory by the brightness of the southern spring and all the instant
+present industry of the fields below me on the low-lands, seemed to
+dissolve into a mocking phantom of derisive dreams.
+
+I stood up hackneyed and forlorn. Had I not done everything I could? Had
+I not kept my promise? I heard the voices below me; one, that musical
+tone, that made the color come and go upon my cheeks, and as I turned
+hastily to descend to them while the breathing earth seemed to send
+upward its powerful sensitizing odors that turn energy into languorous
+desire, and touch the senses with indolence; at that moment the Morse
+register spoke!
+
+Could my ears have deceived me? No! It was running, running, running,
+intelligible, strong, definite; it seemed to me of almost piercing
+loudness, although just audible. I bent over, seized my pad and wrote.
+The Abyss of Death was bridged! From behind the veil of that inexorable
+silence which lies beyond the grave came a voice--and what a voice! The
+clicking of a telegraphic register in signals, that the whole world knew
+and used. I was quiet, preternaturally so, I think, as I took down the
+message. I became almost aged in the intense rigidity of my absorption.
+
+I was told the Dodans came up and saw me, heard the telltale clicks of
+the register, and unnoticed left me. Still I wrote on, unheeding the
+time. My assistants, pale with wonder, stood around me. The measured
+tappings were the ghostly voices of another world. This message began at
+10 a.m., Sept. 25, 1893. It ended at 10 p.m. on the same day. It came
+quite evenly, though slowly, and was unmistakably intended to be
+inerrantly recorded, as indeed it was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"My son," it began, "I am indeed in the red orb of light we have so
+often looked up to when we were together on the earth, and about which
+our wondering minds hazarded so many fruitless guesses. I have been here
+a short time, and now am able to return to you, by that cipher we so
+fortunately printed upon the tablet of memory, word of my existence.
+
+"I can hardly describe to you my occurrence on this planet. I found
+myself here without any recollection of whence I had come, without a
+traceable thought of anything I had ever heard before.
+
+"I was suddenly sitting in a high room, brilliantly lighted by a soft,
+tranquillizing radiance, listening to a chorus of most delicately
+attuned voices, indescribably sweet, penetrating and moving. Around me
+upon white ivory chairs arranged in an amphitheatre sat beings like
+myself, all looking outward upon a sloping lawn where were gathered
+beneath blossoming fruit trees an army, it seemed, of half shining
+creatures, unlike myself, singing these wonderful choruses.
+
+"I have since learned that I did not reach Mars in that identical moment
+when I found myself sitting in the hall. I had come to it, as all
+disembodied spirits from the earth come to it at one receiving point, a
+high hill not far from the tropic of Mars. This hill, crowned and
+covered with glass buildings, is known as the hill of the Phosphori.
+Here, for nearly one of our months, the incoming souls, which are little
+more than a sort of ethereal fluid, presenting a form only observable by
+refracted light, or I should say polarized light, are bathed in a
+marvellously phosphorescent beam procured by absorption from the sun.
+These souls are intermingled in a chaotic stream that I may liken to the
+streaming currents of heated air in convection from a source of heat
+upon our earth, and this continuous tide is caught in a great spherical
+chamber or a series of chambers extending over five miles around the
+bald summit of this eminence.
+
+"In these colossal chambers the phosphorescent light from enormous
+radiators beats incessantly through and through the slowly, oscillating,
+vibrating, revolving soul matter. And here the process of
+individualization is achieved. A soul, or many souls, are separated
+from the great tide, by flashing, under the bombardment of the
+phosphorescent blaze into shining forms. They assume a shape outlined by
+light, and just slightly subject to gravity from the atomic compression
+necessary to maintain their illumination, they fall lightly out from the
+domes of the spheres, touch the floors beneath, and are led away.
+
+"In this way I found later I had arrived at Mars. When the spirits, thus
+shaped in light and otherwise almost immaterial and unclothed, emerge
+from the Hill of the Phosphori, they are taken along wide, white roads
+to some of the many chorus halls which fill the City of Light, where I
+am now, and from which I am sending this magnetic message. They remain
+for hours, even days and weeks in these halls listening in a sort of
+stupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one great
+recreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocal
+gift in beings who have never enjoyed its exercise on earth.
+
+"Gradually under the influence of this musical immersion, as under the
+bombardment of the phosphorescent rays, a mentality seems developed;
+voice and language come, and the soul moves out of the concourse of
+listening souls, moved by a desire to do something, into the streets of
+the city. This is called, as we might say, the Act Impulse. From that
+time on the soul rushes, as it were, to its natural occupation. Its
+mentality, aroused by music, becomes full of some sort of aptitude, and
+it enters the avenues of its congruous activity as easily, as quickly,
+as justly as the growing flower turns toward the Sun wherever it may be.
+
+"Let me present to you the curious scene my eyes encountered as I sat in
+the great Chorus Hall. I say my eyes. It is hard perhaps for you to
+realize what an organ can be in a creature, so apparently, as we are,
+little more than gaseous condensations. The physiology and morphology of
+a spirit is not an easy thing to grasp or define. I am yet ignorant upon
+many points. But dimly, at least, I may make your natural senses
+cognizant of it.
+
+"You have seen faces and forms in clouds. How often you and I from Mount
+Cook on the earth have watched their changing and confluent lineaments
+in the clouds above the New Zealand Alps. It is the same way with
+Martian spirits. They are tenuous fluids, but the individual pervades
+them and a material response is evoked, and the light from their
+surfaces is so halated, intensified, or reduced as to form a figure with
+a head and arms and legs.
+
+"In some way I imagine the organs are optical effects, ruled by mind,
+which is located in this luminous matter. Later I will describe the
+process of _solidification, the resumption of matter_, for these spirit
+forms slowly concrete into beings like terrestrial men and women. There
+is, therefore, a dual population here, the extreme newly transplanted
+souls, and the flesh and blood people, and between them the transitions
+from spirit to corpuscular bodies. But all this takes place in the City
+of Light. Elsewhere over the whole planet the spirits are seldom seen,
+but only the vigorous and beautiful race of material beings into which,
+they--the spirits--have _consolidated_.
+
+"To return to my first experience in the Chorus Hall in the City of
+Light. I seemed to be in a great alabaster cage enormously large and
+very beautiful. Its shining walls rose from the ground and at a great
+height arched together. The front was a network of sculpture, it held
+the rising rows of what seemed like ivory chairs on which the motionless
+white and radiant assemblage were seated. The whole place glowed, and
+this phosphorescent prevails throughout the City of Light, just as it
+does in the Hill of the Phosphori, when we first landed in this strange
+existence.
+
+"The music came from a field in front of the Chorus Hall, which held a
+wonderful array of beings who, while not radiant as we were, had a
+_lustrous_ look over their smooth and lovely bodies, which were tightly
+clad in the palest blue tunics and leggings. These creatures were
+consolidated spirits. They are constantly augmented by new arrivals,
+and, as the number remains almost unchanged, as new arrivals appear,
+others leave and then move off from the City of Light into the vast
+regions of Mars outside and beyond the city.
+
+"A word of explanation would make this all clear. The Hill of the
+Phosphori begins the transmutation of the psychic fluid which makes up
+the souls as they flow into Mars from space. At the Hill the very
+moderate condensation begins, just enough to bring them to the ground by
+gravity. The psychic fluid is susceptible to the light, absorbs and
+emits it, and so the spirit forms are shining like great _ignes fatui_
+on our old earth. The spirits thus individualize, pass in companies to
+the City of Light, and come to the huge chorus halls which surround the
+city on its outskirts, in the country margin.
+
+"They reach these chorus halls by a sort of suasion produced apparently
+by their sympathy with music. Music and Light are the energies, which at
+first and measurably throughout all the latter days of Martian life,
+direct work and thought and being. The music is quite audible for long
+distances, especially in the direction of the Hill of the Phosphori
+where the spirits land. Drawn by it they move unconsciously toward the
+singing centers. Now there are perhaps a hundred of these chorus halls
+about the City of Light grouped in the direction of the Hill of the
+Phosphori, and the music is quite different in them. There are four
+principal sorts, the grave, the gay, the romantic and the harmonic. By
+their interior sympathy the kinds of spirits move to the choruses which
+afford the music they respond to and it is wonderful how infallibly this
+attraction acts.
+
+"The bands separate and strings and lines of the phosphorized spirits
+train away without direction to the choruses that attract them, although
+only a sort of subdued and confused murmur reaches them from the halls.
+
+"Throughout the first stages of life here, the spirits are somnambulous.
+They move and act unconsciously and in obedience to their imbedded
+instincts and tastes. Only, as under the influence of music and light
+and afterwards occupation, they are transmuted by consolidation into the
+fair material race, which outside of the City of Light controls the
+planet, does consciousness and curiosity and language arise. I sat a
+long, long time in the chorus hall, to which I was drawn, which
+produced _grave_ music. I knew nothing, felt nothing, was but dimly
+cognizant of what was about me, but I thrilled with the music.
+
+"I felt the process of condensation going on, and it was a process
+exquisitely blissful. Now and then, a spirit form would arise and step
+down the rising forms and go out, another and another, while as silently
+spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori would enter and take their seat
+and bathe in the almost unbroken surges of music that come from the
+field outside, from the multitude beneath the almond blossom laden
+trees. Movement is without volition in the spirit stage; attraction that
+follows a hidden impulse, that seems indescribable at first, directs
+them. It is only as the process of consolidation in the City of Light
+individualizes, that the spirits become, as you would say, human. But it
+is a humanity of great beauty. Material particles invade or transfuse
+them, replacing the diaphanous phosphorescent spirit fluid, and they
+grade into supple white and rosy figures, strong, strenuous and
+splendid.
+
+"After remaining a long time, perhaps, in the chorus hall, I felt the
+restlessness that causes one after the other of the spirits to go out. I
+followed the solitary line out into the city, the solemn, swaying music
+still heard as I stepped out upon the broad steps which face the city.
+I was now more observant, something like sight and feeling and memory
+were slowly generated within me, and I noticed that whereas the arriving
+spirits moved like apathetic ghosts, those with whom I now was, turned
+with interest this way and that, seemed apprehending and alive.
+
+"The spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori came on the broad avenues
+leading to the chorus halls like waifs of cloud driven by a zephyr, with
+no visible distention of parts, no leg, or arm, or head or body motion.
+Now they moved with some anatomical suggestions.
+
+"I stood amid a colonnade of arches, the white shining columns rose
+around me to the high, shining roof, before me a long descent of steps,
+and beyond me and around on a softly swelling eminence was spread the
+City of Light. It was a marvellous picture.
+
+"The City of Light is simple and monotonous in architecture, but its
+composition and its radiance quite surpass any earthly conception. The
+buildings are all domed and stand in squares which are filled with fruit
+trees, low bush-like spreading plants, bearing white pendant lily-like
+flowers or pink button-shaped florets like almonds. Each building is
+square, with a portico of columns, placed on rising steps, a pair of
+columns to each step. Vines wind around the columns, cross from one
+line of columns to another and form above a tracery of green fronds
+bearing, as it was then, red flowers, a sort of trumpet honeysuckle.
+
+"The walls of the buildings are pierced on all sides with broad windows
+or embrasures, filled, it seemed, with an opalescent glass. Avenues
+opened in all directions, lined on both sides with these wonderful
+houses, which are made of a peculiar stone, veined intermittently with
+yellow, which has the property of absorbing and emitting light.
+
+"It is indeed a phosphori as, if I recall it aright, the sulphides of
+barium, strontium, and calcium were upon our earth. Later I shall see
+the great quarries of this stone in the Martian mountains. Another
+strange feature in these Martian houses was the hollow sphere of glass
+upheld above each house. It is a sphere some six feet in diameter made
+up of lenses. It encloses a space in the center of which is a ball of
+the phosphorescent stone. During the day the rays of the sun are
+concentrated upon this ball of stone, and at night the stored-up
+sunlight is radiated into lambent phosphorescent light.
+
+"It was the close of a Martian day that I felt the returning impact of
+volition and left the chorus hall. I emerged, as I said before, upon the
+broad platform with its colonnade of columns and arches and saw the
+city as the night drew on. It is difficult to put in words, my son, the
+wonderful effect.
+
+"Each house built of this strange substance, which throughout the day
+had been storing up the energies of light, now, as the fading day waned,
+became a center of light itself. At first a glow covered the sides of
+the houses, the colonnade and dome, while the glass prisms above them
+sent out rays from their imprisoned balls of phosphori. The glow spread,
+rising from the outskirts of the city in the lower grounds to the
+summits of the hills where the sun's last rays lingered. It became
+intensified. The green beds of trees were black squares and the houses,
+pulsating fabrics of light between them. A slight variety of
+architecture in places was accentuated by diverse and varying lines or
+surface light.
+
+"The whole finally blended and a sea of radiance was before me in which
+the beautiful houses were descried, the illuminated groves, and like
+enormous scintillations the glassy spheres--the Martians call them the
+_Plenitudes_ above them. Many other developing beings were around me,
+and voiceless, mute, impassioned, with an admiration which we had as yet
+no adequate organs to express we gazed upon the throbbing metropolis,
+ourselves luminous spectres in the vast eruption of glorious light
+before, above, around us.
+
+"As the night settled down the light grew more intense, more beautiful.
+I could discern the opalescent glasses in the houses sending out their
+parti-colored rays, patching the trees with quilts of changing colors,
+and far away there came, still unsubdued by the night, the continuous
+elation of music.
+
+"All night, all day, the choruses kept on with intermissions, but the
+singers change. This musical facility is the mental or emotional
+characteristic of the Martian. There is more in music than you
+earthlings know or dream of. It is a part of the immortal fiber of men,
+and in Mars it _creates_ matter, for the slow assumption of material
+parts, as I have said, is propagated and accomplished by music, and the
+parts thus made are the most perfect expression of matter the divine
+form of man or woman can know, I think. They are tuned to health, to
+beauty, to inspiration, but all of this you shall know.
+
+"So I went down the steps into the city. I was with a group of spirits
+who noticed me, and whom I noticed, but as yet the listless, strange,
+doomed expression was on our faces, and though memory was beginning to
+light its fires within us, though the transmission of viewless particles
+of matter into our fluent bodies of spirit had begun, though mind and
+desire were awakened, not a word passed our shining lips, and we moved
+on in silence.
+
+"The City of Light is often called in the Martian language also the City
+of Occupation, for here the forming spirits work. I have told you that
+as _consolidation_, through Music and Light, goes on, the aptitudes or
+tastes are awakened, and this first birth of desire in Mars carries the
+spirits off from their ivory seats in the Chorus Halls to the City,
+where like an animal ferreting its purpose by intuition, they seem
+impelled whither their needs are best satisfied.
+
+"I now know that the City of Light is generally divided,--not exactly,
+but as association would naturally impel, into four quarters, the
+quarter of art, the quarter of science, the quarter of invention, the
+quarter of thought. This is simply that the artists, the scientific
+minds, the designers, and the philosophers are somewhat by themselves.
+The population of the City of Light is made up of a fair, white race of
+Martians, and of the forming spirits. As the forming spirits attain
+materialization through occupation, they may remain in the City or go
+out into the other cities, and into the country to work and live.
+
+"Besides the quarters I have mentioned, there is the business section
+and the offices of the government.
+
+"In the light of all I have learned since I came, I may at once explain
+something about the actual life and social organization of this strange
+world.
+
+"The Martian world is one country. There are here no nationalities. The
+center of the country is in the City of Scandor, quite removed from the
+City of Light. Business is carried on as with you on the earth, but its
+nature and its physical elements vary, as you will see. There is a
+circulating medium, banks and business enterprises, but it is more
+veiled, more hidden, less, far less, insistent than with you. A great
+socialistic republic is represented in Mars, and the limits of
+individual initiative are very narrow. Still they exist.
+
+"One prime element of difference is in the nourishment and the area of
+population. The Martian lives only on fruit, and he lives only a few
+degrees on either side of the Equator. All the businesses that in your
+earth arise from the preparation and sale of meat and all the various
+confections, disappear there, and also all the mechanism of house
+heating and lighting. Also there are no railroads, but innumerable
+canals, which form a labyrinth of waterways, and are fed from the tides
+of the great northern and southern seas.
+
+"The business is largely agricultural, but in the cities the pursuit of
+knowledge still continues. There is, however, on Mars a much lessened
+intellectual activity than on the earth. It is a sphere of simplified
+needs and primal feelings exalted by acutely developed love of Music.
+Mars is the music planet. There are not on Mars newspapers, journals,
+magazines, books. The tireless production of these things on the earth
+has but one analogy in Mars, the publication of music scores, the
+recitation of poetry and symposia, and the great illustrated journal,
+Dia. But these things I will explain later.
+
+"I wandered on that night through the city with other spirits. We went
+through the city streets in the radiance of the _Plenitudes_ above the
+houses. The night air was blowing through the trees, and the city was
+filled with people. They were the Martians. We were scarcely noticed. In
+the City of Light the new arrivals are not questioned until they begin
+to "take shape," as they say here, and then they are closely examined,
+and their origin, if it can be traced, is written down and kept in great
+registers.
+
+"The groups were moving in streams toward the higher ground, and as my
+companions were gradually separated from me and were lost like wisps of
+moving light here and there, I went on alone. I came up long, wonderful
+avenues between walls of light, regularly punctuated by the dark squares
+of trees, and the spherical radiations of the Plenitudes above the
+houses.
+
+"The people about me seemed all young, or scarcely more than, as we say,
+in middle life. They speak less than the earth folk, and when they speak
+they utter very simple sentences, and seem very sincere. I often stood
+by little groups gathered at the corners of cross streets, and listened
+to their musical intonations. The language is vocalic and monosyllabic.
+It sometimes suggests a Mongolian tongue, but without the guttural
+clicks and coughs. The Martians are all gifted in music. It fills their
+lives.
+
+"From point to point crowds were assembled about platforms where singing
+was in progress, and every now and then a man or woman in the street
+would sing loudly and passionately with such power and beauty that the
+impressionable Martians would follow the refrain of the song and the
+whole street for blocks and blocks would resound in waves of delightful
+melody. There are no mechanical modes of propulsion in the streets of
+the City of Light. _The Martians all walk_.
+
+"I approached the top of the broad hill on which the City is built, and
+came suddenly out into a square filled again in its park-like center
+with trees. From amid these trees rose a massive building, which I
+instantly recognized as an observatory; the many round domes, as on
+earth, were unmistakable.
+
+"I passed up the walks of the square to the building and entered it.
+
+"It was illuminated by balls of phosphori in glass globes, and its cool,
+broad halls and stairways were, in the soft light, very beautiful. But
+their wonderfulness consisted in the insertion upon the walls of
+illuminated plans and maps of the heavens. These miniature firmaments
+were all afire, so that each opening, carefully graded in size to
+represent stars of the first or second or third magnitude, was filled
+with a beaming point of light, and I walked in these noble corridors
+between reduced patterns of the universe of stars. I can hardly tell you
+how astonished and entranced I was.
+
+"I had for the first time since I reached the planet the impulse of
+speech, and I raised my hands with that motion of snapping the fingers,
+which you recall was characteristic of me on earth, and _spoke_. I
+cried, 'Here is my home.'
+
+"As my hands dropped to my sides I felt resistance. I looked down upon
+myself and could behold the changing surfaces of my body. Under this
+completing stroke of volition the work begun upon the Hill of the
+Phosphori and the Chorus Hall in reducing the intangible spirit fluid to
+corporeal expression was now hastening to an end. I do not stop here to
+consider the reflections this suggests as to the nature of matter, those
+abstruse speculations we indulged in so often over the pages of Muir and
+Helmholz and Tait and Crookes.
+
+"I had reached the ascending stairway, when my hand--for hand it now
+seemed to be--was taken in a friendly pressure, and I turned and saw a
+tall figure with a face of extreme nobility, somewhat scarred, I
+thought, dressed in the usual Martian attire of a flowing tunic and
+closely fitting body clothing. He said in English, 'You are from the
+earth as I am.'
+
+"My son, how can I, in this dull, mechanical method of conversation with
+you, ignorant, indeed, whether the magnetic waves loaded with my
+message, are traversing or not the millions of miles of space to your
+ear, how can I make you realize the wonderful and blessed feelings of
+amazement and happiness that the stranger's words brought me. Here I
+was, a disembodied soul from Earth, which at that moment I only dimly
+recalled, undergoing the strange process of re-establishment in flesh
+and blood, and slowly appropriating those natural appetites which come
+with flesh and blood, a waif of spiritual being in the great voids of
+creation, impelled by some implanted power of affinity to this remote,
+strange, phantasmal and unreal place, overwhelmed in a stupor of
+confusion, like some awakening patient from the vertigo of a terrifying
+dream!
+
+"I looked upon my friend, and in the rapidly rising flood of emotions
+that came with the acting members of my body, flushed and throbbing with
+excitement, and with a wild joy besides, I flung myself upon his neck
+and pressed him with arms that seemed once more those natural physical
+ties that have held upon my breast those I best loved on earth.
+
+"The stranger led me slowly up the stairway and past great celestial
+spheres which filled the higher hallways, conducting me to a room at one
+corner of the great structure. The room was a singular and unique
+apartment. It consisted of a large central space, furnished with the
+usual ivory chairs, and a broad, massive center table, also of ivory,
+curiously inlaid with particles of the omnipresent _phosphori_, which
+gave out a liquid light and imparted indescribable chasteness and beauty
+to the carved ornaments upon them. The floor was dark, a leaden color,
+lustrous, however, like black glass, and made up in mosaic. Around the
+room were alcoves lit by lamps of the phosphori, and in each alcove a
+globe of a blue metal upon which were painted sketches like charts or
+maps. A chandelier of this blue metal was pendant from the ceiling, and
+in its cup-like extremities, arranged in vertical tiers, were round
+balls of the phosphori, glowing softly.
+
+"Wide windows, unprotected by glass or sashes, just embrasures framed in
+white stone which everywhere prevails in Mars, looked out upon the
+marvellous City, which thus seemed a lake of glowing fires, over which,
+rising and refluent waves of light constantly chased each other to its
+dark borders, where the surrounding plain country met the City's edges.
+But throughout the distance I could trace lines of light marking
+highways or roads leading interminably away until quite extinguished at
+the optical limits of my vision.
+
+"The walls of this beautiful room rose to an arched ceiling which was
+inlaid with this wonderful blue metal, seen in the globes, designed in
+scrolls and waving ribbons, and just descending upon the walls
+themselves in attenuated twigs and strings. The walls were bare and
+shining.
+
+"My friend led me to one of the great windows and placed me in a chair.
+Drawing another beside me, placing his hand on mine, and leaning outward
+toward the burning splendor below us, above which in the still, clear
+heavens shone those stellar hosts you and I have so often watched with
+wonder, he said:
+
+"'Ten Martian years ago I came to this world as you have come. As a
+spirit I entered the chambers on the Hill of the Phosphori. I sat in the
+Chorus Hall. I entered the City and slowly changed, as you are changing,
+into one of the Martian white people. I found my work, as you will, in
+this Patenta, for by that name in Mars is called this home of astronomy
+and physical philosophy. Here, amid telescopes and apparatus of
+experiment and investigation, I have spent the years, mapping with many
+others the skies, and above all beating the earth we left, as have many,
+many, whom you will meet, with magnetic waves, hoping against hope, that
+some response might be gained, some hint of that connection through
+space which the physicists of this planet expect, ere long, may make all
+the beings of the universe one great sidereal society.'
+
+"He stopped and leaned away from me, perusing my face with interest.
+Words came to my lips, memory again asserted its triumphant declaration
+that I was the same being as had lived upon the earth, and with it the
+sudden turbulence of hope that she, your mother, whom we so often
+expected to regain, might, as I had, have reached this planet, too, and
+to me, renewed in youth, might come the glory and the joy of knowing her
+again.
+
+"I turned to him and spoke: 'Kind friend, I am yet dazed and stricken
+with the marvellousness of my being here. It seems but a short time, a
+lapse of even a day, that I bade good-bye to my son on the death-bed in
+my home on earth. I am too tormented with wonder to speak to you much. I
+can tell all I know of myself in a little while. But now as I grow
+stronger, tell me of this new world, and oh! give me, sir, food. I feel
+the quickening fevers of appetite and desire.'
+
+"The man arose and left the room. In a few moments he returned followed
+by a boy and a young woman bearing a basket. They spread a yellow cloth
+upon a small ivory table and set down two plates of the bright blue
+metal; upon one they placed a pile of small round cakes and on the other
+a number of red and yellow gourd shaped fruits. At a signal from my
+companion I arose and sat at the table.
+
+"He remained at the window and continued: 'While you break your long
+fast, let me tell you what I know about this new world which will now be
+your home for a long time. You will learn all, but I am not watching
+to-night. In seeing you and hearing the familiar English speech I am
+moved myself by currents of retrospection; my earth home comes back to
+me. I will satisfy your curiosity, and, you in turn, must tell me what
+has happened in the old home.'
+
+"He paused; from the streets of the city rose a sacred song. It came
+like a slowly increasing torrent of sound, soft and low, rising with
+impetuous fervor until it seemed to engulf us in its melodic tide.
+Individual tones were heard in it, but its solidity and mass were most
+impressive. I shook and trembled beneath the impact of its vibrations;
+in its surging glory of sound I became fully reincarnated. I awoke naked
+and ashamed. The man saw my confusion. He hurried to a niche in the wall
+and handed me the tunic of the Martians with its girdle of blue cord and
+its cap and shoes of the blue metal exquisitely wrought and light. I put
+them upon me and lifting the cakes and the mellow-soaked pears to my
+lips, listened.
+
+"'The Martians,' he continued, 'are both a natural and supernatural
+race. The natural race are largely prehistoric, though many yet exist;
+the supernatural race are made up of beings from other worlds and a
+great majority come up from the earth. How reincarnation first began on
+Mars is unknown, though the natural people, the Dendas, have traditions
+about it, vague and contradictory. It must have been slow. The
+supernatural people thus brought to Mars have created its civilization,
+discovered the phosphori, and established Music, which is so much of
+their life, and accelerated in the way you have learned the process of
+materialization.
+
+"'They built this City of Light from phosphorescent stone quarried from
+the Mountains of Tiniti. Formerly the spirits came helter skelter to
+Mars all over its surface and went wandering about, helped to
+reincarnation by the various villagers or citizens. The great new
+improvement in the last half century has been the creation of the
+receiving station at the Hill of the Phosphori, the building of the
+Chorus Halls, and the establishment of the City of Light. Light draws
+the spirits, and though spirits reach other points of Mars, the
+centralization of Light here, draws most of them to this side. The
+Martians are not immortal. They vanish in time.
+
+"'As reincarnated all spirit becomes young but nourishment has undergone
+a change. The physiological process is singular. I need not dwell upon
+it. Evaporation replaces defecation. Love enters the Martian world, but
+it has lost much of the earthly passion. The physiological effects are
+also different. There are no children here.
+
+"'We live in the tropical regions mostly of Mars, and the polar and
+north temperate zones are empty. The natural Martian races are found
+more plentifully there. They are strong and small and work under the
+supervision of the supernaturals. They are like the earthlings and eat
+meat. Our food is bread and fruit. Our language does not lend itself to
+composition; it only sings. Literature, as we knew it on earth, does not
+exist here. The natural Martians have tales and stories and plays and
+some books. These things no longer interest the supernaturals. Our life
+is quite simple, almost expressionless, except for the power of our
+music. The souls from different parts of the earth recognize each other
+and converse in human language, but, unless practiced, it is forgotten
+and our euphonies take its place. I have used my earth language with a
+friend and still speak English well.
+
+"'We have art here, but it is almost wholly sculpture and architecture
+and design. Color, except in glass, does not greatly please the Martians
+and there are few painters. They survive from other worlds, but cannot
+secure pigments, and draw only in black and white for the most part.
+They are cartoonists, as we would say, on the earth. But we grow fruits
+and flowers, the former in varieties and richness unknown upon the
+earth and the latter in delicate tints with blues and yellows, the only
+primary strong tints the Martians admire.
+
+"'Mechanical invention is discouraged, except as it assists astronomy.
+Astronomy is the great profession. Cars, railroads and conveyances, as
+you say on earth, do not exist. We walk or sail and float upon our
+canals. Our industry is agriculture and building. Architecture is
+studied and advanced beyond all you have ever known on the earth. Mars
+is filled with beautiful cities. Its whole government consists in a
+council at the City of Scandor, from which representatives issue to its
+various departments. One is here in the City of Light. His motives are
+always just. There are no parties, for there are no policies. Life is so
+simple. Beauty and knowledge only rule us. Character, as you, as I, knew
+it on the earth, does not exist. There are no temptations, and we live
+as children of Light, in a sort of childhood of feeling, with great
+gifts of mind. But even living is noble. There is indeed rivalry. Yes,
+envy is with us. We worship God in great temples in services of song.
+Sermons are never heard.
+
+"'In this city the great designers live, also the men who work at the
+deep problems of life and thought and matter; and the sculptors. It is
+the next largest city to Scandor. Scandor is far away. I never saw it.
+Glass work is done here and throughout Mars. Making the blue metal which
+you see, quarrying stone and ore and coal for the smelters and glass
+factories, the fabrication of dress material and fabrics for houses,
+making our boats and canal ships, cutting down the forests in the
+Martian highlands, cultivating fruits and flowers and the great wheat
+fields are the chief industries, and there are lesser lines of work, as
+the potteries and the instrument makers.
+
+"'There are no industries in the City of Light. It is employed as I told
+you. Its population is constantly changing, for spirits like you are
+reincarnated here, and these new multitudes come and go. To-morrow, the
+ships on the canals will carry many away. The spirits, as you did, when
+they enter the city, wander as they will; they enter the houses, the
+workshops, the laboratories, everything in obedience to their
+instinctive choice. The people of the City of Light are therefore
+largely engaged in caring for them as they fall into bodily forms,
+clothing, feeding, housing them.
+
+"'Each householder and all citizens report to the Registeries what
+spirits have come to them, and whence they came, and the great diversion
+and entertainment of our people is to listen to the stories of other
+worlds, which these new arrivals bring. Memory does not survive long
+and they soon forget their past history. It is best so, except in
+fugitive and dreamlike fragments, unless they are great.
+
+"'According to their desire or aptitudes, the spirits are sent away when
+Martianized to the different parts of Mars, and many stay here with us
+in the workshops and laboratories.
+
+"'Besides Music, the people of Mars delight in recitation, and in the
+City of Scandor I hear there are great theatres or public places where
+recitations and concerts and even noble operas are held. Many of these
+are brought to us by great spirits from other worlds, their own works in
+poetry or prose or music. In Scandor there are great orchestras with all
+the instruments we had upon the earth, and the paper, Dia, is published
+there, which is read everywhere in Mars. There are few books, no schools
+in the common sense. The thinkers have assemblies and there are
+announcements and explanations of discoveries.
+
+"'Our life in many ways is like the life on earth, but less active, more
+contemplative, and sin and money-making are almost absent. The wicked of
+all sorts have one fate; they are fired off the planet. We can overcome
+the attraction of gravitation by our Toto powder. These executions are
+strange to earth eyes. You will see them. The Toto powder is also a
+motive power.
+
+"'We have a medium of exchange, silver, and there are rich and poor with
+us, but no poverty. There can be no armies nor navies. The government
+carries on extensive works of improvement and keeps the canals and pays
+its laborers. The government supports this City of Light and the people
+here are paid for the number of spirits they care for and assist.
+Happiness reigns on Mars, but it is a pensive happiness. We never,
+because of the singular physiology of our bodies, can know the
+boisterous and passionate joys of earth, neither do we know many of the
+ills of the flesh. We have sickness and there are accidents. We have a
+death, but it is like evaporation. We decline again after a long life to
+the spirit stage and vanish. So there are partings here, and the old
+sadness of the end as on earth; but the gaiety of children, the ambition
+of youth, the devotion of parents is unknown.'
+
+"His voice sank, he bent his head upon his hands, and a sort of tremor
+ran through him, and when again he looked upon me his eyes shone with
+moisture, and the hot tears ran down his cheeks. Memory might be
+fleeting on Mars, but the loved ones of the earth were yet remembered,
+and the abysses of the eternal void of space could never be crossed by
+the wave of speech or recognition. This was the pathos of the Martian
+life.
+
+"I was shown by him, as the slowly arising sweetness of fatigue showed
+itself within me, to a bedchamber of charming simplicity. The graceful
+bedstead of the blue metal was covered with snowy covers, curtains hung
+at the windows also white. The furniture of the room was of a sort of
+pale, red wood obtained in the great Martian forests where the trees
+known as the Ribi grow, whose leaves and flowers have a pink tint, which
+in seasons of fruitage is more intense, and present enormous areas of
+extraordinary beauty.
+
+"This room was at the top of one of the many branching wings of this
+composite astronomical laboratory. To reach my room we walked through
+hallways all illuminated with the phosphorescent glowing balls while the
+radiant patterns in the walls shone also with a pale beauty. These balls
+possess a wonderful lighting power and besides their self-illumination
+can be stimulated into the most intense brilliancy by electric currents
+with which the Martians are profoundly acquainted. The electrical
+displays on Mars surpass description and the waves of magnetism I am now
+utilizing to send to you these messages are ten miles in amplitude.
+
+"I fell asleep, quickly lulled into an almost death-like slumber by the
+cadence of innumerable fountains. Near the _Patenta_ is the Garden of
+Fountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was the
+plash and rivulous current of these water courts that brought on sleep.
+
+"I awoke when the Martian dawn was coming on. Slumber had given me the
+last reassurance of identity of body, and I awoke with a delightful
+sense of health and youth. I stood at the wide window near my bed and
+gazed out upon the yet luminous City of Occupation. The picture was of
+surprising strangeness and beauty. Far off, until melting into the
+encroaching edges of an outer blackness, the City extended its folds and
+surfaces of light. The streets were empty, the music of the Chorus Halls
+stilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets,
+a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thickly
+leaved trees and the firmament shone with the larger stars, beginning to
+pale before the rising sun. As the sun rose higher, the effulgence of
+the City died away, the light of the same great orb which brings the
+dawn to you, covered with its rays the white and glorious City, the
+music seemed again revived, and from the doorways of the houses I could
+see forms issuing, while far off the Hill of the Phosphori raised its
+glass domes in the air, where the homogeneous tide of spirit was
+undergoing differentiation, as we might say, into separate cognizable,
+discreet beings. An unspeakable delight filled me. I felt the power of
+mind and with it the radiant energy of manhood."
+
+No more words came. The message ended. Not a motion or sound succeeded
+this wonderful trans-abysmal dispatch.
+
+Well, here, at last, was the long expected, impossible, amazing reality.
+When I had deciphered the last word, when I had it borne fully in upon
+me, the significance of it all, I turned to the one natural effort to
+answer this Martian communication. I sent out from the battery of our
+transmitter the longest wave of magnetic oscillation I could emit. The
+message was simple: "Have received all. Await more. Transmission
+perfect."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Again for weeks I watched the station. My assistants relieved me, and
+amongst them was now included Miss Dodan. It was only a few days after
+the Dodans found me at the register, absorbed in receiving my father's
+message, that Miss Dodan called. She ran toward me at the open door of
+the station, her face fixed in an anxious expression of half-alarmed
+expectation.
+
+"Did you really, Mr. Dodd, hear anything? Is it true that something came
+from your father. Oh, tell me, can it be possible?"
+
+I took her clasped hands in my own, looked into her face and told her
+everything. She was the first visitor to the station since the day of
+the marvellous experience. My assistants had promised secrecy, which I
+reinforced effectively by doubling their salaries. I felt I ought not to
+have revealed this thing to Miss Dodan, and when in the first impulse of
+confidence everything so unwittingly passed my lips, I took her arm in
+mine and walked out upon the broad plateau toward the opposite end
+where our smaller experimenting station had been built.
+
+"Miss Dodan," I said, "I am going to ask a great favor of you."
+
+"Yes," she answered, half musingly, for the tremendous fact I had
+related had half robbed her of her consciousness of passing things.
+
+"I want you solemnly for the present to promise me not to reveal the
+strange thing I have told you. It would hardly be believed. No, I am
+sure it would be laughed at, and I would become in the eyes of everyone
+a foolish, impossible dreamer. This would give me a deep sorrow. My
+father's name would be dragged into the mire of this common ridicule.
+You revered my father."
+
+I bent more closely over her, I felt her breath upon my cheeks, her eyes
+seemed fixed in mine, and then I did what I had never done before, I
+kissed the lips of a woman and it was also the lips of the woman I
+loved. There was no resistance, no withdrawal; a tremor--was it
+pleasure?--seemed to disturb her for a moment and again I kissed her.
+This time with a quiet effort toward release she separated herself from
+me, and while I still held her hands, our walk stopped and we faced each
+other, just where looking westward the spires, and flocking houses of
+Christ Church came fully in view.
+
+"Miss Dodan," I began, fearful to use her first name through a
+reluctance that was itself the expression of the deep love I bore her,
+"Miss Dodan, I may for some time yet be engaged in this now imperative
+work. I cannot, you know, now leave it. It is the most marvellous thing
+the world has ever known. It means so much to me, indeed to us all.
+These messages are erratic--fitful. I have now waited for weeks for a
+renewal of these strange communications and there is nothing. But in the
+midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment
+me. I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you all
+the devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment
+that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant
+to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now
+to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an
+instant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait,
+until the depthless power of my love for you can be made clear."
+
+I would have sunk upon my knees in the abasement and passion of my
+desire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her arms
+about my neck and placed her head where--well, I am no connoisseur in
+love scenes--but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gave
+her heart to me.
+
+We passed back in silence, and when she left me the fluttering
+handkerchief that had so often waved back its salutation on the winding
+distant road was now in my hands, and its signals sent by me came to her
+from the plateau. It was the simple pledge of our mutual love, a pledge
+that even now as I prepare these last pages of a manuscript that is a
+testament to the world, soothes my pain and renews the happiness of that
+day, forever and forever lost.
+
+The next message came a few days after my interview with Miss Dodan. It
+was a rainy day in November--the spring time of that Southern land. The
+register was heard by one of my assistants, Jack Jobson, a man who had
+unremittingly taken my place when I was absent, and who seemed more than
+anyone else dazed and wonder stricken over the experience we had. He
+came running to me, a wild terror in his face, exclaiming, "It's going
+again, sir. Hurry! It's running slow." I sprang upstairs, and before I
+had reached it heard the telltale clicks. It was not altogether a
+sheltered position, and as I reached the table I felt the bleak and
+chilly air penetrating the crevices of the window, a raw ocean breeze
+that in a few instants crept through my bones. But I was again
+unconscious of everything; that marvellous ticking obliterated all
+thought of earth, its affairs, accidents, dangers, loves, hopes,
+despairs, all forgotten, swallowed up in the immeasurable revelation I
+was about to receive.
+
+The second message began at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of November
+25, 1893, two months exactly after the first. Its very opening sentences
+I failed to get. It lasted late into the morning of the next day. The
+strain of taking it was somehow singularly intense upon me. I was taken
+from the table the next morning unconscious. I had fainted at the close.
+It began, as I received it, a few opening sentences having been lost:
+
+"...was sent to you I was in the City of Light, and now I am in the City
+of Scandor.
+
+"The morning of that wonderful night in which I became a flesh and blood
+Martian, strong and young and beautiful, dawned fair. My friend came for
+me, and we went together to the great 'Commons' of the Patenta, a superb
+hall where all the professors, investigators, and students in the great
+Academy sit at many tables. This huge dining room is at the center of
+the group of buildings which make up the Patenta. Corridors lead into it
+from the four sections of the Patenta, and as we entered, from the
+different sides there were many men and some women taking the ivory
+chairs at the side's of the long tables of marble, on which rose in
+beautiful confusion of color crowded vases of fruits.
+
+"Surrounding the room are niches instead of windows, and in each niche
+one noble symbolic figure in white or colored marble.
+
+"Light fell in a torrent of glory through the faintly opalescent glass
+compartments of the ceiling, from which, at the intersection of the
+broad and long rafters of blue metal, hung chandeliers formed in
+branching arms with cup-like extremities, and holding spheres of the
+omnipresent _phosphori_.
+
+"I stood a moment with my companion at the entrance of the great dining
+room, and watched the groups and individual arrivals, as they assorted
+themselves into companies or engaged in some short interchange of
+greetings. It was a very beautiful scene. The faces of all were
+wonderfully clear and strong, and in the commingling of forms, the bold,
+intellectual features of some, the more rare, delicate outlines of other
+faces, the flowing of the graceful tunics and robes, the pleasant,
+musical confusion of voices, with the quick, glancing movements of
+attendants, the heaped up chalices and baskets, vases and broad
+spreading plates of fruit, the many carelessly arranged and profuse
+bunches of radiant flowers in tall receptacles of glass or alabaster, in
+all this, with the strong, simple architectural features of the Hall,
+the eye and mind and senses seemed equally stimulated and satisfied.
+
+"Amongst the glorious throng my companion pointed out to me many of
+those great men and women whom I seemed to know by their writings and
+portraits when on the earth. At one table sat Mary Somerville,
+Leverrier, Adams, La Place, Gauss and Helmholz; at another Dalton,
+Schonbeim, Davy, Tyndall, Berthollet, Berzelius, Priestly, Lavoisier,
+and Liebig; here were groups of physicists--Faraday, Volta, Galvani,
+Ampere, Fahrenheit, Henry, Draper, Biot, Chladini, Black, Melloni,
+Senarmont, Regnault, Daniells, Fresnel, Fizeau, Mariotte, Deville,
+Troost, Gay-Lussac, Foucault, Wheatstone, and many, many more. At a
+small table immediately beneath a dome of glass, through whose softly
+opaline texture an aureole of light seemed to embrace them, sat
+Franklin, Galileo and Newton. It would be impossible to describe to you
+my amazement at the astonishing picture.
+
+"It almost seemed as if the air vibrated with the excitement of its
+impact and use, as these giant minds conversed together. Endowed again
+with youth, scintillating, brilliant, the flush of a semi-immortality
+impressed upon their faces, which again bespoke the eminence of their
+intellects, in picturesque and effective, almost pictorial groupings,
+this wondrous gathering filled me with new rapture. My comrade led me to
+other branching halls similarly occupied. Chemists were here
+conspicuous--Chevreuil, Talbot, Wedgewood, Daguerre, Cooke, Fresenius,
+Schmidt, Avogadro, Liebig, Davy, Berthollet, and many, many more.
+
+"It formed an equally striking scene. I turned to my companion and asked
+him how it was that the mathematicians, chemists, physicists,
+astronomers, were so crowded together. He said, 'The Patenta covers,
+with all its buildings, a space about one mile square, and here in
+laboratories and in the great observatories these men have flocked
+because of a sympathy in their tastes and talents. Although astronomy is
+the great profession, and, as I will show you, the marvels of the
+Universe are being more and more fully known, yet the study of the
+elements and the laws of matter is popular and also followed
+unremittingly. It is true that we know these people are from your earth;
+they have reported all that to the Registeries, to whom I will soon
+conduct you; they yet retain strong memories of the earth, though it is
+confined more largely to knowledge than to experience. In some, the
+Martian life and habit has almost obliterated their earthly notions and
+designs. It is singular that of the scientific workers of the earth the
+astronomers, physicists, and chemists alone reach Mars. The biologists,
+zoologists, botanists, geographers, and geologists rarely are booked at
+the Registeries as coming from the Earth. Their lives may be prolonged
+elsewhere, they seldom reach us.
+
+"'There are some exceptions. The plants of Mars are numerous, its rocks
+and animal life curious, and they are well understood. A few doctors
+from the earth are here, but medicine and surgery are not so much
+needed, yet in the study of life our philosophers have made great
+strides. Your thinkers and poets, artists, composers, dramatists,
+musicians, come here, but of all the wonderful students of Nature the
+earth has produced, as far as I know or have heard, Lamarck and Agassiz,
+Owen, and Cuvier alone have been reincarnated on our globe. And the
+warriors and generals of the earth are unknown here.'
+
+"We had reached a table unnoticed, unheard. There was a constant rush of
+words about us. The melodic charm of the Martian tongue, like the soft
+vocalization of Italian pleased me. If the Martians are without books
+or papers, they possess all the resources of conversation. Animation,
+pleasure, salutation, cheerfulness and joy was everywhere, the perfume
+of flowers filled the air, the shafts of sunlight broken into the most
+enticing iridescence filled the great noble rooms with lovely colors,
+and the clear white tables, beautifully spread with fruit, seemed to
+chasten appetite into something ethereal and rare.
+
+"As we stood an instant at our places the people arose, and from some
+distant and concealed place, so situated I afterwards learned, as to
+gain access to all the dining halls, there came a swell and burst of
+jubilant music. It was so fresh and free and bewitching in its glee and
+ringing cadences, so consonant and accordant with the glad and
+illustrious feeling of the place and time, that my heart seemed to leap
+within me; and then it softened, and changing into notes of melodic
+gravity, ended in a splendid outcry of soaring, piercing notes--the
+salute to the morning. Long after the voices had finished, the rolling
+notes of an organ continued the loud outburst.
+
+"As we sat down, the conversation was again resumed and I noted then the
+singular clearness and suavity of this Martian language. I must hasten
+my narrative. I have so much to tell you. We ate the great cereal of
+Mars--the Rint--a delicious food, in which, as it seemed to me, the
+substance of a sort of rice was mingled with a creamy exudation in all
+of which was enclosed the flavor of the orange and the peach. This, with
+a fruit, a kind of milk, and many wines, forms the nourishment of the
+Martians. The fruits are most various, and every hidden or patent fancy
+of the gourmet seems elicited or satisfied in them. I cannot now
+describe them even if I recalled them. One commended itself to my taste
+strongly, a sort of nodular banana, holding a fragrant nucleus, like a
+large strawberry immersed in a savory juice, and coated with a rind
+stripped from it by the hand. It is of most stimulating qualities. It is
+called Ana.
+
+"Few implements are in use; the Rint is taken in short spoons and the
+fruit is usually manipulated with the fingers. The milk and wine are
+drunk from the most ingeniously devised and ornamented glasses, napkins
+of the Tofa weed are used, a pale green cloth, and large bowls of
+acidified water in which floats a morsel of soap are served at the end
+of meals. Great variety prevails, and individual fancy, taste, desire,
+or invention sway as with you on earth.
+
+"The breakfast over, the companies arose and moved out in clusters and
+trains to the avocations of the day. Many of these workers in the
+Patenta have houses throughout the city, while others living singly
+congregate in the numerous apartments, and enjoy these commons. The
+extraordinary assemblage I saw here is repeated in the other great
+communal halls where the artists, philosophers and inventors congregate.
+But the Halls are of quite different construction in each quarter of the
+City.
+
+"Accompanying or associated with these Halls are the Courts of
+Announcement and Recreation. Here lectures, conferences, entertainments,
+are given, and the people of the City flock in droves not infrequently
+accompanied by numbers of the new Spirits who here are often enabled to
+gain their final solidification; '_Gell_' as the Martians say.
+
+"My companion led me out of the Hall. Men and women were moving slowly
+in various directions and as we made our way over the campus and between
+the many noble buildings I saw many of the lambent spirits half emergent
+into fleshly shapes accompanied by the watchers, who are in great
+numbers in the City, carrying over their arms the white and blue dresses
+with which to clothe them as the spirits fall into solid forms.
+
+"Amongst these buildings I easily noted the marvellous observatories
+where objectives twenty feet in diameter are used with which the
+astronomers actually discern the life of our earth. The reports they
+make from week to week of their inspection of the Solar system, and of
+the commotions, changes, births and demolition of Stars, are the
+sensations of Mars. These Reports are read aloud in the Halls of
+Announcement and Recreation. But astounding beyond belief, they
+photograph the surfaces of these distant bodies, and report in moving
+pictures the disturbances of the cosmic universe. No wonder that the
+whole Mind, as it were, of Mars is concentrated on the fabulous results
+of their cosmic studies.
+
+"We descended from Patenta Hill in an avenue that led between the white
+columned houses with their spheres of Phosphori and their umbrageous
+squares around them. It was a season of flowers, though I understood
+that by the use of fertilizing injections the number of flowers in a
+shrub and even in an herb can be here greatly multiplied. The windows of
+the houses were open and their sills crowded with blossoms. The use of
+the red blossoming vine was strangely extravagant. In many cases it had
+thrown its branches over an entire house, clambering over the roof and
+encircling the phosphoric cage, so that the white house was dissected by
+its twigs and tendrils, while the red honeysuckle flowers depended in
+clusters from the walls, the roof gutters, and the light house globes
+above them.
+
+"The Court of the Registeries was a long low structure made of the
+prevalent white stone with a roof of what seemed to be red copper. It
+was built upon one of the canals which here enter the city and formed
+one side of a long pier or dock to which and from which interesting
+little boats were constantly approaching and as constantly departing.
+
+"A hum of business and everyday work surrounded the place, and it seemed
+refreshing to note the stir and bustle of affairs. Streams of people
+were entering the Court as we arrived. They were inhabitants and
+watchers bringing the new incarnations to the Registeries to have their
+origin recorded if they could recall it. Indeed many spirits fail
+utterly to remember their former condition, and happen, as we might say,
+upon Mars, unexplained and inexplicable. They even are without speech
+and learn the Martian language as a child learns to talk.
+
+"We pushed in with the jostling crowd, and even as I entered I could
+hear the murmurous chant of the Chorus Halls, borne hither-ward on the
+morning wind. It now seemed a long time, although but one day apparently
+had elapsed since I sat, a trail of luminous ether, undergoing the
+strange process of materialization.
+
+"How incredible it all was, how incomprehensible. I pinched myself until
+I could have cried out with pain, and at that very instant a voice
+saluted me, calling me by name and a rushing figure encountered me. I
+stood transfixed. Before me was Chapman, the mechanic, workman, and
+photographer for Mr. Rutherford, in New York in the seventies, a man
+whom I knew well, from whom I had learned much, and whose skill helped
+so largely in the production of Rutherford's negatives of the Moon. My
+repulsion was over in an instant. I clasped him heartily. It seemed so
+good, so human, to embrace something in this strange world. An equal
+resistance met my own. We were indeed substance.
+
+"'Mr. Dodd,' exclaimed my old acquaintance, 'are you here? This is
+wonderful. Have you just become one of us? What luck! what a great
+providence for me! I am in the observatory. Must sail to-morrow to
+Scandor to report a sudden confusion in Perseus. They call it here
+_Pike_. You shall go with me. I have a long leave of absence I will show
+you many marvels. And you can tell me everything about Tony. He was a
+baby when I knew you.' Turning to my smiling companion, he spoke in
+Martian, of which to give you some semblance I cipher these words: 'Aru
+meta voluca volu li tonti tan dondore mal per vuele vonta bidi ami.'
+
+"I returned Chapman's hearty salutation. I yet retained the human speech
+of earth and I was struck with the miraculous incident that in the
+planet Mars, in a populous city, I was addressing a friend in the
+English tongue.
+
+"But the joy of it was inexpressible. Oh, the sweetness of old
+acquaintanceship in strange, and as here, impossible surroundings! I
+gazed on him with unspeakable curiosity. I talked to him just to hear my
+own voice and his in response, to realize if words were still words with
+the old meaning, if the intangible mutation I had undergone was a
+reality, if I was indeed alive, if my lungs and throat, the
+configuration of my mouth, the vocalic impact of the air, was a fact, a
+sound, a meaning, or whether it all was some phantasmagoria, beautiful
+and fair indeed, to be dispelled with a shock of annihilation.
+
+"No! we were breathing, sensate things, were human kin and kind. The
+sudden vertigo sent me throbbing, like a stricken animal, against the
+high pillars of the room we had entered, and a reflex tide of emotion
+swept over me in a storm that shook me with convulsive sobs.
+
+"My companion handed me a black wafer. I took it, it dissolved, a
+fierce acridity seemed formed in my mouth, and in an instant I felt
+strong and bold.
+
+"The Registeries were offices in the alcove-like openings in the sides
+of this very long building. In the same building were the Courts, which
+are few, and here the rooms for the reception and storage of supplies
+for the City. The Hall of Registeries is prolonged into a series of huge
+buildings extending along the walls of the Canal.
+
+"I was led by my unknown friend and Chapman to one of these recesses on
+which I recognized a globe of our earth with its continents in relief.
+Here upon simple tables were spread great bound books made up of thick
+creamy leaves of white paper. These were the Registers. The original
+home, planet, world, or star, from which each emigrant spirit had
+departed was, as far as possible, determined, and appropriately
+recorded. The details of their lives were inquired into, the condition
+and history of the sphere they had left examined, and thus by the
+revision and comparison of these narratives the history of the various
+worlds was in a fair way known, almost as accurately as their present
+inhabitants knew them.
+
+"The alcoves of the Registeries were really ample rooms. Cases holding
+voluminous records were ranged upon their walls; maps, charts, even
+paintings and drawings, as made by the arriving spirits hung upon the
+walls, and in broad albums were gathered the portraits, in small size,
+of the incarnated persons. The Registeries were young men who, from long
+intercourse with the affairs and occupants of each of the different
+extra-Martian bodies, whence spirits came, had become familiar with
+their languages and circumstances and avocations.
+
+"The keeping, indexing, compiling, illustration, of these extraordinary
+records is a difficult and inexhaustible task.
+
+"The results are often reproduced to the Martians in lectures,
+bulletins, or in sections of the great newspaper Dia.
+
+"The young men approached us as we entered the room, and after saluting
+my guide and also Chapman with the Martian cry, Tintotita, led me to a
+chair, and giving me one of the black wafers, whose acidity had a short
+time before so vigorously renewed my consciousness, began their inquiry.
+
+"The photograph of each visitor is taken, and a process quite like our
+collodion or wet process is used. The portraits are more permanent than
+with the perishable dry plates. It is a curious thing to learn that for
+100 years these records and pictures have been taken, and that there
+are on Mars hosts of unidentified spirits, who entered its wondrous
+precincts before that time.
+
+"The duration of life in Mars is very various. There seems here an
+undiscovered law, and a group of observers in Mars are to-day trying to
+penetrate this mystery. It is asserted that there is evidence that
+Egyptians of the ante-Christian epoch are to-day living in Mars, but
+their identification is now almost impossible. On the other hand, it is
+a fact ascertained and recorded that in one hundred years many Martians
+die, while others scarcely survive the ordinary limit of our human life
+on earth. This gives a great interest to Martian society. Here for ages
+have possibly flown disembodied spirits from our earth; in their
+reincarnation they have assumed the features and faculties of youth;
+they have also, under changed conditions of life, and moderated
+functions and activity in living, been physically, perhaps mentally,
+modified. Their own memory of their past on Earth, however vivid, and
+then in exceptional beings, has slowly disappeared or left only vague
+cloud-like waverings and congeries of reminiscences.
+
+"So that great human souls that have entered Mars in the early centuries
+of our earth's historic periods may be living here almost unrecognized.
+They have drifted into occupations suitable to their genius in some of
+the many great cities, and no vestige of their past remains. The system
+of the Registeries is scarcely a century old, and while now from the
+marvellous industry and persistence of the investigators, the great ones
+of the neighboring worlds, and even the most obscure are in some
+cognizable way identified, yet from the long ages before that there is
+almost no authentic registration.
+
+"This is more to be regretted as the law of life on the planet might
+then be better formulated. Essentially it seems necessary for existence
+here to be in unison with the conditions; contentment means longevity.
+Of course, the remarkable men and women I saw at the Patenta were all
+well known. They had made themselves known, and not only were their
+earthly names and lives put down on the pages of the Registers, but all
+their knowledge had been as inquisitively and scrupulously impressed.
+Nor is this all. From many worlds and earths there is flowing constantly
+to this planet new, strange, wonderful beings. Here is a cosmos of
+races, tastes, nationalities, destinies, civilizations, and instincts,
+from whose amalgamated and fused vortices of tendency this marvellous
+life has been formed.
+
+"However completely the mere memory of detail vanishes, the traits of
+nature remain, and these mingling beings present a kaleidoscope of
+contrasted or blending talents. But union of beings comes in here as in
+our States to combine all together and create this unique expression of
+social beauty, tenderness, scientific power, progress and spiritual
+exaltation. Marriage is here as with us, and love holds its deathless
+sway among the white and noble Martians as on earth, while the affection
+of friendship seems to weave every atom of society to every other atom
+in a social texture over which only moves the refining powers of thought
+and aspiration.
+
+"Mars does indeed seem a sort of Paradise, for it is quite certain that
+the best, the truest, the deeper and emphatic souls come here; and while
+a sort of sin or social incompatibility is found here, and there are
+crimes, and while death and sickness and accidents occur here, as I have
+told you, yet these things have a moral or mental, rather than physical
+expression. At least, in a great measure, and they are rare. No!
+accidents of matter pertain to Mars; its materiality is complete. As I
+send this to you I feel my warmth, the heat of my body, the expiration
+of my breath, the movements of my eyes, the beating of my heart, all,
+all, these bodily phenomena seem unchanged--their physiology is changed,
+their corporate reality seems the same, their corporeal consequences
+are different. But I cannot explain clearly this to you. Do I know it
+clearly myself?
+
+"I was questioned by the Registeries, both of whom had come from the
+earth, though in them, as in all the less highly endowed, memory was
+fading. Because of this, Registeries quickly succeed each other, since
+the later arrivals from the other worlds are better adapted to elicit
+the information needed from the new spirits. And this applies to other
+worlds, to Mercury and Venus, etc., whose Registeries are, so far as
+possible, appointed from previous occupants of those spheres.
+
+"The larger, far larger percentage of spirits come from the three
+planets, Mercury, Venus and the Earth; but there are singular
+inexplicable arrivals from distant stars, and of these the records are
+in many instances of extraordinary wonderfulness. I must not pause to
+recount this. I know it very imperfectly.
+
+"My examiners had little to do. My memory seemed of great power, and I
+told them the story of our experiments, discoveries and our compact to
+communicate with each other. This portion of my story was listened to
+with admiration. Chapman, my guide, and the two Registeries leaped to
+their feet, exclaimed with delight and embraced each other in ecstacy.
+'At last! At last!' cried out all of them, while hastily calling
+officers of the building to them they rapidly explained my singular
+announcement. It seemed to run like fire through the throngs. A great
+crowd was soon pressing in upon us on every side, while the Martian
+ejaculation '_Hi mitla_' rang in all directions. I was astounded. What
+was this strange excitement, and why had my simple tale awakened this
+fierce commotion?
+
+"My guide noting my dismay and alarm, laughingly explained the reason of
+the confusion. 'For years and years,' he said, 'it has been hoped by the
+Martians to send some message to the Earth. We understand wireless
+telegraphy, we can bridge almost infinite distances with the monstrous
+waves of magnetic disturbances, it is possible for us to generate. We
+have bombarded the earth with magnetic waves, but no response, no single
+indication has been returned to us that our messages were received. Our
+knowledge of the earth language is complete, even our knowledge of the
+telegraphic codes is partially so. But we have hopelessly repeated, are
+even now repeating these efforts.
+
+"'You, my friend, are the first man from Earth who tells us that
+wireless telegraphy is understood upon Earth, that receivers have been
+invented; but above all it amazes and transports us to know that you
+have perfected means, before leaving the Earth, to have such messages as
+you may deliver from Mars properly received. There is, though,' he
+exclaimed, as he turned to the eager, shining faces about me, 'still a
+grave doubt whether our good friend can assure us of the ability of the
+_Earthlings_ to send us back any communication. They may be unable to
+force through this enormous distance waves of sufficient magnitude to
+reach us.'
+
+"There was a loud murmur of disappointment, mingled with exclamations of
+dissent and reproach. Once more I was plied with questions, and then, my
+son, there came to me, singularly clouded in forgetfulness until that
+instant, the memory of that fruitless message which we received about a
+year before my death on Earth.
+
+"I arose, and amid a hush of expectation excited by this motion,
+accompanied as it were with a gesture inviting silence, spoke aloud in
+English:
+
+"'My friends, I recall a night in August, 1890, in the Earth's
+chronology, when my son and myself, then hoping against hope that the
+carefully adjusted receiver we had, would ever be called upon to herald
+a message from another world, were suddenly surprised to see and hear
+the register of our instrument move and sound. It was indeed animated
+by some extra terrestrial power. Could that power have come from your
+Mars; were we the first to receive one of your messages that you have so
+long been raining on the Earth?'
+
+"I looked around in enthusiasm, and with a conscious sense of
+companionship, pride and affection. I do not think I was altogether
+understood, except by a few, but the contagion of my own pleasure seized
+the multitude, and a great melodious shout arose, while cries of '_Hi
+mitla_' echoed in the Hall, and then, carried away with an emotional
+impulse, these excited Martians broke into a song, a swinging chant,
+that brought to the doors of the room new accessions of spectators whose
+instantaneous sympathy was expressed by the added volume of sound they
+contributed, until beneath the vibrant power of the great chorus the
+building seemed itself to tremble.
+
+"And then a curious and astounding thing happened. My old acquaintance,
+Chapman, leaped up in the dense clusters, and springing on a table
+shouted, 'To the Patenta.' The words seemed understood by almost all. I
+was seized by powerful arms, swung upon the shoulders of two splendid,
+vigorous youths. While by one impulse the throng surged through the
+doors in a sort of triumphal progress, I found myself moving in the
+midst of the excited populace up a broad avenue to the central hill of
+the city again, which was crowned by the many towers, halls, domes and
+aggregated arms and facades of the wonderful Patenta, the great communal
+home of Experiment and Observation.
+
+"The clamor of our approach brought to the scene the dwellers in the
+houses and the wanderers in the streets. And amongst the great density
+of forms and faces I saw the phosphorescent figures of many forming
+spirits swept on in this friendly anarchy of delight and anticipation.
+
+"My son, as I send these words out into the ether-filled realms of space
+across the millions of miles that intervene between that speck of light
+on which even now I know you lament my departure, and this new home of
+mine, which to you also is but a speck of light, I feel in a desperation
+of doubt that you will never hear them.
+
+"How thrilled and awe-struck I became as I gazed around me, and looking
+over the surging mob beheld their multitudinous lineaments, the faces of
+the races of our earth, its many nations, the faces of men or women who
+had lived in Venus, in Mercury, in the fixed stars, perhaps, as we call
+those globes from whose lambent surface light reached the earth after
+the expiration of a century of years. What a beautiful exhilaration of
+feeling it imparted, these flushed and shining faces, the liquid eyes of
+the south now charged with the fires of transporting expectation, the
+steady gaze of blue-eyed northerners firm and rapt and steadfast; the
+power of huge, colossal frames of muscle, the sinuous activity of spare
+and slender forms all attired in that consummate garb of blue and white,
+their caps of metal reflecting the light in cerulean lustres.
+
+"On, upward, we moved, impelled by an impulse quite indefinable but
+sufficient to condense about us by its contagion the Martian populace,
+quick, responsive, inquisitive, intelligent and excitable as children.
+We were approaching the Patenta by an ever widening avenue, our rustling
+approach announced by a chant of vociferous and yet melodious notes.
+
+"The avenue of Approach is known as the _Imprintum_. On either side rose
+lines of marble columns, their lofty capitals crowned with statues,
+their bases clustering with marble groups, while breaking now and then
+the white monotony, spiral and intertwining pillars of colored glass
+sprang into the air, like titanic tropical vines holding in extended
+fingers the balls of phosphori.
+
+"The pavement we trod was made of blocks of the phosphori, and at night
+this magnificent, indescribable and transcendent street becomes a path
+of flame, showering upon the files of silent marble statues above it the
+splendor of this spectral effulgence.
+
+"As we came near the buildings of the Patenta our outcry and the
+sonorous pulsations of the singing brought to its windows and doorways
+the many workers in the laboratories, lecture halls, and offices. We
+were regarded with wonder. But there seems present amongst these people
+a telepathic power, not perhaps what we call that in the Earth, but an
+intuitive construction of meaning upon the passing of a word or a hint.
+Forerunners furthermore had given some account of the strange new spirit
+from the Earth, who had prearranged with people on the Earth itself, to
+return to them, if possible, messages of his experiences after a human
+death. It had been the dream of the Martians, the sensation of their
+daily lives, the hope of returning to their former dwelling places, some
+token, word, salutation, indeed to somehow begin that almost apocryphal
+conception of binding the Universe into a conversational unit.
+
+"No marvel that they were now excited, transported; no wonder that I,
+the accidental being, who falling in their world, as it were, from
+outside, should be the agency to lead to the eventual conquest of these
+great designs.
+
+"On we swept like a tide that advances upon a coast, encompasses each
+salient rock, island and projection, and evading it by embracing it,
+rises still further into the bays and harbors, and brings the full tide
+at last to its most remote limits. So columns and stairways, halls, and
+wings, and arms, of buildings successively were surged round, and the
+vast complex pushed its way to the great Hall of Attention.
+
+"This enormous structure was built somewhat to one side of the great
+Observatories. It was rectangular, elevated and attained to by stairs on
+every side. It resembles a huge Grecian temple, but the interior
+treatment was quite contrasted. Externally it was made of the white
+phosphorescent marble with colonnades of columns of the blue metal
+supporting its projecting roofs. I was carried as by a cataract of
+waters up its stairways. Already its bronze gates were swung wide open,
+and through them the Martian army passed with impetuous stride. Learned
+men, the leaders and great physicists, many of those I had seen in the
+morning had reached the Hall. These were constantly augmented by new
+arrivals from the more distant Schools of Philosophy, Design and Art,
+while streaming in at every door came the joyous multitude, and the
+great vault of the Hall of Attention resounded with the rolling chorus.
+
+"It was a moving, an impossible spectacle. The balconies swept upward
+to a wall of polished granite. They were supported by columns of mosaic
+marble; the floor of roughened glass was concealed with benches of a
+gray stone, whose backs were carved in a tracery of branches, over which
+were thrown pale yellow rugs or shawls; the broad ceiling was divided
+into deep, rectangular recesses _plafonded_ with opalescent glass, and
+these recesses were made by the intersection of huge girders of the blue
+metal, while provisions were made throughout for electric lighting by
+tall glass cylinders, which glow like pillars of lambent flame, and
+stood upright, affixed to the walls at regular intervals, or concealed
+in cavities along the ceiling, or grouped like the fasces of the Roman
+lictors, at the railings of the balconies.
+
+"A wide platform occupied the center of this vast auditorium, and upon
+this I was carried as by a wave of the sea. Here I touched the floor;
+the accompanying crowds dispersed through the hall, which became filled,
+and as it filled some unnoticed signal ushered the glow of the electric
+ether in the cylinders, until a glory of radiance mingled with the
+sunlight and illuminated the audience, whose songs had died away, and
+who sat in attitudes of attention, their faces upturned, their blue
+caps shining resplendently, like a surface of tempered steel.
+
+"I stood alone with my former guide, and Chapman. I felt moved by some
+singular enthusiasm; the exaltation of the moment possessed me, and
+unannounced, as yet unquestioned, I rose to my full height upon a narrow
+rostrum in the platform, and turning from side to side spoke with an
+elation that seemed to propel my ringing words over the great assembly
+with the power and shock of a trumpet:
+
+"'Men and women,' I cried, 'I have reached your wonderful world from
+that habitation of mortal men known to many of you as the Earth, where
+death ceaselessly destroys generation after generation, and only the
+incessant processes of birth as quickly renew the falling ranks of life.
+To us on earth, the disappearance of those we love and cherish, the
+sundering of ties which a lifetime of love and companionship has
+established, the sharp vanishing away into nothingness and silence of
+the faces and spirits of the great and glorious, the good, the helpful,
+the true and noble, has made death an awful, hideous, to some a hopeless
+mystery.
+
+"'We stand on earth speechless before the unseen power which snatches
+from our caresses all that we most cherish, all that makes our life
+there worth living. There is no solution of the mystery, no voice, no
+return, no message, only a blankness of doubt, misgiving and desperate
+yearning in those who must continue. There is indeed with those on Earth
+a partial confidence by reason of religious faith, but strong as that
+seems to be, the endless succession of centuries, each crowding the
+viewless habitations of the dead with the still more and deeper streams
+of disembodied souls, unaccompanied by any response, any utterance or
+return, limit or telltale apparition, has somehow filled all minds with
+a creeping wonder if even the assurances of Revelation can be believed.
+
+"'Dying on the Earth may have continued in historic, and what is called
+prehistoric time, for over 50000 years, and yet from those unnumbered
+millions not a cry or a whisper, note, or vision, is heard or seen to
+betray their destiny, if destiny beyond the grave there is.
+
+"'But back of Religion, back of experience, back of rational doubt or
+infidelity, the heart keeps up its importunate cry of hope. We dare not
+crush out within us the sweet thought of reunion. Upon that earth I lost
+a wife, who summed up to me everything of value, virtue, and beauty
+human life can claim. The passionate desire to regain her, the defiant
+mutiny of my heart against any thought of her annihilation, made me
+turn to the shining hosts of heaven for reassurance. In them somewhere I
+believed the vanished soul of my companion had flown. This wonderful
+world was known to me, and what the wise men of the Earth said of its
+possible population. It was then that with my son I devised, following
+certain suggestions, a system of wireless telegraphy. We have both, my
+son and myself, felt certain that some disturbance was recorded by our
+instrument from some planet beyond the earth. From that moment my son
+and myself felt convinced that we might be permitted to bring about a
+release of the inhabitants of the Earth from the narrow limits of its
+own surface, and launch out upon the spaces of the universe the messages
+that would return to us with some news of other worlds, or bring
+assurance that the Death of the world was but the swinging door to some
+new existence.
+
+"'Men of Mars, that Death which tore from me my wife set his seal at
+last on me, but before the summons was executed, I had made arrangements
+in every possible detail to communicate with my son. We agreed upon a
+cypher, and I have so imprinted each measure of our compact upon my
+memory that all of it is as clear to my mind as it was before I left the
+Earth. Give me possession of your great instruments, let me bridge the
+millions of miles to our earth, and in an instant stir the populations
+of the Earth into fierce attention, so that from now on through all the
+coming years you Martians shall speak with the people of the earth and
+again from Mars, as from some relay station, messages shall pass outward
+to the stars, and thus from planet to planet the reinforced utterance
+may pierce the universe of worlds.'
+
+"I finished; a great shout arose from the immense multitude; with one
+impulse the light blue metal caps were swung from their heads and tossed
+upward, while the cheers passing out into the streets were caught up,
+and in refluent waves of sound rolled back upon me like the murmur of a
+distant storm at sea.
+
+"I do not think I was quite understood, but the chief feature of my
+speech was realized, and the Martians, quick to respond to any
+suggestion, and inflammable of nature, had become enthusiastic over the
+prospects of this new revelation.
+
+"I stood an instant uncertain what I should do, or what new development
+would follow my evident popularity. Suddenly a strong, ringing voice
+spoke from the gallery immediately in front of me. It said--I could not
+quite separate the speaker in the moving throng: 'Come to the _Manana_.'
+
+"Chapman and my friend whispered together 'Volta,' and then turning to
+me told me to follow them. I followed. Already the hall had become
+partially emptied, and we pushed onward amongst radiant men and women,
+who received me with smiles and gestures of approval. Once outside the
+Hall of Attention, we hurried through some narrow corridors, up winding
+stairways, until at length we emerged upon a lofty platform carrying a
+railing about it, and so elevated above all the surrounding buildings of
+the Patenta that my glance seemed to sweep the circuit of the City, and
+swept outward over a rolling and low country through which ran wide
+mirror-like ribbons of water, the great canals of Mars, while afar off
+melting into the crystalline hazes of the horizon rose dark masses of
+mountains.
+
+"I stood an instant stupified and overcome. The deep voice of a
+salutation came to my ears, and turning I saw the face of Volta. Beside
+me was a large induction coil, and above it two huge plates of copper
+about ten feet apart. The next instant a flash passed between the
+electrodes, and I was caught and turned aside with my companions. The
+light of the spark was intense, and the spark itself of great
+dimensions.
+
+"Volta then spoke: 'My friend, your arrival on the surface of our planet
+is a sensation. We are all delighted. You have solved our difficulties.
+With this transmitter you can yourself send to the earth the message you
+wish. And this receiver will catch the waves of the smallest
+amplitudes.'
+
+"He pointed to a singular train of tubes, each filled apparently with a
+shining line of straw shaped metallic bodies. This was raised by some
+silk cord passing to a pulley and arm, perhaps a hundred feet above us.
+
+"Volta spoke with difficulty; he seemed preoccupied, and after I was
+shown the transmitter, and its mechanism was explained, he took my hand
+warmly, pressed it between his own, and then speaking in the Martian
+tongue to Chapman, left us.
+
+"I then sent you, my son, my first message. What pleasure! The great
+sparks flashed magnificently. Chapman and my friend were in ecstacies. I
+worked steadily until the night. And when all was over I waited until
+the stars came out, until again the City of Light shone like some huge,
+myriad faceted stone, and then there came, while Chapman and my friend
+stood mute beside me, your faint response.
+
+"I scarcely caught the lisping ticks, but they came, and it seemed
+indeed as if the power of the Creator had passed into the hands of men.
+
+"With a joy too deep for the futile hopelessness of words to express,
+we both descended from the high station and through the great halls. I
+found my way to the charming, peaceful room above the glowing city and
+fell asleep with prayers upon my lips for all the dead and dying upon
+the Earth.
+
+"The next day as I awoke I found my friend and Chapman waiting for me. I
+felt wonderfully refreshed, and the exultant mood of the Martians
+possessed me. I sang with an interior tumult of excitement. I drew
+before my mind the beauty of your mother reincorporated in this gay,
+lovely world of Mars, so full of power and light and youthful impulse.
+Again I sang, and it was the very air your mother so often played to me,
+'Der Grüne Lauterband,' of Schubert. A few passers by, below my window,
+caught the refrain, my voice rose higher and higher, and their
+disappearing figures seemed to carry the merry, hopping notes far away.
+How fair and glorious it all was!
+
+"And I was to visit Scandor, to visit the beautiful Martian country, the
+mines, the huge fossil ivory deposits, to sail on those canals, whose
+resplendent lines we had detected from the earth.
+
+"My door was shaken, and almost as if yet living on the earth, I cried
+out 'Come in.' Chapman and my friend entered with laughter and
+congratulation. Chapman spoke first: 'Dodd, you are summoned to the
+Council of the Patenta. All are anxious to see you. At present it is
+hoped you will not push further the matter of the telegraphy with the
+Earth. The disturbances in Pike increase daily--flashing stars seem to
+emerge from nothing, meteoric showers, like a rain of sparks rush across
+the fields of the telescopes, gaseous disengagements from what seem like
+shining nuclei, shoot upward for thousands of miles from their surfaces;
+all is chaos, and these disturbances have been noticed in other regions
+of the heavens. Again spirits have ceased arriving at the Hill of the
+Phosphori, the Chorus Halls are almost empty, and the singers have no
+employment. Such a dearth of spirits has not been known before for
+months. It is not uncommon for long intervals to occur when only a few
+spirits arrive, but now there are none.
+
+"'The Registeries report that many lately reincarnated spirits speak the
+languages of Venus and Mercury, and tell of the terrific physical
+convulsions in both planets, that wars are raging in Mercury, and a
+singular plague devastating Venus. The country people have sent in word
+by the canals that rockets in clusters covering hundreds of square miles
+are arising from Scandor. The cause is unknown, cannot even be
+surmised, and last night Herschell and Gauss, at the big telescopes,
+detected a comet charging towards us with an incredible velocity. The
+Council believe I should at once start for Scandor to bring the month's
+report, and these new excitements, to the paper Dia, while they urge
+that you should recount to the governors at Scandor your story, and the
+marvellous fact of the answer sent back from the Earth to you by your
+son. We will go, after an audience with the Council, together, and
+because of some need of more stone from the quarries, we will stop on
+our way out and leave orders at Mit and Sinsi, where the quarries are.
+The trip is full of beauty and wonder, and Scandor, I am told, is Heaven
+itself.'
+
+"He paused. I thought there was a shade of disappointment in my friend's
+face, as Chapman drew me to one side, and I stepped quickly back to him,
+and said: 'Will you not go with us, too? You first cared for me and
+brought me food and raiment.' His eyes were again bright with peace.
+'No, my new friend, I cannot go now. I am waiting, waiting here at the
+City of Light, watching the spirits, if perchance my son from your earth
+is amongst them. Surely he will come some day, and then my happiness
+will be all God can make it.'
+
+"We hurried away to the Chamber of the Council. Once more through the
+devious paths of the great groups of buildings which make up the
+Patenta, between the flowering trees and the tulip flowered vines we
+made our way, with feet so buoyant and so strong that we seemed almost
+to fly.
+
+"The Chamber of the Council of the Patenta was a beautiful room. It was
+one of the few great chambers in the City of Light, dressed in color and
+tapestries. A deep carpet of scarlet Talta wool covered the floor, and
+there hung at irregular intervals from a silver cornice deep green
+curtains. The furniture was very wonderful. A dark wood, like teak,
+opulently fitted with silver, formed the great table that occupied the
+center of the room, as also the heavy chairs on which were placed
+cushions of a golden yellow silk. There were no windows in the room. The
+light entered from above through two simple round apertures covered with
+white glass. Book cases stood about the room filled with large folios,
+which, as I observed from a few spread upon the table, were not printed
+books, but filled with writing in a round, clear hand, legible at some
+distance.
+
+"But the most extraordinary feature of the room was a marvellous
+colossal figure at one end of the room, in a recess richly hung with
+green tapestries. It was cast in silver upon which dull shades and
+frosted and polished surfaces were appropriately combined, as their
+position required, in the portrayal of a Being of incredible benignity
+of expression, attired in flowing robes with an outstretched hand, his
+face invested with a harmonious union of power and sweetness. Beneath it
+upon the enormous black pedestal the letters in silver were
+conspicuous--Tarunta--the Deity. This amazing creation arrested the
+attention of my friend Chapman, and myself, and we stood half
+spell-bound under the influence of its seraphic and potent beauty.
+
+"The next moment we were conscious of the throng filling the room. There
+were many of the great physicists and chemists and astronomers and
+observers whom I had seen at the breakfast in the Dining Hall the
+previous morning with a few others who were the first men I had seen in
+Mars wearing the expression of age. They almost seemed venerable. I
+remembered then what I had learned on my arrival at the Patenta--that
+age and death also supervene in Mars.
+
+"I was observed at once, and friendly hands were extended to me from all
+sides. I was led to the head of the table. There I was invited to
+enlarge my story as given in the Hall of Attention, and I was told to
+tell it in English. A scribe near me conveyed to pads of paper my
+narrative.
+
+"When I had finished an audible murmur of approval filled the room, and
+the most aged of the older men arising, and speaking in Martian,
+translated to me by the scribe, said:
+
+"'My friend, you have delighted us. The time is approaching when we can,
+I trust, receive such visitors from all the worlds, and gradually bring
+it to pass that the visible universe may be bound together through the
+power and sympathy of language. The Council desires that at present you
+refrain from sending your second message until you have visited Scandor,
+and seen something of this new world upon which you have so auspiciously
+alighted.
+
+"'Heroma (Sir, Sire, etc., etc.), Chapman will accompany you. The
+government at Scandor should be apprized of certain strange celestial
+conditions, and we are in receipt of news that at Scandor also unusual
+things are happening. While all we know or have observed could be
+transmitted to Scandor, and all their own knowledge in turn sent to us
+by wireless telegraphy, for reasons which we are not at liberty to
+explain at present, it has been thought best to send the approved diary
+of the Patenta to the government, and also learn in return, by word of
+mouth, what has transpired at our capital. It will afford you some
+opportunity to visit the Martian Mountains, and be more informed for the
+second message you are expected to transmit to the Earth when you
+return.'
+
+"After a few salutations, in which interview I found myself face to face
+with the reincarnated forms of some of the greatest scientific thinkers
+who have lived upon our globe, I left the Council Chamber with my friend
+and Chapman, to prepare for our coming journey. It was then that I
+entered more deeply the City of Light, and saw the unspeakable splendor
+of the Garden of the Fountains.
+
+"The Garden of the Fountains lies over toward the great Halls of
+Philosophy, Design and Invention, whose domes and temple-pointed roofs
+of copper and blue metal I could easily discern. It covers over half a
+square mile of space. It is supplied with water from an enormous lake
+resting in the hollow of an extinct volcano, fifty miles to the east of
+the City of Light, at an elevation of 5,000 feet. A great conduit or
+water main, as we would say, conveys the water to the garden. The Garden
+is built actually upon piers of concrete and stone, connected by arches
+of brick, and through the subterranean chambers, thus formed, the
+division of the streams is made, and there controlled. The whole was
+designed by the great Martian artist, Hinudi, whom some aver is the
+reincarnated Leonardo da Vinci of our Earth.
+
+"The Garden is approached through a labyrinthine avenue made up of
+Palms, which on that side of the City seem to be plentiful, and over
+these palms in extraordinary profusion the vines of the red flowered
+honeysuckle. You cannot see beyond the wall of green on either side in
+this winding way, and only as you gaze upward does the eye escape the
+imprisonment of its surroundings, where above the waving summits of the
+palms you see a lane of the bluest sky.
+
+"As you draw near the debouchment (into the garden) of this oscillating
+road, the splash and roar of falling waters invades your retreat. And
+then suddenly as if a curtain had arisen or dropped to the earth you
+emerge upon a great marble terrace of steps, and before you is spread a
+forest of geysers distributed in entrancing vistas in a lake of tumbling
+and scintillating waters. The scene is amazing and transporting. Rushing
+jets of water are enclosed in hollow pillars of glass, whose lines are
+ravishingly combined in the separate clusters of fountains.
+
+"The heights of these fountains vary from 150 to 200 feet, and they are
+arranged in a peculiar disorder, which, however, conforms to an
+elaborate plan. The water rises in these colored tubes in green columns,
+then breaks into sheets and bubble-laden cataracts of spray above them,
+pouring far outward like blazing showers of little lamps in the full
+sunlight. Many of the tubes are inclined, and the ejected shafts of
+water collide above them, producing explosive clouds of shattered
+vesicles of moisture that float off or drop in miniature rains over the
+lake. This wildness of fountains extends over many a mile. All the jets
+are not in tubes. Many uncovered fountains are interjected amongst the
+glass pillars.
+
+"The pillars vary in form, and have much diversity of aperture, so that
+the water shoots from them in every posture and form. It makes a
+bewildering picture. The exposure of water in the great lake or pond
+which holds these fountains is broken with waves, and the tempestuous
+scene with the constant excitement of the rising and flowing avalanches
+of water creates feelings of abounding wonder. The marble steps extend
+around the lake, and behind them on all sides rises the wall of the
+palms, beaten into motion by the wind blowing ceaselessly. The
+esplanade-like margin between the top step and the palm enclosure
+accommodated great numbers, while the benches in retreating alcoves,
+were also filled.
+
+"It was a varied, exhilarating scene. The moving throngs, the wonderful
+confusion of the spouting fountains in their chrysalids of glass against
+the sky line, the perpetually waving fronds of the palms!
+
+"We hurried to the pier of the Registeries after Chapman had secured the
+sealed envelope, in which were placed the communications to the
+government at Scandor. The canal which enters the City of Light at this
+point is divided into a number of branches whose confluent arms, about a
+mile from the City, unite into two parallel canals whose course we were
+now to follow to the City of Scandor. The small boat we entered was a
+curious vessel of white porcelain, broad and short, with raised keel,
+prow, and expanded stern.
+
+"It was moved by some motor, electric in nature. A pilot took his place
+at the bow, and, under a canopy of silk, in the light of a setting sun,
+followed by the music of the City, we passed away from the City, which,
+even as we left it, slowly, in the descending darkness of the night,
+began to kindle into light, and send upward into the velvet zenith its
+phosphorescent glows."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+"It was afternoon when Chapman and I, fully equipped and provisioned,
+moved off from the long granite pier at the Registeries, after an
+affectionate parting from my guide and friend, who returned sorrowfully
+to resume his watch for his son, whose coming to Mars seemed to him so
+assured.
+
+"How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed! Down the crowded
+canal we slowly moved, amidst the calling crews, the pleasant cheers,
+and beckonings of sightseers; and back of us rose on its hills the City
+of Light, that, as we passed still further away, and watched it in the
+fading sunset, began to glow, and finally, to shine like some titanic
+opal in the velvet shadows of the night.
+
+"These numerous arms of the canal some miles from the City coalesce and
+merge into the enormous trunk canal that passes on to Scandor through
+hills and mountains and the plain country, excavated by the wonderful
+Toto powder. This trunk canal is doubled; upon one member, the boats
+pass outward to Scandor, and on the other the boats return. Branches
+pass north and south at centers of population, and of some of these
+which pass actually into the frozen depths of the polar countries, I may
+tell you later.
+
+"As we slowly progressed into the undulating plain country, with its
+villages and farm lands, diversified by woods, and sometimes solitary
+projections of rock, as the stars stole urgently into the sky, as the
+phosphori lamps began their soft illumination of the decks, and while
+murmurs of songs from merrymakers on the land came to us in snatches
+bewitchingly, though incongruously mingled with the delicious odors of
+the Napi grass, I turned to Chapman, and felt that now, throughout the
+hours of the genial night, I would pour out unchecked the flood of
+inquiry that had risen again and again to my lips in this strange new
+life.
+
+"'Chapman,' I began, 'you must feel that I have a great deal to ask you.
+This new life, with its surprises and the strange incidents of the two
+or three days I have already lived here have suggested so many
+questions, can we not now talk about these marvels?'
+
+"'Certainly,' replied Chapman, as he lifted a glass of delicate pearl
+pink, filled with the pungent and keenly stimulating _Ridinda_, to his
+lips. 'Put on your thinking cap, and perforate me with all the puzzles
+you can think of. I am a trifle rattled myself in this new ranch--have
+not been here long--but I tell you, Dodd, Mars is first class. It suits
+me. Never enjoyed living so much, never found it so much a matter of
+course, and as to livelihood, when I think of those freezing nights on
+the earth in Rutherford's cheesebox shooting at the moon with wet
+plates, I can tell you this sort of thing isn't a long call from all I
+ever hoped to find in Heaven. Open your batteries. To-morrow will be
+full of sight-seeing, and I guess you will forget all you want to know
+to-day in trying to remember what you will see then.' He took another
+sip of the snapping liquid, drew his chair closer to my own, and while a
+sort of musical echo lingered in the air, I began:
+
+"'Chapman, where on Mars are we? I seem to feel neither heat nor cold. I
+see these flowers, the palms in the Garden of the Fountains, day passes
+into night, and there is no very apparent change of temperature, so far
+as feeling goes. What are we made of? Is this new body we carry
+insensible to heat or cold? I feel indeed my pulse beat. I am conscious
+of warmth in the sun, and of coolness in the shade. I feel the wind blow
+on my cheeks, but all these sensations are so much less keen than on the
+earth, and yet again I realize that sensations are in some ways as vivid
+as on the earth. The pleasure of my ears and eyes is wonderfully deep
+and exhaustive, the sense of taste rapid and delightful. I am happy,
+supremely happy, and affection, even the hidden fires of love, burn in
+my veins as on the earth.' Chapman looked at me with that bright smile
+he wore on earth, and his gestures of expostulation were amusing. 'Wait,
+Dodd, don't talk so fast. You remember I had a slow way on the earth. I
+have no reason to think it will prove any less pleasant to stay slow on
+Mars. One thing at a time. My own sense of position is not so secure
+that I can tell exactly all you want to know, and there are a good many
+things that the heavyweights up here don't pretend yet to explain. Now,
+where are we? Well, the City of Light is about 40 degrees south of the
+Martian equator, not so far from what on earth would be the position of
+Christ Church, where you "shuffled off the mortal coil." Don't frown.
+Mars is a serene, sweet place, but I am not yet so intimidated by the
+lofty life here as to drop my jokes. Some Martians strike me as a trifle
+heavy in style, just a suggestion of a kind of sublimated Bostonese
+about them, don't you know. Curious! However, the ordinary Martian is
+gamy, good company, full of happiness, with a considerable fancy for
+jokes, absurdly addicted to music, and as credulous as a child. Somehow,
+Dodd, a good deal of my earthly nature has stuck to me, and I revel in a
+dual life. I have my Martian side, but I can't, and this life can't,
+knock the old foibles of the world you left, out of me yet. I may get
+the proper sort of exultation in time, but just now I've imported
+considerable human horse sense.'
+
+"He looked at me whimsically; I walked away, and watched the receding
+city.
+
+"The motion of our white boat was so smoothly rapid, that soon, and
+almost unnoticed we had threaded all the many lanes, windings, and locks
+that led to the broad canals some twenty miles from the city. We had
+passed laden barges, flat and storied boats carrying excursions or
+freight, and trains of smaller craft crowded with fruit brought in from
+distant farms for the great population of the City of Light. The scene
+assumed a fairy-like unreality as night settled down, and the boats
+swarming with light, or else carrying a few red lanterns, passed us
+while their occupants or owners chanted the lonely lullaby of the
+Martians, which begins: 'Ana cal tantil to ti.'
+
+"It was yet to me all a wonderful dream, from which each moment I
+dreaded awakening. It was all so beautiful!
+
+"I sat again with Chapman under the canopy, talking of the earth.
+Strange Mystery! Here we were with our earth memories yet vivid,
+recalling incidents of life in New York City, and summoning amid all the
+appealing charm of this strange new life, the little, sordid variances
+and trials, vexations and minor sufferings that had marred his own life
+on earth. We turned to these things, not because they were grateful or
+pleasing to remember, but because it seemed to _establish_ us, or rather
+me, to give me identity, and build up the growing certainty that I had
+come from the earth, and was re-embodied in this new sphere of active
+feeling and experience.
+
+"I told him of you, of the death of your mother, of our flight to New
+Zealand, our experiments, the Dodans, and then turning to him, as we saw
+the Martian moon rise in ruddy fullness far away over the hill of
+_Tiniti_, I said, searchingly: 'Chapman, you remember Martha? How
+beautiful and good she was! I have kept one long, sad, and still
+deathless hope in my repining heart. I shall see her again! It must be!
+I have felt so certain of this that no argument, no appeal to reason,
+can drive away the keen sense of its realization. Have you seen her on
+Mars amongst the thousands you have met, and is there on this entrancing
+orb any other place than the Hill of the Phosphori, for the disembodied
+of other worlds to enter this new world?
+
+"Chapman smiled. 'Yes,' he answered, 'I remember your wife very well. I
+could pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet in
+the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion,
+and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings
+have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing
+skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; it
+may yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accounts
+told me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at different
+points; many indeed have been received near Scandor, and on one or two
+occasions the prehistoric peoples, the little strong men of the
+mountains and the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that
+has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And
+quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood
+might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious
+practices, not to say superstition. But look, how fair the night has
+become.'
+
+"The landscape about us was wonderfully illuminated by the two
+satellites, Deimos and Phobos, which, as you well know, were made known
+to astronomers on the earth by Prof. Asaph Hall in 1877. What a
+marvellous spectacle they presented, moving almost sensibly at their
+differing rates of revolution through a sky sown with stellar lights.
+The combined lights of these singular bodies surpassed the light of our
+terrestrial moon, by reason of their closeness to the surface of Mars,
+while the more rapid motion of the inner satellite causes the most weird
+and beautiful changes of effect in the nocturnal glory they both lend to
+the Martian life.
+
+"We were sailing in a broad river-like canal, perhaps one mile or more
+wide. On all sides the undulating ground, covered with cultivation,
+varied with thick patches of trees, with here and there shining lights
+from villages and isolated homes, carried the eye onward to a rising
+hill country, beyond which, again, silhouetted against the shining sky
+where Phobos began to rise mountain tops were just discernible.
+
+"Deimos, the outer moon, was already shining, and its pale, sick light
+imparted a peculiar blueness impossible to describe upon all surfaces it
+touched. Here was the phenomenon we witnessed with increasing pleasure.
+Phobos was emerging from a cloud and its yellow rays possessing a
+greater illuminating power, mingled suddenly with the blue and spectral
+beams of Deimos and the land thus visited by the complimentary flood of
+light from these twin luminaries seemed suddenly dipped in silver. A
+beautiful white light, most unreal, as you mortals might say, fell on
+tree and water, cliff, hill, and villages. The effect was not unlike
+that instant in photography when a developing plate shows the outlines
+of its objects in dazzling silver before the half tints are added, and
+the image fades away into indistinguishable shadow.
+
+"It was a print in silver, and while we gazed in mute astonishment the
+sharp shadows changed their position as Phobos, racing through the
+zenith, changed the inclination of its incident beams. The effect was
+indescribable. I walked the deck in an agitation of wonder and delight.
+Chapman, to whom the novelties of this Martian life were still
+wonderful, followed me, and was the first to speak.
+
+"'Dodd, you know that the strangest thing about this whole place is your
+body. It's body all right enough, but I can't quite understand what sort
+of a body it is. It hurts in a way, and is pleased in a way, but it
+seems a better made affair in texture and parts than anything we
+possessed on earth. Exertion is so easy.'
+
+"'Well, Chapman,' I answered, while my eyes rested on the water, through
+which an approaching barge rose like a vessel of frosted or burnished
+white metal, 'we were taught on the earth that, with gravitation reduced
+one-half, the same weight on Mars would seem only half as heavy as on
+the earth, and that the effort which there carried us eight feet would
+here send us sixteen.'
+
+"'It is true,' returned Chapman, 'but that doesn't explain everything.
+We sleep less here, we scarcely touch meat, and yet exertion, prolonged
+by hours, scarcely accelerates the blood or vexes the nerves, and
+generally we don't grow old. Our bodies are light; the texture,
+apparently firm and resisting, is somehow diaphanous. I've seen the
+light through the palm of my hand. And then again I haven't. Somehow
+mind works in the body here and changes it, and changes it different at
+different times. Why, Dodd, the other day at the Patenta, a student
+jumped up with a cry of delight at something, and stumbled and fell from
+a window to the ground, but he stood up without a bruise or hurt of any
+kind. His exultation, his emotional excitement made him buoyant, I
+think, and he fell to the earth like a thistledown. There was no
+concussion.'
+
+"'Well,' I responded, 'I cannot tell. I know very little as yet. I feel
+wonderfully active and vitalized. My senses are acute. I see further,
+hear further, smell further than I ever did on earth, and it even seems
+to me I can anticipate things. The nerve currents are so rapid, the mind
+seems so persuasive, that coming events are registered by a prophetic
+feeling I can scarcely describe. For that reason, Chapman, I grow
+happier every minute, for now I see approaching that great joy, my
+reunion with Martha, the one great divine event I hunger and hope for.
+
+"'Well,' said Chapman, as a cloud covered the scudding moons, 'I do hope
+you may see her, and somehow I think, too, you will. But, Dodd,' the
+moons emerged, and the lower one was in transit across the face of the
+upper, 'I must call your attention to this strange peculiarity of our
+bodies, that we undergo extremes of temperature with almost no
+noticeable sense of the great heat or cold. This region we are
+traversing is about the latitude of Christ Church, as I told you, and it
+is the period of harvests, and the heat is moderate, but in the height
+of summer the heat seems scarcely more felt than now, and in the
+clothing I am now wearing, I have sailed through the ice packs of the
+North, and slept thinly covered in its snows, but without undue
+discomfort. I tell you, matter in us, and flesh and blood in us are all
+differently conditioned.'
+
+"'Why not ask these questions of the wise men of the Patenta, the
+doctors and chemists?' I replied. 'I can think of an analogy that might
+make this Martian constitution intelligible. A close, dense body
+conducts heat or cold; a loose, open texture or cellular mass does not.
+In our curious embodiment from spirit the substance of our bodies is an
+etherealized matter, loosely, I might say, flocculently, disposed, and
+while it conveys sensations of a certain tone or key of vibratory
+intensity, it will not respond to any violent or coarse shocks. They
+simply cannot be carried. They escape us. Are the people all alike
+amongst the Martians?'
+
+"'Oh, no,' returned Chapman, who pointed to the widening spaces in the
+beams between the slow Deimos and the fleeter flying Phobos, 'there are
+great differences. I have seen that. In materialization some seem badly
+put together, and these resemble our former terrestrial bodies. They
+grow old, they succumb to disease, they feel changes of weather and they
+have less vitality. Yes,' and he drew nearer, 'it is these unhappy
+misbirths in this spirit land who retain the sin of earth and cannot
+survive and get the _Kinkotantitomi_ or irreverently, as the earthling
+would say, the grand bounce. They are fired off the planet.'
+
+"He paused and laughed. How strange this almost human laugh sounded, and
+yet how pleasant! I looked at him with a deep affection. He noticed the
+impression, and quickly drawing me to him, said half timidly:
+
+"'Dodd, that sort of laugh and those words of mine just used, are not
+Martian, they don't belong to these rarefied beings here. They have a
+human or earthly taint, and they frighten me. I seem so lonely
+sometimes. My stray fun which I once enjoyed on earth must somehow be
+forgotten here. I feel so irreverent at times, so full of horse play,
+but I must keep up the high key and act like the rest. Indeed for the
+most of the time I feel as they do, I suppose, but sometimes that sort
+of ribaldry and feelings of the ludicrous that made us joke, and prank,
+and cut up in genial companionships come over me, and I am suffocating
+with a glee out of place to this exalted society. Ah! it's good to feel
+you, my friend, so fresh and new from earth. It's promised here in the
+learned talk I have heard, that those who disappear from Mars become
+reincorporated upon earth again, if they belong there. Well, I wouldn't
+mind if I got returned, wonderful and sweet and happy as all this seems.
+The dear, dear old Earth!'
+
+"He flung his arms around me, and our faces met, as if we had been lost
+brothers. A sort of terrifying melancholy invaded me. I was so distant
+from all I had known and loved, so distant from the surges we had
+watched from our observatory at Christ Church, so distant from the life
+of heat and clothing and genial domesticities; the life even, it might
+be called, of the daily paper, the novel, the new book, the life of
+politics and human history, and conventionality, the life of ups and
+downs, of sickness and health, of individual enterprise, of routine and
+mechanical fatigue, the life of exertion, contrast and social
+inequality, with its picturesqueness, its incessant interest, all this
+was now utterly removed by all the measureless leagues of icy space
+between me and the floating planet--the old sin-stricken Earth--that was
+shining in the Martian skies, so inconspicuous and tiny--so
+inaccessible.
+
+"But my heart was pulsating audibly. If I could recover Martha, if, in
+this serene atmosphere of good will and fairness and kindness, in the
+midst of unknown possibilities of knowledge, in the company of
+enthusiastic and high-minded men and women, in this arena of scientific
+wonders, and in the joy and beauty of universal happiness and thrift and
+peace and well doing and intuition, I could find a human companionship
+in the woman whose face and nature have summed up for me the whole of
+life, if I could find her! then, indeed, this new world would be all my
+earthly home could be, and the endless future with her for guide and
+friend would lose its terror and lonely isolation, and--I dared to think
+it--even the presence of God himself become bearable.
+
+"Chapman had stolen away from me. He had stolen to the little, dainty
+rooms that were sunk in the cockpit or cabin of our boat, and I was
+standing alone in the light of the midnight moons in Mars, a waif from
+the far earth, incomprehensibly born after death into this human
+presentiment and renewal in youth, and again instinct with revivified
+passion and desire; and breathing the atmosphere of a planet that for
+years I had watched through the tube of a telescope, as a floating flake
+of celestial fire. A delicious drowsiness overcame me, and while I
+noticed the pilot was changed, his place being taken by another, and
+that we were approaching a ridgy or disturbed country, I found my way to
+the white couch prepared for me, and sank into a deep and dreamless
+sleep.
+
+"The morning of the next day was clear and beautiful. Shall I ever
+forget that first approach to the mountains of Tiniti, where Mit and
+Sinsi, the villages of the quarries, are located. All day long the boat
+propelled through a diversified country, covered with morainal
+heaps--great hills of drift matter, heaps of worn pebbles and rolling
+plains of estuarine sediment. Much of this land seemed untouched with
+cultivation, and sublime forests of the loftiest trees covered it. The
+canal passed through solitudes, where the silence was only broken by the
+cackling laugh of a crane-like bird, marching in lines along the banks,
+or perched like sleepy sentinels amid the outstretched branches of the
+trees.
+
+"These wild and fascinating regions were often alternated by miles of
+bright plantations radiant with the yellow leaves of the Rint, bearing
+its deep red pods, while avenues of palms, not unlike the royal palm of
+the Earth, led in long vistas to clustering groups of houses, and we,
+too, caught glimpses of basking lakes on which, even as in the Earth,
+the patient fisherman in basket-like circular boats, waited for his
+flashing captives.
+
+"Then, again, there were prairie-like stretches of a sort of pampas
+waving in cloudy lines, the glistening pappus of the wild Nitoti, a
+peculiar, low composite, that grows in abundance and furnishes food to
+the strange gazelle of this latitude in Mars.
+
+"This animal, the Rimondi, could be seen in scampering herds over these
+plains, its horns making an hour glass form above its head, as they bent
+to each other, touched, and then curved outward again to reunite a
+second time.
+
+"We were rapidly moving northward, and just as it would be on the earth,
+the changing vegetation gave visible notice of our advance.
+
+"But more interesting than nature were the scenes of life along our way,
+and the custom of public worship filled me with wonder. Amphitheatres
+of stone built high above the ground, and approached by encircling
+terraces of steps dotted the country at long intervals. These, Chapman
+explained, were the churches of the people. Here they gathered from long
+distances around, and, even as he described their meaning, the
+congregations were seen assembling, while later we heard the music flung
+in waves of sound from these houses of song and worship.
+
+"Chapman did not understand the Martian faith. There seemed little to
+understand about it. It was one national expression of the love of
+goodness and of beauty, but it was all directed to a source of
+infallible wisdom, power and justice.
+
+"Thus considering the country and its customs we fell again into a long
+colloquy:
+
+"'Dodd,' said Chapman, musingly, 'we should all become as these people
+about us, and do the same things, and believe and act as they do. You
+will, but I think I remain a little strange. I seem a spectator that a
+caprice has cast upon this globe, and though I live here, I must succumb
+to a certain alienation, a lack of mediation between their life and my
+former existence, and because of this subtle estrangement, I shall
+contract disease, or meet with accident, or waste in age, while you
+shall stay young, and living, sink into the Martian life and yield to
+it a spiritual, a mental acquiescence. You will become absorbed, and,
+with your love realized, the whole rhapsodic life of this world will
+mingle you forever in its tide of song and science and labor.'
+
+"'Yes,' I answered, 'I am sure I shall. For whatever period of time I
+stay here, I am one with this beautiful and strange life. I respond
+naturally to all this serenity and joy, this precision of power over
+inanimate things; this flooded being and the dawning sense that through
+the stepping stone of Mars, I approach yet higher beatitudes of living.
+At least in Mars the sordid taint of suffering, of ignominious physical
+torture and privation, which spoiled the Earth, is almost unknown.'
+
+"Chapman laughed, and an echo gave back from some hillside its musical
+response. 'Ah, it may be, I know it is true, and yet--and yet--the Earth
+possessed a pictorial, a dramatic power in its contrasts of happiness
+and suffering, of goodness and sin. It had literary material. Its
+consecutive growth in the ages of social and national and economic
+history were so wonderful, so thrilling in interest, in the details of
+character and adventure, in the incessant panoramic display it gave of
+light and shade. And on it rested the shadow of a strange, pathetic
+doubt, the mystery of creation. Its romance, its fiction, its fable, and
+the animating picture it furnished, with its sceptics and its
+believers, its haters and its lovers, its tyrants and its heroes. Its
+wide, verbal immensity! I miss all that, or almost all. This life is
+evenly celestial, and glowing, and carelessly happy. And here knowledge
+is extreme and pervasive and omnipotent. The dear commonplaces of the
+Earth life are unknown too, the ludicrous is absent, and the sublimity
+of sacrifice impossible.'
+
+"He laughed again, and I felt for one brief, incredible instant a pang,
+too, that the blossoming, full, sensual Earth has passed from beneath my
+feet forever.
+
+"But it was past. For me nothing was left behind when Martha had gone
+before. The future for me was the pilgrimage through worlds for her lost
+face. The sum and substance of a world's growth, of the unintermittent
+and heraldic progress of the soul was union with her. And deeper in my
+convictions than science or faith or desire, lay the consciousness of my
+sure approach.
+
+"Again the evening fell. We arrived at the entrance of a gloomy and
+stupendous gorge. It was the wonderful passage driven through the first
+area of igneous rocks before we reached the quarry country of the
+Tiniti. It pierced the dark and stubborn dike that rose in sheer walls
+like the Palisades on the Hudson, 1,000 and 1,200 feet above our heads,
+and it seemed that the darkening tide was carrying us into the bowels of
+the sphere. As the precipitous walls rose on either side, a loud report,
+followed by another more muffled, startled us. Looking upward, Chapman,
+shouting '_Golki, tanto_,' with outstretched hand pointed to a flaming
+missile passing over our heads, and apparently in the direction we were
+heading.
+
+"It was a meteor. It was just such a phenomenon as we know of on the
+Earth. I felt certain that it was a bolide from space, one of those
+fiery visitors of stone and iron that collide occasionally with our
+Earth, and that somewhere before us, in the country we were approaching,
+it would be found.
+
+"Later a few straggling shooting stars appeared. The languor of fatigue
+overcame me, and I slept prostrate on the cushions of the deck as the
+murmurous reverberations from the walls of the rock-bound canal rose and
+fell, with the cadence of the waves, splashing softly against their
+feet.
+
+"I dreamt of the Earth, the pictures naturally recalled, by these
+surroundings, of my life on the Hudson River in New York, and it seemed
+so real, that I should find myself with you working away in the old
+laboratory at Yonkers near the Albany Road. Suddenly I was shaken, and
+opening my eyes I beheld the firmament of heaven falling in coruscating
+cascades about us. Starting up, I found myself clutching Chapman, who
+had called to the pilot to stop the boat. A few of the attendants were
+grouped near us, and the loudly suppressed exclamations made me realize
+that these visitations were perhaps infrequent upon Mars.
+
+"It was a meteoric shower, like our leonids in November. It rained
+pellets or balls of fire, these phosphorescent trains gleaming
+spectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall.
+Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase and
+diminish, and recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the ground
+of some meteoric mass.
+
+"It was a marvellous and splendid scene. It lasted till the dawn. We
+remained almost unchanged in position, while the tiny comets crowded the
+sky with their uninterrupted march, and the air was shot through with
+intermingled lanes of light.
+
+"As the morning broke, we had passed the great gorge in the canal, and
+had entered a wild, savage, almost treeless country. Great weathered
+columns of rock stood alone in the debris of their own dismemberment,
+the bare gray or rusty and jagged expanses sloping up steeply from the
+edge of the canal, sparingly dotted over with gray bushes, and covered
+with an ashen colored lichen.
+
+"The scene was here forbidding and desolate. We moved for miles through
+the waste of a ruined world. The whole region had been the stage of
+great volcanic activity, and the monticules of scoriaceous rock, the
+broad plains excavated with deep pools that reflected their dismal,
+untenanted borders in the black depths of unruffled water, spoke of
+meteorological conditions long prolonged and intense. It was a weird,
+strange place, silent and dead. But amongst these vast ejections, these
+truncated fossil craters were embedded masses of the rare self-luminous
+stone that made the City of Light. Chapman told me how in pockets or
+huge amygdaloidal cavities, this white phosphorescent substance was
+quarried, brought up bodily perhaps in the slow upheaval of the region
+from the deep-seated sources of this mineral flood.
+
+"The canal passed along for miles in the depression between two folds of
+the surface. Finally, gazing ahead, there slowly came into view a huge
+_rictus_, a gaping rent in the side of the black and gray and red walls
+to our right, and a minute movement of living forms, scarcely
+discernible, revealed the first quarry near the little town of Sinsi.
+
+"As we drew nearer I descried a slant incline from the open excavation
+down which the blocks of stone were slid. They were brought to the
+surface by hoisting cranes, and just as our little porcelain
+cockle-shell glided to the dock, an enormous fragment rudely shaped into
+a cubical form, was moving down the metal road bed to the edge of the
+canal.
+
+"Here we landed, and a crowd of people hailed us, and amongst them were
+many of the prehistoric people, the short, sturdy brown or copper
+colored northerners who work in the quarries and mines. It was
+nightfall. Their day's work was over, and they crowded around us with
+interest. They were good-natured, but quiet, and dressed in a kind of
+overalls that was made in one garment from head to feet.
+
+"Chapman pushed amongst them, followed by me. We made our way to a
+pleasant house, built of the quarried volcanic rock, alternating with
+the white stone of the quarry, and covered with an almost flat roof of
+the blue metal. In this house we were received by the Superintendent of
+Quarries, a supernatural, who still retained a mechanical aptitude,
+brought with him from the earth. The greetings were pleasant, and as the
+Superintendent spoke his former earth language, which had been French,
+we got along intelligibly.
+
+"The rooms of this house were large, square apartments, simply furnished
+with the white chairs, tables and couches I had seen in the City of
+Light, but on its walls were drawings and photographs of the quarry, the
+country, and groups of the workmen. Amongst the pictures were some
+wonderful large scenes of an ice country, and the lustrous high wall of
+a gigantic glacier. I pointed these out to Chapman. He told me that to
+the north of the mountains lay the great northern sea, in winter a sea
+of ice, and that from continental elevations within it glacial masses
+pushed outward, invading the southern country. A road led over the
+mountain from Sinsi to regions beyond, where there were fertile
+intervals and plains inhabited by populations of the small, early people
+we had met.
+
+"Here were their settlements, from which the workmen of the quarries had
+been brought. Beyond this again lay the margins of the polar sea. The
+Superintendent--his name was Alca--had visited this region, and probably
+made the pictures I wondered at. The Superintendent said we should visit
+the great quarry in the morning before we started again for Scandor. And
+he showed us, as the darkness descended about us, a marvellous
+phenomenon. Standing on the roof of his house, we looked up the mountain
+side to the immense opening forced in its flank, and it had become a
+great surface of palpitating, rising and falling light. The waves of
+glorious soft radiance bathed the village about us, the waters of the
+canal, and the arid crusts of rock beyond, the circle of encompassing
+darkness straining like a great black wall, on its spent edges.
+
+"Song and music closed the day, and after eating the wine-soaked cakes
+of Pintu, we made our way to the white and simple bedchamber and waited
+for the morning.
+
+"It came, fresh and splendid. The air of this latitude of Mars is so
+pure, vivid and dustless! My strength and power and vitality seemed
+boundless. And as in the broad mirror of my bedchamber I viewed my
+reflection, I leaped with wonder to see the youth I had been, formed
+anew in lineaments, fairer than Earth's. My son, I have become younger
+than yourself, age has vanished, and all the restraint of differing
+years between has vanished with it.
+
+"Alca, Chapman and myself, as is the Martian habit, walked to the quarry
+mouth, up a winding and hard stone road. This dreary and desolate region
+seemed to have a charm. Its expanse of rigid waves of stone, pimpled
+with sharp excrescences, and as deeply pitted with cavernous grottoes,
+where no life seemed able to survive, save a stunted herbage, sparsely
+assembled in vagrant groups, or gathered in thirsty lines around the lip
+of the still pools, was full of scenic interest, but more deeply
+eloquent of great geological convulsions.
+
+"Chapman and Alca were in front of me, speaking the Martian tongue,
+while I stood looking backward every few steps, delighted to trace the
+broad river of the canal winding through the desolation for miles
+beyond. Then I noticed how rapid and effortless is motion in Mars.
+Volition is so easy and penetrating, the body becomes a mere plaything
+for the mind. Every function, every part is swayed into vitality by the
+mind. There is the apparent motion of the limbs, but really the whole
+frame sweeps on as by an intangible process of translation, and the body
+is transferred to the point the mind desires it to reach almost without
+fatigue. This gives strength exactly proportioned to Will, and the shorn
+powers of disease and Time proceed from the creative faculty of thought.
+The disabling of the body in Mars by weakness or disease, or accident or
+age, sprang front a mental discord, an emotional dissonance. Here was
+the explanation of those disorders that still cling to the Martian life.
+In this lay also the secret of crime.
+
+"I looked upward to Chapman, who was then peering with hand raised to
+his eyes at some object before him which the Superintendent had pointed
+out, and I felt sorrowful that he should be in disagreement with this
+life. It boded ill. I had begun to love Chapman, and the first sense of
+suffering I had felt seemed now awakened at the thought of harm coming
+to him.
+
+"But there was no time for meditation. Chapman and Alca were looking
+backward and shouting. They beckoned with their arms, and as I gazed I
+saw between them, and ahead of them a great black object, about which a
+number of the little workmen were running excitedly like a swarm of
+ants. I leaped to their position. Chapman exclaimed: 'You remember the
+meteor we saw. Well, there it is.'
+
+"Extended like a gigantic and deformed missile lay an iron meteorite
+before us, the same thing as the Siderites that appear in your Museums
+on Earth. It was yet warm, a crevice spread down into its interior, and
+it had apparently rolled from the spot of its first impact, since a
+hammered side, abraded and worn on the hard rock, lay uppermost. It bore
+the significant pits, thumb-marks and depressions of the terrestrial
+objects, while streaming striations spread from its front breast where
+the iron in melting had run like tears over its surface. It measured
+some four feet in length, and must have weighed many tons.
+
+"Then a curious thing happened, or seemed to happen. Alca, the
+Superintendent, advanced to it, and bending against it with
+outstretched arm, muttered a few words, frowned as if in concentrated
+thought, and--was it credible--the iron object moved. I looked aghast at
+Chapman, who turned away with what I dismally interpreted was an
+expression of disgust. I pressed up close to him, and he murmured, 'Was
+that a miracle? If it was I should like to get back to common sense and
+jack-screws.'
+
+"We continued upward, and now the terrific gulf piercing the ground for
+over two terrestrial miles yawned at our feet. The steep precipice, lost
+in a twilight dusk below, was disconcerting. The blocks of stone were
+hoisted from the gigantic pit by hoists worked by hand. Here is one of
+the anomalies of this existence in Mars. Electrical science and its
+application is understood, great stores of mechanical experience and
+wisdom can be drawn on, and yet in most of the mechanical work, hand
+work, the toilsome method of the Pharaohs of Egypt prevails. There are
+no railroads or trolleys or steam vehicles. The boats are driven by
+explosive engines, and there are electric carriages of velocity and
+power. But the latter are infrequent. The canals are numerous,
+especially about Scandor, and the great trunk canals are broad avenues
+of traffic.
+
+"The intense swift motion of the Martians meets their needs in most
+cases. Where hard labor on a mammoth scale is necessary, the little race
+of _prehistorics_ serves all their purposes. The canals are their great
+engineering feats, and the wonderful telescopes, their triumphs in
+applied science, their knowledge of the transmutation of the
+elements,--their greatest intellectual victory,--and Scandor, the City
+of Glass, their architectural gem and miracle.
+
+"We stood in a line gazing upon the receding roof of the great cavern,
+the heavy walls left like buttresses to hold up the overlying mountain
+ridge, and the tiny figures dimly swarming on the distant floor.
+
+"The quarry extends far in under the ridge. Much barren rock is taken
+out, for the Phosphori rock occurs variously in masses, layers,
+lenticles, and almond shaped inclusions in the igneous matrix.
+
+"We were to descend, but before we did so the Superintendent led us to
+the summit of the ridge. From here, with a superb hand telescope, we
+gazed up a distant land beyond the volcanic area we had surmounted,
+occupied by farms and villages. It was the North country where the
+prehistorics dwelt. It seemed peaceful and attractive. Beyond this again
+we just discerned the shimmering surface of the Great Glacier, the
+superb train of ice, that comes southward in the winter, and encroaches
+even upon some of the exposed margins of the land of the prehistorics.
+Its retreat is rapid in the warm season, and its broad tract is broken
+by emergent backs of rocks and land, that are seamed with wild flowers.
+The Martians travel to these oases in the Ocean of Ice, and it is from
+these flowers that an entrancing perfume is extracted, of which the
+Martians are extremely fond.
+
+"We lingered on this pinnacle of rock and surveyed a prospect on either
+side of contrasted and great interest. The land of the Zinipi north of
+us resembled the fertile hill and valley country of the Genesee River in
+western New York, the great region south of us a combination of the
+Snake River country in Idaho, and the fissured ranges of the Silverton
+Quadrangle in Colorado.
+
+"Between these rose this high partition of castellated rock.
+
+"We descended again to the mouth of the quarry, and, led by the
+Superintendent, were swung far out from its dizzy sides into the lake of
+air between them upon a platform, used for an aerial elevator. Chapman
+clung nervously to me, and complained of a light nausea and dread. I
+felt only a tonic exhilaration, and as we slowly sank through the shaft
+of air, crossed by sunlight for some distance, and then passed into the
+cooler shadows of its deeper parts, where the yet level sun failed to
+penetrate, I cried aloud with delight, and the abyss around us shouted
+its salutation back.
+
+"Still we descended, and soon saw back in the deep prolongations of the
+tunnel the shining walls of this phosphorescent cave. The light glowed
+so effulgently that it seemed a soft radiant haze, through which came
+the sound of voices, and in it black figures moved incessantly.
+
+"The method of quarrying is not unlike that of the marble quarries on
+the earth. Drilling long holes in and under the stone, which from
+pressure has assumed a rudely cubical cleavage, separates the rock into
+heavy pieces. These holes are wedged, and the rocks forced off into
+useful blocks. All is done by hand, and the picture of activity, with
+workers constantly engaged at their various duties made a singular
+scene. We walked far into the ever deepening womb of the mountain, while
+on either hand lateral tunnels, or rather avenues had been pushed,
+penetrating rich segregations wherever they had been traced, and where
+also glowed the welcome glow of this lithic lamp.
+
+"The Superintendent explained that the stone was quite unequal in
+quality, and he told us how the illuminating power of the stone was
+actually tested in what on the Earth we would call candle powers, but
+is known on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinum
+wire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see the
+varying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixture
+of impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, were deprived of all
+luminousness.
+
+"Returning, it seemed as if in the sharp convulsions of the crust a
+flood of light had been somehow absorbed by the rock, and then this
+light-saturated rock had been overwhelmed and buried out of sight, only
+to be painfully restored to its first home, in the open skies, by the
+labor of men.
+
+"But time was pressing. Chapman must reach Scandor, his envoy's errand
+was important, and bidding the kind Alca good-bye, which the Martians
+execute by a kiss and an embrace, we came out again into the deep well,
+and gazed upward past the glistening precipices, irregular with little
+ledges, and over-reaching cavities, to the distant sky.
+
+"And now a terrible calamity befell us. The Superintendent pointed out a
+narrow path that led circuitously around the great crags of rock to the
+top. It was a narrow winding ledge, rising by a mild incline, and
+circling the pit before it finally reached its brim. In parts it was
+quite unprotected, but the extraordinary nerves of the men made the
+achievement of passing out or in the quarry by this means a very simple
+test of endurance. Even as the Superintendent alluded to its use, a file
+of dark figures was just above us, with soldierlike precision marching
+down to the level we occupied. Chapman banteringly asked me to try it,
+and I accepted the challenge, urging him to follow.
+
+"We started up. At first the ascent was simple, and the view backward
+just a little exciting. We continued, and I noticed that the path
+contracted, and nervously looking on ahead, was startled to find it
+broken with short gaps, which must be crossed by jumping. I had felt the
+vague premonitions about Chapman increasing, and somehow, by that
+intuition which becomes prophetic, in this semi-etherealized
+constitution of our bodies and minds, in Mars, I knew an impending blow
+hung over us.
+
+"I looked back and saw Chapman gravely following me. The cheer and
+laughter had disappeared from his face, the jesting gayety had fled, and
+he seemed enfeebled. I hastened to him, and he raised his face with a
+reassuring smile.
+
+"'Dodd,' he said, 'I am dizzy. I feel strangely here,' and he felt his
+forehead. 'I wonder that it is so. But come! Don't be frightened. It
+will pass over.' He pushed me from him. For an instant we stood and
+gazed around us. Far up we saw the outer sunlight beating on the barren
+exposures of the mountain, around us was black excavated rock, and below
+the shining walls, faintly blue and pink.
+
+"'Chapman,' I said, 'let us go back. The hoists will take us out.'
+'Folly,' was the answer. 'I shall be all right. Why, a Martian has no
+physical weakness or dread. Come, Dodd, you have not yet acquired the
+Martian defiance of accident, disease, or death. You are sneaking back
+under the cover of fear for me.'
+
+"His voice seemed peevish. I looked at him with wonder. He leaped past
+me, with a forced agility, and sprang on upward. I followed with
+lightness born of thought, with which the true Martians move.
+
+"On, on, we sped. The narrowing path carried us up until one of those
+gaps I had noticed came in view. Chapman stopped, and then hearing my
+approaching steps, ran forward and jumped. His calculation and strength
+were yet secure and adequate. He safely passed the first break in the
+pathway, and, as I crossed it with a wide leap, we both still sped on
+upon an even narrower shelf, which also was more steeply inclined
+about the jutting prominences of the rocky cliff.
+
+"The next gap was reached, and now the edge of the succeeding length of
+pathway was not only farther away, but higher up. Chapman, I could see
+imperfectly, because of a slim projection in my way, had reached the
+lower side, and, hesitatingly, drew backward. It was his preparation for
+the leap. He launched forward. I rushed precipitately upward, feeling
+the air about me vibrating, it seemed, with an impending disaster.
+Chapman had landed on the further side of the break, but the cruel,
+treacherous rock crumbled beneath his impact, and I saw his staggering
+form turning backward. Another instant and his descending body was below
+me, plunging to the floor of the abyss. I turned, and then, my son, I
+felt the marvel of the mind's creative power over matter. I wished
+myself at the bottom of the quarry where Chapman had fallen, and
+although the movement of the translation down the pathway seemed
+apparent, yet I was scarcely parted from him an instant before I was
+standing and leaning over him in a group of astonished workmen, at the
+very spot where he lay. He was conscious, but gravely injured. I knelt
+beside him, and as I raised his head upon my knee, he looked up, and his
+lips moved; at first he was inarticulate, but soon his words became
+audible and intelligent.
+
+"'Dodd,' he said, 'this ends me for Mars. Take the papers to the Council
+at Scandor. They are in the cabin in my desk. They are sealed. I know
+there is a celestial runaway that is going to strike this planet. I
+overheard that much at the Patenta. And its direct path, the point of
+impingement, will be at Scandor. The fires ascending from Scandor are
+signals that they, too, have divined the disaster. I think so at least!
+Hurry on! You may see the strangest phenomenon eyes have ever seen. But,
+Dodd, enough of that. I am turned down for this world. I was not in
+agreement, as the philosophers call it, and the true mental Martian
+immunity from accident was not in me. I am injured mortally.'
+
+"He groaned and tried to rise, but his crushed body was incapable. The
+Superintendent, Alca, had hurried to the spot where the crowding men
+stood around us ejaculating their amazement. Alca tore open the garment
+about Chapman, and placing his forehead on the body, poured out as it
+were, the full tide of his mental sympathy and power.
+
+"I could see the struggle between the mortality of Chapman, born of
+doubt, and his unfittedness and apathy, and the spiritual power of the
+brave Superintendent. The flame of life in Chapman would be stimulated
+or excited, and then flicker and die down. These alterations lasted but
+a short time. Soon Chapman passed into stupor, and then death
+supervened, and the strange and seldom known circumstance of death among
+the supernaturals in Mars was realized.
+
+"Alca kept the body of Chapman, which would be sent back to the City of
+Light, and cremated in the Temple of Glorification--which I have not
+seen. He intended to accompany it. He sent me on to Scandor. I had now
+learned enough of the Martian language to speak, imperfectly. That
+mental facility, which is the amazing and most wonderful thing in Mars,
+was perhaps more slowly roused in me. But daily I became known, and more
+alert and inflamed with thought and the eager intuition of the Martians.
+
+"We started from the great Quarry of Sinsi, and I was alone with the
+Martians on the porcelain boat, now made by this tragic fate the
+ambassador from the City of Light to the Council in Scandor.
+
+"The sterile, sinister and yet marvellous region of lava beds, dikes and
+conic craters suddenly was passed, and the canal moved into the huge
+forest lands of the Ribi wood.
+
+"This is a beautiful land. Mountain ranges rising from four to six
+thousand feet cross it, holding broad valleys and plains, or elevated
+plateaus between them; lakes and rivers pass through it, and villages
+and towns with a mixed population of the supernaturals and the
+prehistorics are frequent. The canals cross the great region in many
+directions. The trunk line I followed was carried up and down by systems
+of locks of astounding magnitude and perfection. Great lakes were made
+convenient feeders, and rivers were also tapped to keep the water levels
+constant in the canals. The weather was that of a semi-tropical
+paradise, and the late flowers of the Ribi filled the air with
+fragrance.
+
+"Quickly we approached Scandor. It was a clear, calm day when we emerged
+from the Ribi country, and the pilot pointed out to me the distant
+hills, almost purple in a twilight haze, which encircled the Valley of
+the City of Scandor. The country we had entered was a fertile farm
+country, where great plantations of the Rint, and vineyards of the Oma
+grapes were established, and where great flocks of the Imilta dove,
+almost the only meat eaten by the Martians, are raised. The enormous
+flocks of this snow-white bird were strangely beautiful. They made
+clouds in the air, and their purring notes when they settled in white
+blankets over the fields, were heard pulsating over long distances.
+
+"Finally we came to the last tier of locks at the summit of which my
+curiosity was to be satisfied by a view of the great City of Scandor,
+the City of Glass.
+
+"It was night when our china boat floated upon the waters of the last
+lock that completed the ascent, and immediately below the observatory
+Station or Settlement of Scandor. I was standing on the deck of the
+boat, watching impatiently the slowly rising tide upon which we were
+borne upward. I could at first see as we ascended the towers of the
+observatory station. Above me, looking at us with interest, on the walls
+of the lock, was a company of Martians. The night was cloudy, and the
+lights of the hastening satellites were but intermittently evident.
+Gradually my head passed upward beyond the obstructing interference of
+wall and gate and fence, and the glorious and unimaginable splendor of
+the City of Scandor, like some monstrous continental opal, lay before me
+in the immediate valley.
+
+"The glistening panes of water below me marked the places of the
+descending line of locks. Around me were the buildings of the Scandor
+Observatory, and to the right and left swept the forested slopes of a
+circular range which, as I later saw, ranged about in one
+amphitheatrical circuit the, great vale of Scandor. But only an
+instant's glance could be spared for this detail. The divine City
+glowing below me seemed to magnetize attention, and control, through its
+wonderfulness each wavering attitude of interest. My son, the eye of man
+never beheld so astonishing a picture. Imagine a city reaching twenty
+miles in all directions built of glass variously designed, interrupted
+by tall towers, pyramids, minarets, steeples, light, fantastic and
+beautiful structures, all aflame, or rather softly radiating a variously
+colored glory of light.
+
+"Imagine this great area of building, penetrated by broad avenues,
+radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a center where rose upward to
+the sky a colossal amphitheatre. Imagine these roads, delineated to the
+eye by tall chimneys or tubes of glass through which played an electric
+current, converting each one into a lambent pillar. Imagine between
+these paths of greenish opalescence the squares of buildings of domed,
+arched and castellated roofs, pierced and starred, and spread in lines
+and patterns of white electric lamps. The noble proportions of the
+larger buildings, the graceful outlines of turreted or campanulate
+erections, and the smaller houses were all defined. I could see canals
+or rivers of water winding through the City spanned by arches of flame,
+and even the symmetrical disposition of the dark-leaved trees was
+visible.
+
+"But the night was still further turned to day, for above the City, high
+in the velvet black empyrean were suspended thousands of glass balloons,
+each emitting the Geissler-like illumination that marked the lines of
+streets. So full and opulent was the flood of light, that the summit I
+had reached, the encircling hills, and the farther side of the
+saucer-shaped valley where Scandor lay, were bathed in an equally
+diffused radiation.
+
+"But, as if the heavenly marvel might still further startle and amaze
+and charm me, from the City rose the swelling chords of choruses;
+billows of sound, softened by distance, beat in melodious surges on the
+high encompassing lands.
+
+"I stood mute and transfixed. It seemed a beatific vision. If the very
+air had been filled with ascending choruses of angels, if the dark
+zenith had opened and revealed the throne of the Almighty, it would have
+seemed but a congruous and expected climax.
+
+"Long I gazed, and slowly, very slowly became conscious of the great
+numbers of people about me, and that they were being augmented by new
+arrivals. The porcelain barge I had come in from the City of Light, was
+moored now to the side of the lock. I had disembarked, carrying almost
+mechanically in my hand, the chest in which the communications from the
+Patenta to the Council were locked.
+
+"It was perhaps only a short interval before the pilot woke me from my
+trance, saying in Martian: 'This is the Observation Hill of Scandor.
+These are Scandor's Observatories. I hear there is seen by the observers
+some approaching danger in the heavens. These citizens of Scandor are
+crowding from the City to hear the latest reports. There is a messenger
+from the Council here waiting on the observers. I will bring him to you,
+and you and the messenger can at once be conveyed to the Council.'
+
+"I looked at him speechless, yet unable to again realize I lived and
+breathed in another world. It seemed as if a sudden motion, a cry, a
+whisper even, would break the chrysalis of sleep about me, and plunge me
+into void and nothingness.
+
+"The pilot left me, and I saw him thread his way amongst the lines of
+people, moving toward the dark walls of the observatory that covered the
+hill. At long intervals rockets rose from the opposite rim of the great
+circular ridge around the City, scarring the deep, inky vault about us
+with lines of fire. They ascended to an enormous distance. Almost
+instantly these were apparently answered by similar rockets in other
+colors from the hill I stood on.
+
+"There was a sudden movement about me. The pilot had returned. With him
+came the messenger. I flung my absorption from me. I was a Martian. The
+light of recognition came back again to my eyes--my tongue was loosened,
+my senses accommodated themselves to the stupendous circumstances about
+me. I spoke first.
+
+"'Mindo,' (the name of the pilot), 'I am ready to accompany my guide to
+the City. Will you go with us?'
+
+"'No! Heboribimo,' (your excellency), 'I must stay at the locks. I shall
+descend to the City in the boat to-morrow. This man will bring you to
+the canal. I advise haste. There is great excitement and dread in
+Scandor. Mars is in the path of a comet.'
+
+"I turned to my guide, a beautiful youth, not dressed as the citizens of
+the City of Light, but clothed in a tight fitting doublet of a creamy
+blue, with short trunks of yellow, and on his feet were sandals. He
+saluted me, and together we descended the broad boulevard between the
+widely separated lustres that became more crowded as they massed like a
+progressive deepening of color into the eddying splendors of the City
+itself.
+
+"Again I realized how swift is motion in Mars. We wished to reach the
+City, and we glided to it by the rapid propulsion of desire. The broad
+way was filled with lines and groups of peoples clustering to the
+hilltop--and over the far-reaching slopes I could see the awaiting
+throngs. My guide pointed to the constellation of Perseus, and I could
+discern a nebulous mass of considerable diameter from which proceeded a
+wisp-like exhalation, just a phantasmal fan of phosphorescence, behind
+it.
+
+"The glory of the City fell around us now; we were in its broad streets
+beneath the towering pillars of light that framed them in a fence of
+splendor. On we pressed, but I glanced from side to side, noting the
+great glass houses and buildings, here colonnades of translucent
+opalescent beauty, made up of hollow tubes of glass holding an interior
+illumination, and clambered over by vines whose expanding leaves formed
+a tracery of silhouettes upon their sides.
+
+"Still on, past porticos and under arches, through open forum-like
+squares, from which were elevated the great glass globes I have
+described, which hung lamp-like in the sky,--past palaces and arcades,
+blocks of low stores in iridescent tints, and long, straight fronts of
+white opaque buildings, through occasional tunnels into which we
+plunged as into a sea of radiance, and on, out, past a few squares of
+black umbrageous trees that seemed like dead coals laid on the heat
+quivering hearth of a furnace, past minarets of curling, entwined
+filagrees of glass threads, past dull or darker areas where the huge
+glass factories were built, their forges glowing like Cyclops' eyes in
+the night, and from which was produced the colossal sum of manufacture,
+which this great City embodied.
+
+"It was a strange bewilderment of marvels, and from it all, as if it
+were its interior motive and cause, sprang light. It was electric in
+origin, conveyed in some peculiar manner from a great source of power,
+in the high falls of Zenapa, near the City. But this I learned later.
+
+"I divined that we were approaching the center of the city. Soon,
+indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I had
+descried from the hill of Observation at the locks. Here it is, that the
+great plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of the
+Pan-Tan are held. It was a seraphic, astounding picture. It rose in the
+midst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light,
+purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. How
+wonderful! I stopped. For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upon
+a miracle of constructive and decorative art. One hundred columns of red
+glass rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green glass
+arches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire. From the
+pillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets,
+carrying gorgeous chandeliers of a red bronze; the largest chandeliers
+were at the very upper edge of the building, and the cascade of light
+thus shed upon the splendid fabric was indescribably magnificent.
+
+"But there was small time for wonder or examination. We swept on through
+the shadowy gardens about it, and my guide quickly brought me to the
+Hall of the Council, a low, inconspicuous building of yellow brick, one
+of the few discordant architectural notes in the whole city.
+
+"The doors of the single chamber, which embraced all the interior space,
+swung open, and I stood on the threshold of a shallow, rectangular
+depression, surrounded on all sides with benches, and holding in its
+central area a long table, at which, beneath tall lamps, sat, perhaps, a
+dozen men and one woman. Opposite to my point of view, in a niche upon
+the further wall, was the colossal figure of the Deity I had seen in the
+Patenta at the City of Light.
+
+"The faces of the twelve men turned to us as we entered. The herald
+announced my errand with the customary salutation of 'Hebori bimo.' I
+was invited to descend to the central table. I advanced, and laying
+Chapman's chest, with its sealed communications upon the table, spoke:
+
+"'I am a stranger. I have come to your world from the Earth. I bring
+news, celestial news, from the astronomers of the City of Light. I had a
+companion to whom all this was entrusted.' He was killed in the quarries
+of Tiniti. I came on, bidden so to do by Alca, the Superintendent. The
+papers of the Wise Men of the Patenta are here.'
+
+"I laid the chest upon the table. My speech was yet unformed, and
+perhaps upon the delicate and intellectual faces before me, there dwelt,
+with the transient influence of a passing thought, a smile of sympathy
+or amusement. Then a young being at the head of the table exclaimed in
+Martian:
+
+"'Welcome, stranger. All who come to us are soon made one with
+ourselves. The Martian spirit is that of salutation and friendship. We
+have heard of the discoveries in the new commotions in planetary space.
+Our own astronomers have announced them. This great City of Scandor, the
+product of many centuries' toil and invention, is apparently doomed. It
+lies in the path, certainly defined and determined by observers, of a
+small cometary mass, which will plunge upon it a rain of rock and iron.
+Even now this approaching body grows more and more visible in the sky.
+The astronomers are working at the problem, hoping some deflection, some
+interpositional mercy will carry off this disturbing incidence. But if
+we are to be destroyed, if there is no escape from the singular fortune
+of annihilation by an inrushing stream of meteoric bodies, then warning,
+through proclamation, shall be made, and our citizens will move out of
+the city to Asco, and the islands of Pinit.'
+
+"He ceased; upon him the expectant faces of the others, assembled about
+the table, were fixed, and a visible tremor of dismay and grief seemed
+to convulse them. A few covered their faces with their hands, others
+stood up and gazed at the benignant colossus in bronze at the end of the
+room, while others, motionless, still maintained their attitude of
+attention.
+
+"The presiding officer, with a slight inclination of the body, raised
+his hand, and addressing me, said: 'You shall be the guest of our City,
+and if it must be that this great capital of Mars must succumb to this
+mysterious invasion, if this place, so long a marvel of beauty, shall
+be succeeded by a heap of burning stones, then you shall be our
+companion in pilgrimage. Remain with us until the end of this strange
+circumstance is known.'
+
+"As he finished, a noise of indescribable lamentation from a multitude
+of voices broke upon our ears--the sound of running feet and sharp cries
+of amazement, crashed in upon the half ominous silence about us.
+
+"I turned instinctively to my guide. He stood statue-like beside me,
+with a stealing pallor crossing his face, and then, the doors of the
+apartment swung open, and loud voices were heard crying, 'The Peril
+comes. Stand forward. To the Hills!'
+
+"Panic, that nameless associated mental terror of the unknown and the
+impending, which on Earth spreads fever-like through multitudes, had
+arisen amongst the Martians, and hurrying crowds were hastening in a
+wild retreat from the City to the hills.
+
+"All thought of the Council, of my errand, or of the new relation I had
+been graciously accorded, disappeared from my mind. Frightened by the
+sudden premonition of destruction, bewildered by the torrent of new
+sensations, and even yet only half confident that my existence in the
+new world was altogether real, I was impelled to spring forward.
+Reaching the doors, hands shot out around me, and I was swept in the
+tide of running forms.
+
+"It was a living stream of manifold complexity. Only for one moment did
+I lose consciousness. The next I was struggling to escape from the
+spreading tentacles of this involved current. I leaped to the projection
+of a low pedestal, upon which an unfinished construction or group of
+statues was in progress. Holding my exposed position for an instant, I
+wrenched myself clear of the pulsating throngs, and succeeded in gaining
+the low summit above me. Here I was free to look around me. My guide was
+gone, the Council House was lost to view; I was alone. Below passed the
+surging crowd, made up of youths and girls, with few older men or women,
+many beautiful, all expressing the Martian distinction, but now
+strangely bewildered and uncontrolled. It was a reversed emotional
+picture from that buoyant, frenzied throng that a few weeks ago carried
+me into the Hall of the Patenta.
+
+"Faces were turned toward the sky, and hands, as if in ejaculation, were
+waved up and down, or thrust in significant indices toward that fatal
+blurred blot of splendor in the heavens. I followed their direction. The
+approaching nebula had grown sensibly since an hour ago. It glittered,
+the size of a shield, and a light coruscation seemed emanating from its
+edges. The faces of the multitude were justified. The mass above us was
+a train of celestial missiles, hurling toward Mars. Its contact seemed
+more and more imminent. I felt a nameless terror. The thought of
+isolation in this new world, the unknown awfulness of this planetary
+disturbance, the sudden extinction of the hopes that were feeding my
+heart with a new life, and the forecasting of the impossible agonies of
+universal death in this great, strange place I had so wonderfully
+entered, overcame me. I fell sobbing to the glassy floor on which I was
+standing. It was again a new proof of my assumption of the ecstatic
+nature of these children of light and music, impulse and inspiration.
+
+"The convulsion passed. I felt stronger, and was quickened with a keenly
+prudent determination to escape from the city, find my way back to the
+Hill of Observation, and if possible, send you, my son, my last
+experience before all had become silence.
+
+"I could see the regular ascent of the rockets from the distant hill. I
+found the streets about me almost emptied, the white, lustrous river of
+life had passed. I descended to the pavement. The way past the splendid
+Amphitheatre was easily found, and then I hastened, guided by a dumb
+instinct of direction, toward the still ascending rockets. I came to
+the broad Boulevard which led to the Hill of Observation, and went on,
+now plainly controlled by the sweeping avenue of lamps about, and in
+front of me.
+
+"I shall not pause to recount the success of my application to the
+astronomers to use the transmitters of the wireless telegraphy, which
+are as fully perfected here as at the City of Scandor.
+
+"As my message ends, the dawn ascends from the wide margins of the Ribi
+country. I am stunned with drowsiness. The Sun's rays have extinguished
+the scintillant peril in the skies. But the order has gone forth to
+leave the City, to camp upon the hills, the City of Scandor is doomed,
+and the area of destruction it embraces is the diametral measure of
+the----"
+
+I heard no more. Overcome with fatigue, exposure and increasing
+pulmonary weakness, of which I had had painful premonitions, I fainted
+at the table, and fell to the floor of the damp and inclement room.
+
+My assistants aver that the transmission ceased almost the next moment
+upon my collapse, and the unfinished sentence of my father's message can
+be readily understood as implying that the foreign body, or Swarm,
+which was destined to strike Mars, had been determined as having about
+the amplitude of the City of Scandor.
+
+Days lengthened into weeks, weeks to months, but though unflinchingly
+watched by night and day, no further message was received. I had become
+weaker, pale and lifeless. The terrible malady made its inroads upon a
+frame unable to meet its savage or insidious attacks. This weakness was
+aggravated by the excitement produced by the singular experience I had
+passed through. My nerves had undergone a strain quite unusual, and the
+interior sense of elation, reacting its fits of extreme mental
+despondency dislocated my system, and accelerated the gliding virus of
+disease inundating the capillaries of circulation and breaking down the
+tissues with fever and consumption.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Miss Dodan came more and more frequently to see me. The thought of my
+physical depression, the revulsion of hopelessness over my changing
+lineaments made the love I bore her more painful and enervating. I tried
+hard to conceal my fears over my condition. But Miss Dodan had been
+observant. Her developing affections became daily more tender and
+delicate, and her solicitude evinced itself in many charming, thoughtful
+ways that added only a more poignant sadness to my sufferings.
+
+I was, indeed, tortured by the conflicting aims life seemed to furnish
+me. On the one hand was the necessity of continuing, if I could, my
+communications with my father; on the other, the duty I owed myself to
+abandon all for the woman I truly loved, and to renovate and establish
+my health so that I might woo and win, and marry her.
+
+It was, in a sense, an ethical question, but it was quite as hard to
+determine by ordinary arguments whether I could have any permission to
+violate my promise to my father, as it was to estimate the exact measure
+of my obligations to myself and Miss Dodan. An incident occurred that
+dissipated this dilemma, sent Miss Dodan to England, and left me at
+Christ Church to receive the last message from my father before the
+sickness had fully developed that now has laid its searching and
+remorseless veto upon any further life or happiness for me in this
+world.
+
+Miss Dodan and myself were seated together upon a bench drawn up in the
+sunshine at the foot of the Observatory, watching with delight the
+distinct changing sea, the plumes of smoke from diminished steamers, and
+the white glory of full-rigged ships. It was the autumn of the southern
+country, and the dreamy spell of the declining days fell softly upon the
+material tissues of nature, as well as on the acquiescent spirit of man.
+
+"Father," said Miss Dodan, uncertainly, while she formed her hand into
+an improvised tube, and looked through it on the peaceful scene at our
+feet, "has been telling me of my birthplace in Devonshire. It must be
+very beautiful, more beautiful than it is here. But there is no sea, and
+it seems to me now that I should die without it; it is the very soul and
+voice, too, of all this picture!" She spread out her arms, and half
+willfully threw back the one nearest me, until it swept over my head,
+and I caught and kissed the opened palm.
+
+"Yes," I replied, "the sea relieves everything about or near it, from
+the humiliation of commonness. The stamp of distinction rests on its
+printless waves. It was the first surface of the earth, and its primal
+regency has never been lost or forfeited;" a suspicion crossed my mind:
+"How was it your father spoke of Devonshire. I never knew before that
+you came from that pearl of the countries of England. Would you like to
+see it?"
+
+My voice half sank, and the hitherto unsuspected fact that Mr. Dodan had
+observed my physical danger, and now was planning to interrupt his
+daughter's intimacy and hallucination for a poor, failing man,
+struggling with an impossible problem, and a mortal malady, seemed
+suddenly understood by me. I turned to her a face of questioning
+concern. Her eyes were still fixed upon the distant, pulsating sea.
+"No," she answered, half nonchalantly. "I suppose not, and yet--why not!
+I have only known this country; to cross the great ocean, to see the
+capital of the world, to learn the great wonders of its palaces and
+temples, to see its multitudes, to see the Queen. Ah! to see the Queen!"
+
+Her hands folded tightly together across her brow, she looked the very
+embodiment of reverent expectation, and the blushing roses on her
+cheeks, the lovelight in her eyes seemed to deepen for an instant, and
+then pale slightly, as she turned to me only to see me bury my head in
+my hands, holding back the cry of stifled hope that often before had
+leaped to my lips, but never had before so nearly passed them.
+
+"Oh, Bradford," she cried, "would you mind so much! I would soon be back
+again. And then, you know, this awful telegraphic work would be over,
+and we could be happy together without a thought of that cold, far-away
+Mars!"
+
+We talked on together till the dusky night had begun to gather its
+shadows about us, and Mars, that marvellous spot of light from whose
+untouched continents the waves of magnetic oscillation might even then
+be starting on their pathless transit across the abyss of space,
+destined for my ear, began to shine above us.
+
+It was clear to me now that Mr. Dodan had been carefully nursing in his
+daughter a desire to see England and the Queen, and her own little
+birthplace, and that he had formed a resolution to separate us, for his
+daughter's best interests, as he thought.
+
+I suffered from a very proud, sensitive nature, perhaps unwholesomely
+intensified by the lonely life I had led, and a peculiar sense of my
+difference from other people.
+
+This revelation, so unwelcome, so fraught with painful anticipations,
+roused my pride to a sharp climax of revolt, disdain and defiance. Miss
+Dodan should go,--I should urge it. I would applaud and hasten it, there
+would be no weakness, no supplication, no obstacles on my part. Let
+death write his inerrant claim to me, let it be recognized; Mr. Dodan
+need not be disturbed as to my absolute self-control.
+
+The very acerbity of my coming misery, through Miss Dodan's absence,
+fully realized by me, seemed now only to add a desperation of assumed
+indifference and gayety to all my actions. I argued against delay, and
+dwelt with excellent effect upon the charms of the visit. I assumed that
+Miss Dodan needed the change, that the educational value of such an
+experience would be incalculable.
+
+Mr. Dodan was frankly surprised and pleased. This unexpected support and
+enthusiastic commendation of his plan was something he gratefully
+accepted, and he assumed a new manner toward me. He ascribed to me a
+power of self-renunciation which won his ardent approval and admiration.
+
+The day was at last fixed. Miss Dodan, young, appreciative, and
+curious, was elated at the prospect of the voyage, and, momentarily, at
+least, forgot her first reluctance to desert me. The preparations were
+all completed. I need not dwell upon all the detail of that last week.
+It was a cruel ordeal for me, but no one would have suspected my real
+anguish. I seemed the most thoughtful of all, the most naturally buoyant
+and hopeful for the success of the trip. I forgot nothing. The telegraph
+station was not, however, neglected. I watched at night, and during the
+hours of my absence my assistant was persistently present in the tower.
+
+At last the steamer sailed away from the wharf at Port Littelton. The
+last moments I passed alone with Miss Dodan were sacred, sweet memories;
+all that I have now.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Dodan and Miss Dodan were waving their handkerchiefs from
+the deck as I turned sorrowfully back to Christ Church. I realized that
+I had seen Miss Dodan for the last time, and that when she returned to
+New Zealand, she would only find me gone. There was but one duty now. To
+resume, if possible, the communications with my father, and prepare the
+story of my experience and discoveries, and leave it to the world.
+
+I went back to the Observatory. I was again alone. A reaction of
+despondency overwhelmed me, and it was coincident with a hemorrhage,
+which left me weak and nervous. I resumed my watching at the station. I
+seemed to anticipate a new message. I endured peculiar and excruciating
+excitement, a tense suspense of desire and prevision that deprived me of
+appetite and sleep, and accelerated the ravages of the disease, that
+now, victorious over my weakened, nervous force, began the last stages
+of its devastating advance.
+
+It was a clear, cold night of exquisite severity and beauty--May 20,
+1894, that the third message came from my father. It was announced, as
+had been all the others, by the sudden response of the Morse receiver. A
+few nights before, grasping at a vague hope that I might again reach him
+with the magnetic waves at my command, I had launched into space the
+single sentence: "Await me! Death is very near." The message that now
+startled my ears began with an exact answer to that trans-abysmal
+despatch:
+
+"My son, the thought of your death fills me with happiness. Surely you
+will come to this wonderful and unspeakable world, you will see me
+again, and I you, but under such new circumstances! My heart yearns for
+you immeasurably. Come! Come quickly! To press you to my heart, to speak
+with you, to teach you the new things, and Oh! more than all, to bring
+you to your mother. For, Tony, she is found; my search is ended. I have
+discovered her whom the cruel mystery of Death on earth so sharply
+removed from us, in youth and radiance. I have not yet revealed myself.
+The joy of anticipation surpasses thought or words. I have hastened back
+from seeing her, whom to leave in this paradise imparts the one pang I
+have known in this new life, hastened again to the Hill of Observation
+that now looks on the cruel ruin, the emptiness of desolation, where
+once was the City of Scandor. Let me tell you all:
+
+"When I sent you my last message I was at the Tower of Observation. As
+the last wave was emitted from the transmitter, the hand of
+Superintendent Alca, whom I met at the mines, was laid upon my shoulder.
+I looked up in surprise. He answered my questioning glance: 'I did not
+return with Chapman. There was no need of it. A barge going to the City
+of Light took the body. I explained everything in a letter to the
+Council. I was distressed over the news I had received of the approach
+of the cometary mass, which I have detected myself, and I hurried after
+you in my own kil-chow (the name of the little porcelain steamers),
+anxious to see this terrible thing. Let us go out and watch the wonder.
+Whatever happens we shall remain together. I am from Scandor myself,
+and though I might have been safer at the mines, I could not stay there
+in the crisis.'
+
+"We descended to the ground and walked out over the hillside. The
+encircling range of high country about Scandor is, perhaps, one thousand
+feet high. Its crest is a low swell, that beyond the city falls away in
+broken, irregular slopes to the country of the Ribi on one side, and to
+far outstretched plains on almost every other side. This dome was
+covered with the people of Scandor, fleeing from the doomed city. The
+long lines of moving figures were issuing from the city through its
+numerous boulevards, and crowding the spaces on the hilltops. The
+astronomers knew exactly now the nature of the approaching mass, its
+orbit, spacial extent and weight. Their proclamation had been prepared
+and pasted all over the city, announcing its certain destruction, but
+that the area of devastation would only embrace the city, that the
+cometary visitor was a narrow train or procession of meteors of stone
+and iron, that the force of impact would be considerable, enough to
+crush to the ground the glassy splendor of the beautiful city, and that
+beyond its limits there would be almost no falls.
+
+"Beautiful, indeed, was Scandor in the morning light. It lay before us
+shining with a hundred hues. How can I tell you of its exquisite
+perfection! Its arrangement expressed a color scheme simple and
+effective. The amphitheatre rose in the center, an opalescent yellow;
+the boulevards spaced with trees, stretched out in radiating lines from
+it, defined by the blue lines of ornamental metal pillars which held the
+lamps; from point to point, piercing the air from the shady peaks or
+squares shot up also the needles of metal holding the curious electric
+globes, while at regular intervals blue domes like gigantic azure
+bubbles interrupted the streets of square and colonnaded houses, that
+began around the amphitheatre, with pale saffron tones, and grew in
+intensity until the edges of the huge populous ellipse were laid like a
+deep orange rim upon the green country side. The light falling upon this
+reflected, refracted and dispersed, seemed to convert it into a liquid
+and faintly throbbing lake of color, cut up into segments by the dark
+lanes or streets of trees.
+
+"And this was to be crushed and crumbled to the ground. The houses and
+all the constructions are built of glass bricks laid in courses, as with
+you on the earth, a soluble glass forming the cement that holds them in
+contact and together. The huge glass factories making this formed a
+black circle in one part of the City.
+
+"It was now day, and the meteoric nebula was invisible. All day the
+people came crowding to the hills. At last, as we gazed in bewildered
+admiration at the strange multitudes about us, the sound of distant
+music, the organ-like swell of a titanic chorus approaching was heard.
+Far away down the boulevard, on whose apex we stood, we saw a marching
+retinue of men and women surrounding a platform borne on the shoulders
+of men. The platform held the upright figures of the Council amongst
+whom, distinguished by a blue chalcal tunic bound about him by yellow
+cords, was the noble being I had seen in the Council chamber on the
+night of my arrival in Scandor.
+
+"How marvellous it all seemed. The sense of unreality, of dreamland
+again overpowered me, a wild horror like some mad possession seized me.
+I shook convulsively, and covered my face in my hands, stricken through
+and through with a nameless repining misery of doubt, of apprehension,
+of dismay. It was the last struggle of readjustment between my memories
+of earth, my identity as a man on the earth, and this new life I had
+entered. Alca caught me affectionately and placed the acrid bean I had
+tasted in the City of Light in my mouth. The black suffocation passed,
+and as I slowly returned to realization and serenity I opened my eyes
+upon the city, now dead and silent, but blazing with all its lights,
+awaiting desolation, dressed in its sumptuous glory like some princely
+captive on whom the doom of immolation, before an unappeasable deity,
+had suddenly fallen. It was night fall.
+
+"Suddenly a flash, a short piercing note, a loud report, and the sky
+above us seemed crowded with glowing missiles. The impact from the first
+arrivals of the cometary body upon the outer envelopes of the Martian
+atmosphere had begun. A loud shout of attention, surprise and half
+extemporized terror rose from the multitudes about us. It was a
+breathless moment. The oncoming shoals shot forward in rapid jets of
+fire now clouded together in igneous masses, now separated in disjointed
+streaks and radiant clusters of snapping, shining bolts.
+
+"As yet the material rushing in upon us failed, in most instances, to
+reach the ground in solid forms. It was burned up in the air. The
+spectacle was surpassingly strange. The air before us was weaved with
+crossing shafts, threads, and traces of phosphorescent light. Behind
+this veil still shone with responsive beauty the great city, while
+rising occasionally in bursts of color, we could see the alarm rockets
+from the opposite hills penetrate the entering flood of light with
+frivolous and extinguished protests.
+
+"About half an hour after the glory reached us, and as on all sides the
+country shone in spectral illumination, a great mass, decrepitating with
+minute explosions along its oncoming side, plunged down upon the noble
+amphitheatre of glass. A dreadful sound of crashing stone followed, and
+then, rapidly fired from the aerial batteries, came still more of the
+dark, half ignited bodies, bathed in hurrying streams of evanescent
+blades, and splinters of light.
+
+"And now the destructive bombardment had really begun. The celestial
+downpour increased, the valley below us sent upward the detonations of
+exploding meteorites and the harsh reverberating crash and overthrow of
+glass fabrics. The lights of the city were brokenly extinguished and the
+pitiless hail of ruin continued with increasing fierceness.
+
+"It was an awful, glorious scene. The vault of the sky emptying itself
+in an avalanche of flame, while from within the wide stream of
+projectiles, collisions caused by some accident of deflection originated
+interior spots of sudden blazing light. The irregular and separated
+shocks of sound from the falling city now ran together in a continuous
+roar of dislocated and broken walls, towers, parapets and citadels.
+Coruscations sprang out from the yet heated masses, accumulating on the
+ground, as they became incessantly struck by new accessions. The ground
+trembled with ceaseless fulminations and impingement, the atmosphere
+seemed saturated with sulphurous odors, and the panoramic flow of
+fluctuating splendor shed a day-like brightness upon the upturned faces
+of the startled and stupefied multitude.
+
+"All night long the invasion continued. The area of destruction, exactly
+as the astronomers had defined it, was confined to the long elliptical
+basin in which Scandor lay. Beyond it hardly a branch upon the trees was
+broken, though occasional erratic bombs shot over us and fell miles away
+along the borders of the canals.
+
+"As the morning dawned, the shower discontinued, a few laggards fell in
+scattering confusion over the prostrate city, and the sun climbing the
+eastern sky sent its peaceful reassuring light upon a cairn-like heap of
+desolation. The chilled surface of the fallen meteorites were broken up
+by areas of glowing cinder-like surfaces. The glittering and opaline
+city of glass, the City of Scandor, capital of the Martian world, was
+buried beneath the scorching and stony fragments of a minor comet, or
+some diminished and wandering meteor train which suddenly issuing from
+the unknown depths of space had descended with mathematical precision
+upon the treasure city of the planet.
+
+"The Martian legions remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent. The
+awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their
+spirit, and they looked into each other's faces with bewilderment.
+
+"I had stayed with Alca throughout the night, and I now turning to him
+said:
+
+"'Let us go! What can we do here? Let us walk away for awhile. I am
+dizzy with terror.'
+
+"'Yes,' he answered, and tears seemed filling his eyes, 'we will go. We
+will walk out into the hill and river country beyond the canal. Many are
+wandering over the country now. The farmers will harbor us and the
+beauty of the lanes will bring us cheerfulness.'
+
+"And so we went away, hastening with the Martian velocity of motion
+until as the sun hung in the zenith, we had reached a hillside sloping
+upon a meadow space through which passed the clear but sluggish waters
+of a wide stream. A tulip-like grass was distributed in the heavy
+luxuriant growth of the meadow, which bore upon pendant threads a blue
+bell-like flower. A gentle wind, rising and falling, swept over them,
+lifting and blowing out the cups as it passed off to the surface of the
+water and printed it with plashes of ripples. A piece of wood pushed out
+from the hillside, the trees that formed it struggling out into the
+meadow in a broken succession of individuals like a line of men. Here,
+leaning against the last tree trunk that stood quite alone in advance of
+its companions, was a young woman, her arms folded above the cap--like
+the Grecian cassos--that imperfectly held her hair, and dressed in a
+yellow tunic and the half seen leggings of meshed chalcal thread--a
+lovely picture of meditation.
+
+"I caught Alca's arm in a sudden wave of desire and excitement. It was
+the impulse of love, the first burning of its sacred fire I had known in
+Mars, and it was the intense certainty of recognition that made it so
+impetuous. My Son, your Mother was before me!
+
+"The same glorious beauty I had known on earth covered her, and like a
+mystic light shone from her face and person. I was myself again, young,
+and she was the same. The impelling sense of a superhuman Destiny
+bringing us together again in this new world, forced from me an
+ejaculation of thankfulness. The cry was not loud, but audible to her
+ears, and she turned toward us. Yes! it was Martha, as I knew her in
+those raptured days of love on the banks of the Hudson before disease
+and weakness and age had stolen the bloom from her cheeks, the light
+from her eyes, and the fair presentiment of charm and perfection from
+her body. She did not see me perhaps clearly. Certainly she did not
+recognize me. An instant's scrutiny and her face turned again to the
+open exposure of hill and field, stream and cloud-flecked sky.
+
+"Alca had observed my gestures of delight, and, perhaps reading my
+thoughts by that intuition of mind so wonderful in the Martians, pushed
+me toward her gently and moved away from us toward the brink of the
+river.
+
+"I stood for a moment hesitating, overwhelmed with the marvel of this
+new thing. I stole on, and finally pushing aside the high grown grass,
+was at her side--at the side of the very form and feature of the woman
+who had taught me on earth the worth of living and the meaning and the
+glory of rectitude.
+
+"She was breathing fast, her bosom rising and falling with quick
+respirations, and her cheeks flushed with color, made a delicious foil
+to the pearly tone of her face, concealed on her neck and forehead by
+the escaping tresses of her dark hair.
+
+"I drew back, trembling with anticipation, my heart beating, and my
+clasped hands folded on my breast in an agony of restraint. She was
+talking, talking to herself in the low musical voice of the Martians.
+The wind had ceased, a dark shadow from a crossing cloud moved toward us
+from the river over the blue sprinkled field, a haze stole upward from
+the farther view, and, bending at the margin of the water the figure of
+Alca bathed in light, seemed to watch us like some calm incarnate
+response to my own hopes and prayers.
+
+"'How beautiful, how wonderful it is!' her arms dropped from her head,
+the body bent forward to the earth, she knelt; 'but must it always be as
+it is! Shall not the companion of my days come to this dear place? The
+light of sun and moon and stars seems as it always seemed on Earth, but
+there does not come to me the divine touch of affection, that intimate
+feeling of oneness and self-surrender that was mine with Randolph on the
+Earth. A strength unknown to me before, a power of enjoyment, a motion
+that is ecstacy, thought, feeling, language, all strong, radiant,
+supreme, but yet loneliness! Memory of the things of Earth hardly
+remains, except where love prints its firm expression. Randolph, my
+husband, and Bradford, my boy, to me are deathless. Why can it not be
+that they should be here also? Can the purposes of divine love be
+fulfilled by this separation? Shall all the powers of this new life,
+this beautiful and sinless Nature be wasted for the want of love which
+holds both Nature and the soul in place, in harmony, in adoration of the
+One enduring Thought?
+
+"'How the long years have rolled by since I have left the Earth, and
+how, amid all the pleasurable things of this serene and hopeful life,
+the hidden loneliness has denied it the last completing touch of joy!
+Only as I still dare to believe, that the flight of years must end his
+aging days on Earth, and that the eternal destiny of married souls is an
+eternal union, and that his reincarnation here shall bring us into a new
+and better, richer, deeper harmony of mind and tastes and thoughts; only
+as the belief grows stronger with passing time, can I, so surrounded
+with peace and happiness, in this countryside of quiet work and gentle
+cares, bear longer this awful isolation, the nights of prayerful hope,
+the days of still enduring hope.
+
+"'How beautiful it is to live, to watch the changing seasons in this
+strange new world untouched by sickness or death or sin. And yet,' she
+convulsively clasped her face, 'what beauty, what peace, what
+sinlessness can replace the only life--the Life of Love?
+
+"'And then my boy! Can it be possible that I may see him! Why, now he
+will seem only a brother in this new youth in which I have been born,
+and yet--and yet--the mother feeling is unchanged; the old yearning,
+just as when I left him a boy upon the Earth seems as great as ever.
+
+"'Oh! when shall this waiting all end in our reunion--father, mother,
+son--and all strong and glad in youth and hope?'
+
+"She rose and stretched out her arms toward some phantasy of thought or
+fancy in the air above her, and then a song of recall from a distance
+floated along the meadow and the river's banks, a sweet, joyous,
+beckoning melody, that compelled the ear to listen, and the feet to
+follow.
+
+"Martha half turned--I was dazed with wonder--I did not wish to speak. I
+could not then have revealed myself. It was all too marvellous, too hard
+to comprehend. The old doubts of my reality, of the realness of
+everything I had seen, surged up again, and swept over me in a tide of
+disillusion.
+
+"Was I dreaming; in the death from Earth had I passed into a wild
+phantasmagoria of mental pictures, some endless dream where the lulled
+soul encountered again, as visions, all it may have hoped for, all its
+unconscious cerebration had limned on the interior canvases of the mind,
+to be reviewed, as in a sleep, where every detail met the test of
+curiosity--except that last test--waking? Should I awake?
+
+"I sprang forward and beat myself, in a sort of fury of doubt against
+the trees about me. The resistance was secure and certain. Pain--it
+seemed a kind of bliss, as the guarantee of my flesh and blood
+existence--came to me and in my paroxysms the torn skin of my body bled.
+I looked at the red stains with exultation. I felt the aches of physical
+concussion, with a real rapture.
+
+"This life was real, was dual--body and mind--as on Earth, and the woman
+hastening before me along the marge of the rippling stream--I listened
+in a kind of feverish anticipation of its silence, for the low cadence
+of water passing over pebbles--was Martha! It must be true! What agency
+of superhuman cruelty could thus deceive me? No! my eyes were faithful,
+and the air, thrilling with the distant song, brought nearer to my ears
+the answering call of my wife!
+
+"She was far distant. I ran from tree to tree in the wooded back ground
+and traced her to a little hamlet where a group of Martians awaited her.
+They turned up a narrow lane singing, and I lost them.
+
+"I returned to Alca, pensively standing on the hill we had first
+descended, and said nothing of the strange revelation. I contrived to
+learn from him the name of the little village, and the nature of its
+inhabitants. He called it Nitansi, and said it had been one of the old
+spots where migrating souls from other worlds once entered Mars.
+
+"'A few,' he added, 'come there now, though rarely, and the people
+cultivate flowers in great farms, and formerly sent them to Scandor. I
+think I saw them moving now along the fields at the riverside. We must
+go back. I shall go down the canal to Sinsi. I know the Council of
+Scandor will resolve to rebuild the city.'"
+
+The message closed. I rose and staggered backward into the arms of
+Jobson. A severe hemorrhage ensued, and slowly thereafter the darkening
+doors of life began to close upon me. Disease had won its way against
+all the force of life.
+
+It has been my task during these last weeks of life to write this
+account of these wonderful experiences, and to leave them to the world
+as an assurance--to how many will it give a new delight in living, to
+how many will it remove the bitterness of living, to how many may it
+bring resignation and hope--that the blight of Death is only an incident
+in a continuous renewal of Life.
+
+   (End of Mr. Dodd's MS.)
+
+
+
+
+Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan.
+
+
+Mr. Dodd died January 20, 1895. He never recovered from the severe shock
+caused by hemorrhage, after receiving the second message from his father
+and recorded above. He appreciated the imminence of death acutely, and
+struggled to complete, as he has, the narrative of his life. My daughter
+was not again seen by Mr. Dodd, though he received several letters from
+her, which were found beneath his pillow after his demise.
+
+I was with Mr. Dodd constantly during the latter days of his illness,
+and then promised him that I should secure the publication of his
+remarkable story.
+
+I am not willing to hazard any conjecture as to the more extraordinary
+features of this narrative. I can very positively, however, affirm my
+complete confidence in Mr. Dodd's honesty. I knew both his father and
+himself very well, and through a long intimacy found them both
+consistently conforming to a very high type of character, courage, and
+intellectual integrity.
+
+The MS. of Mr. Dodd was handed to me by himself, and I recall with a
+pathetic interest his smile of appreciative gratitude as I received it,
+and gave him my earnest assurance that it should be printed, and that
+the world would be made acquainted with his experiments and their
+results.
+
+Mr. Dodd was the residuary legatee of his father, and his own will made
+during his last sickness, appointed me as his executor. My daughter was
+made his sole heir, with two exceptions; small amounts in favor of his
+assistants--Jeb Jobson and Andrew Clarke were mentioned in his will--and
+these sums have been paid by myself to each.
+
+A series of extraordinary misfortunes, for which I am myself measurably
+to blame, resulted in the complete disappearance of the fortune
+inherited by my daughter. Her own death and that of my wife, following
+upon this disaster, though in no way connected with it, obliterated--and
+here again I admit a very grievous culpability--the remembrance of the
+MS. of Mr. Dodd and my own promises as to its publication.
+
+I found the MS. of Mr. Dodd carefully wrapped up at the bottom of a
+trunk of papers, and confess that I opened the package it formed with a
+bitter sense of self-reproach. Mr. Dodd had expected to publish this
+paper in New York, and had requested that it should be forwarded to that
+city. I have at last complied with his wishes, and the MS. leaves my
+hands, absolutely unchanged, consigned through the kind intervention of
+a friend, to a publishing house in that western metropolis. I am unable
+to add anything more to this statement, which, in itself, I fear conveys
+considerable censure to the undersigned.
+
+            August Bixby Dodan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Note by the Editor.
+
+The MS. alluded to by Mr. Dodan in the preceding paragraphs was safely
+brought to New York in 1900, and after a very careful examination,
+repeatedly rejected by the prominent publishers to whom it was
+submitted.
+
+Through a peculiar accident connected with some negotiations pertaining
+to a scientific work, contemplated by the writer, the MS. came into his
+hands, and he has been encouraged to publish it, influenced by the
+favorable comments of friends upon its intrinsic interest. He also has
+added to the work as an appendix, which cannot fail to attract the
+attention of many, the views of the great astronomer Schiaparelli upon
+the present physical condition of Mars, being the reproduction of an
+article by that distinguished observer translated from _Nature et Arte_
+for February, 1893, by Prof. William H. Pickering and published in the
+Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution
+for 1894, published here by permission of "Astronomy and Astro-Physics,"
+in which journal it first appeared in Vol. XIII., numbers 8 and 9, for
+October and November, 1894. In this report also appeared Schiaparelli's
+Map of Mars in 1888, which the Editor has not reproduced in this
+connection.
+
+The introduction to-day of the wireless telegraphy, assuming a daily
+increasing importance, furnishes some reasonable hope that the
+marvellous statements given in Mr. Dodd's narrative may be more widely
+verified in the future, and point the way to a realization of the daring
+and thrilling conception of interplanetary communication.
+
+
+
+THE PLANET MARS.
+
+BY GIOVANNI SCHIAPARELLI.
+
+
+
+THE PLANET MARS.
+
+BY GIOVANNI SCHIAPARELLI.
+
+
+Many of the first astronomers who studied Mars with the telescope had
+noted on the outline of its disk two brilliant white spots of rounded
+form and of variable size. In process of time it was observed that while
+the ordinary spots upon Mars were displaced rapidly in consequence of
+its daily rotation, changing in a few hours both their position and
+their perspective, the two white spots remained sensibly motionless at
+their posts. It was concluded rightly from this that they must occupy
+the poles of rotation of the planet, or at least must be found very near
+to them. Consequently they were given the name of polar caps or spots.
+And not without reason is it conjectured that these represent upon Mars
+that immense mass of snow and ice which still to-day prevents navigators
+from reaching the poles of the earth. We are led to this conclusion not
+only by the analogy of aspect and of place, but also by another
+important observation....
+
+As things stand, it is manifest that if the above-mentioned white polar
+spots of Mars represent snow and ice they should continue to decrease in
+size with the approach of summer in those places and increase during the
+winter. Now this very fact is observed in the most evident manner. In
+the second half of the year 1892 the southern polar cap was in full
+view; during that interval, and especially in the months of July and
+August, its rapid diminution from week to week was very evident even to
+those observing with common telescopes. This snow (for we may well call
+it so), which in the beginning reached as far as latitude 70 degrees and
+formed a cap of over 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) in diameter,
+progressively diminished, so that two or three months later little more
+of it remained than an area of perhaps 300 kilometers (180 miles) at the
+most, and still less was seen in the last days of 1892. In these months
+the southern hemisphere of Mars had its summer, the summer solstice
+occurring upon October 13. Correspondingly the mass of snow surrounding
+the northern pole should have increased; but this fact was not
+observable, since that pole was situated in the hemisphere of Mars
+which was opposite to that facing the earth. The melting of the northern
+snow was seen in its turn in the years 1882, 1884 and 1886.
+
+These observations of the alternate increase and decrease of the polar
+snows are easily made even with telescopes of moderate power, but they
+become much more interesting and instructive when we can follow
+assiduously the changes in their more minute particulars, using larger
+instruments. The snowy regions are then seen to be successively notched
+at their edges; black holes and huge fissures are formed in their
+interiors; great isolated pieces many miles in extent stand out from the
+principal mass and, dissolving, disappear a little later. In short, the
+same divisions and movements of these icy fields present themselves to
+us at a glance that occur during the summer of our own arctic regions,
+according to the descriptions of explorers.
+
+The southern snow, however, presents this peculiarity: The center of its
+irregularly rounded figure does not coincide exactly with the pole, but
+is situated at another point, which is nearly always the same, and is
+distant from the pole about 300 kilometers (180 miles) in the direction
+of the Mare Erythraeum. From this we conclude that when the area of the
+snow is reduced to its smallest extent the south pole of Mars is
+uncovered, and therefore, perhaps, the problem of reaching it upon this
+planet is easier than upon the earth. The southern snow is in the midst
+of a huge dark spot, which with its branches occupies nearly one-third
+of the whole surface of Mars, and is supposed to represent its principal
+ocean. Hence the analogy with our arctic and antarctic snows may be said
+to be complete, and especially so with the antarctic one.
+
+The mass of the northern snow cap of Mars is, on the other hand,
+centered almost exactly upon its pole. It is located in a region of
+yellow color, which we are accustomed to consider as representing the
+continent of the planet. From this arises a singular phenomenon which
+has no analogy upon the earth. At the melting of the snows accumulated
+at that pole during the long night of ten months and more the liquid
+mass produced in that operation is diffused around the circumference of
+the snowy region, converting a large zone of surrounding land into a
+temporary sea and filling all the lower regions. This produces a
+gigantic inundation, which has led some observers to suppose the
+existence of another ocean in those parts, but which does not really
+exist in that place, at least as a permanent sea. We see then (the last
+opportunity was in 1884) the white spot of the snow surrounded by a
+dark zone, which follows its perimeter in its progressive diminution,
+upon a circumference ever more and more narrow. The outer part of this
+zone branches out into dark lines, which occupy all the surrounding
+region, and seem to be distributary canals by which the liquid mass may
+return to its natural position. This produces in these regions very
+extensive lakes, such as that designated upon the map by the name of
+Lacus Hyperboreus; the neighboring interior sea called Mare Acidalium
+becomes more black and more conspicuous. And it is to be remembered as a
+very probable thing that the flowing of this melted snow is the cause
+which determines principally the hydrographic state of the planet and
+the variations that are periodically observed in its aspect. Something
+similar would be seen upon the earth if one of our poles came to be
+located suddenly in the center of Asia or of Africa. As things stand at
+present, we may find a miniature image of these conditions in the
+flooding that is observed in our streams at the melting of the Alpine
+snows.
+
+Travellers in the arctic regions have frequent occasion to observe how
+the state of the polar ice at the beginning of the summer, and even at
+the beginning of July, is always very unfavorable to their progress.
+The best season for exploration is in the month of August, and September
+is the month in which the trouble from ice is the least. Thus in
+September our Alps are usually more practicable than at any other
+season. And the reason for it is clear--the melting of the snow requires
+time; a high temperature is not sufficient; it is necessary that it
+should continue, and its effect will be so much the greater, as it is
+the more prolonged. Thus, if we could slow down the course of our season
+so that each month should last sixty days instead of thirty, in the
+summer, in such a lengthened condition, the melting of the ice would
+progress much further, and perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to
+say that the polar cap at the end of the warm season would be entirely
+destroyed. But one cannot doubt, in such a case, that the fixed portion
+of such a cap would be reduced to a much smaller size, than we see it
+to-day. Now, this is exactly what happens to Mars. The long year, nearly
+double our own, permits the ice to accumulate during the polar night of
+ten or twelve months, so as to descend in the form of a continuous layer
+as far as parallel 70 degrees, or even farther. But in the day which
+follows, of twelve or ten months, the sun has time to melt all, or
+nearly all, of the snow of recent formation, reducing it to such a
+small area that it seems to us no more than a very white point. And
+perhaps this snow is entirely destroyed; but of this there is at present
+no satisfactory observation.
+
+Other white spots of a transitory character and of a less regular
+arrangement are formed in the southern hemisphere upon the islands near
+the pole, and also in the opposite hemisphere whitish regions appear at
+times surrounding the north pole and reaching to 50 degrees and 55
+degrees of latitude. They are, perhaps, transitory snows, similar to
+those which are observed in our latitudes. But also in the torrid zone
+of Mars are seen some very small white spots more or less persistent;
+among others one was seen by me in three consecutive oppositions
+(1877-1882) at the point indicated upon our chart by longitude 268
+degrees and latitude 16 degrees north. Perhaps we may be permitted to
+imagine in this place the existence of a mountain capable of supporting
+extensive ice fields. The existence of such a mountain has also been
+suggested by some recent observers upon other grounds.
+
+As has been stated, the polar snows of Mars prove in an incontrovertible
+manner that this planet, like the earth, is surrounded by an atmosphere
+capable of transporting vapor, from one place to another. These snows
+are, in fact, precipitations of vapor, condensed by the cold, and
+carried with it successively. How carried with it if not by atmospheric
+movement? The existence of an atmosphere charged with vapor has been
+confirmed also by spectroscopic observations, principally those of
+Vogel, according to which this atmosphere must be of a composition
+differing little from our own, and above all, very rich in aqueous
+vapor. This is a fact of the highest importance because from it we can
+rightly affirm with much probability that to water and to no other
+liquid is due the seas of Mars and its polar snows. When this conclusion
+is assured beyond all doubt another one may be derived from it of not
+less importance--that the temperature of the Arean climate
+notwithstanding the greater distance of that planet from the sun, is of
+the same order as the temperature of the terrestrial one. Because, if it
+were true, as has been supposed by some investigators, that the
+temperature of Mars was on the average very low (from 50 degrees to 60
+degrees below zero), it would not be possible for water vapor to be an
+important element in the atmosphere of that planet nor could Water be an
+important factor in its physical changes, but would give place to
+carbonic acid, or to some other liquid whose freezing point was much
+lower.
+
+The elements of the meteorology of Mars seem, then, to have a close
+analogy to those of the earth. But there are not lacking, as might be
+expected, causes of dissimilarity. From circumstances of the smallest
+moment nature brings forth an infinite variety in its operations. Of the
+greatest influence must be different arrangement of the seas and the
+continents upon Mars and upon the earth, regarding which a glance at the
+map will say more than would be possible in many words. We have already
+emphasized the fact of the extraordinary periodical flood, which at
+every revolution of Mars inundates the northern polar region at the
+melting of the snow. Let us now add that this inundation is spread out
+to a great distance by means of a network of canals, perhaps
+constituting the principal mechanism (if not the only one) by which
+water (and with it organic life) may be diffused over the arid surface
+of the planet. Because on Mars it rains very rarely, or perhaps even it
+does not rain at all. And this is the proof.
+
+Let us carry ourselves in imagination into celestial space, to a point
+so distant from the earth that we may embrace it all at a single glance.
+He would be greatly in error who had expected to see reproduced there
+upon a great scale the image of our continents with their gulfs and
+islands and with the seas that surround them which are seen upon our
+artificial globes. Then without doubt the known forms or parts of them
+would be seen to appear under a vaporous veil, but a great part (perhaps
+one-half) of the surface would be rendered invisible by the immense
+fields of cloud, continually varying in density, in form, and in extent.
+Such a hindrance, most frequent and continuous in the polar regions,
+would still impede nearly half the time the view of the temperate zones,
+distributing itself in capricious and ever varying configurations. The
+seas of the torrid zone would be seen to be arranged in long parallel
+layers, corresponding to the zone of the equatorial and tropical calms.
+For an observer placed upon the moon the study of our geography would
+not be so simple an undertaking as one might at first imagine.
+
+There is nothing of this sort in Mars. In every climate and under every
+zone its atmosphere is nearly perpetually clear and sufficiently
+transparent to permit one to recognize at any moment whatever the
+contours of the seas and continents, and, more than that, even the minor
+configurations. Not indeed that vapors of a certain degree of opacity
+are lacking, but they offer very little impediment to the study of the
+topography of the planet. Here and there we see appear from time to time
+a few whitish spots, changing their position and their form, rarely
+extending over a very wide area. They frequent by preference a few
+regions, such as the islands of the Mare Australe, and on the continents
+the regions designated on the map with the names of Elysium and Tempe.
+Their brilliancy generally diminishes and disappears at the meridian
+hour of the place, and is re-enforced in the morning and evening with
+very marked variations. It is possible that they may be layers of clouds
+because the upper portions of terrestrial clouds where they are
+illuminated by the sun appear white. But various observations lead us to
+think that we are dealing rather with a thin veil of fog instead of a
+true nimbus cloud, carrying storms and rain. Indeed, it may be merely a
+temporary condensation of vapor under the form of dew or hoar frost.
+
+Accordingly, as far as we may be permitted to argue from the observed
+facts, the climate of Mars must resemble that of a clear day upon a high
+mountain. By day a very strong solar radiation, hardly mitigated at all
+by mist or vapor; by night a copious radiation from the soil toward
+celestial space, and because of that a very marked refrigeration. Hence
+a climate of extremes, and great changes of temperature from day to
+night, and from one season to another. And as on the earth at altitudes
+of 5,000 and 6,000 meters (17,000 to 20,000 feet) the vapor of the
+atmosphere is condensed only into the solid form, producing those
+whitish masses of suspended crystals which we call cirrus clouds, so in
+the atmosphere of Mars it would be rarely possible (or would even be
+impossible) to find collections of cloud capable of producing rain of
+any consequence. The variation of the temperature from one season to
+another would be notably increased by their long duration, and thus we
+can understand the great freezing and melting of the snow which is
+renewed in turn at the poles at each complete revolution of the planet
+around the sun.
+
+As our chart demonstrates, in its general topography Mars does not
+present any analogy with the earth. A third of its surface is occupied
+by the great Mare Australe, which is strewn with many islands, and the
+continents are cut up by gulfs, and ramifications of various forms. To
+the general water system belongs an entire series of small internal
+seas, of which the Hadriacum and the Tyrrhenum communicate with it by
+wide mouths, whilst the Cimmerium, the Sirenum, and the Solis Lacus are
+connected with it only by means of narrow canals. We shall notice in
+the first four a parallel arrangement, which certainly is not
+accidental, as also not without reason is the corresponding position of
+the peninsulas of Ausonia, Hesperia, and Atlantis. The color of the seas
+of Mars is generally brown, mixed with gray, but not always of equal
+intensity in all places, nor is it the same in the same place at all
+times. From an absolute black it may descend to a light-gray or to an
+ash color. Such a diversity of colors may have its origin in various
+causes, and is not without analogy also upon the earth, where it is
+noted that the seas of the warm zone are usually much darker than those
+nearer the pole. The water of the Baltic, for example, has a light,
+muddy color that is not observed in the Mediterranean. And thus in the
+seas of Mars we see the color become darker when the sun approaches
+their zenith, and summer begins to rule in that region.
+
+All of the remainder of the planet, as far as the north pole is occupied
+by the mass of the continents, in which, save in a few areas of
+relatively small extent, an orange color predominates, which sometimes
+reaches a dark red tint, and in others descends to yellow and white. The
+variety in this coloring is in part of meteorological origin, in part it
+may depend on the diverse nature of the soil, but upon its real cause
+it is not as yet possible to frame any very well grounded hypothesis.
+Nevertheless, the cause of this predominance of the red and yellow tints
+upon the surface of ancient Pyrois is well known.[A] Some have thought
+to attribute this coloring to the atmosphere of Mars, through which the
+surface of the planet might be seen colored, as any terrestrial object
+becomes red when seen through red glass. But many facts are opposed to
+this idea, among others that the polar snows appear always of the purest
+white, although the rays of light derived from them traverse twice the
+atmosphere of Mars under great obliquity. We must then conclude that the
+Arean continents appear red and yellow because they are so in fact.
+
+Besides these dark and light regions, which we have described as seas
+and continents, and of whose nature there is at present scarcely left
+any room for doubt, some others exist, truly of small extent, of an
+amphibious nature, which sometimes appear yellowish like the continents,
+and are sometimes clothed in brown (even black in certain cases), and
+assume the appearance of seas, whilst in other cases their color is
+intermediate in tint, and leaves us in doubt to which class of regions
+they may belong. Thus all the islands scattered through the Mare
+Australe and the Mare Erythræum belong to this category; so, too, the
+long peninsula called Deucalionis Regio and Pyrrhae Regio, and in the
+vicinity of the Mare Acidalium the regions designated by the names of
+Baltia and Nerigos. The most natural idea, and the one to which we
+should be led by analogy, is to suppose these regions to represent huge
+swamps, in which the variation in depth of the water produces the
+diversity of colors. Yellow would predominate in those parts where the
+depth of the liquid layer was reduced to little or nothing, and brown,
+more or less dark, in those places where the water was sufficiently deep
+to absorb more light and to render the bottom more or less invisible.
+That the water of the sea, or any other deep and transparent water, seen
+from above, appears more dark the greater the depth of the liquid
+stratum, and that the land in comparison with it appears bright under
+the solar illumination, is known and confirmed by certain physical
+reasons. The traveler in the Alps often has occasion to convince himself
+of it, seeing from the summits the deep lakes with which the region is
+strewn extending under his feet as black as ink, whilst in contrast with
+them even the blackest rocks illumined by the sunlight appeared
+brilliant.[B]
+
+Not without reason, then, have we hitherto attributed to the dark spots
+of Mars the part of seas, and that of continents to the reddish areas
+which occupy nearly two-thirds of all the planet, and we shall find
+later other reasons which confirm this method of reasoning. The
+continents form in the northern hemisphere a nearly continuous mass, the
+only important exception being the great lake called the Mare Acidalium,
+of which the extent may vary according to the time, and which is
+connected in some way with the inundations which we have said were
+produced by the melting of the snow surrounding the north pole. To the
+system of the Mare Acidalium undoubtedly belong the temporary lake
+called Lacus Hyperboreus and the Lacus Niliacus. This last is ordinarily
+separated from the Mare Acidalium by means of an isthmus or regular dam,
+of which the continuity was only seen to be broken once for a short time
+in 1888. Other smaller dark spots are found here and there in the
+continental area which we may designate as lakes, but they are certainly
+not permanent lakes like ours, but are variable in appearance and size
+according to the seasons, to the point of wholly disappearing under
+certain circumstances. Ismenius Lacus, Lunae Lacus, Trivium Charontis,
+and Propontis are the most conspicuous and durable ones. There are also
+smaller ones, such as Lacus Moeris and Fons Juventae, which at their
+maximum size do not exceed 100 to 150 kilometers (60 to 90 miles) in
+diameter, and are among the most difficult objects upon the planet.
+
+All the vast extent of the continents is furrowed upon every side by a
+network of numerous lines or fine stripes of a more or less pronounced
+dark color, whose aspect is very variable. These traverse the planet for
+long distances in regular lines that do not at all resemble the winding
+courses of our streams. Some of the shorter ones do not reach 500
+kilometers (300 miles), others, on the other hand, extend for many
+thousands, occupying a quarter or sometimes even a third of a
+circumference of the planet. Some of these are very easy to see,
+especially that one which is near the extreme left-hand limit of our map
+and is designated by the name of Nilosyrtis. Others in turn are
+extremely difficult, and resemble the finest thread of spider's web
+drawn across the disk. They are subject also to great variations in
+their breadth, which may reach 200 or even 300 kilometers (120 to 180
+miles) for the Nilosyrtis, whilst some are scarcely 30 kilometers (18
+miles) broad.
+
+These lines or stripes are the famous canals of Mars, of which so much
+has been said. As far as we have been able to observe them hitherto,
+they are certainly fixed configurations upon the planet. The Nilosyrtis
+has been seen in that place for nearly one hundred years, and some of
+the others for at least thirty years. Their length and arrangement are
+constant, or vary only between very narrow limits. Each of them always
+begins and ends between the same regions. But their appearance and their
+degree of visibility vary greatly, for all of them, from one opposition
+to another, and even from one week to another, and these variations do
+not take place simultaneously and according to the same laws for all,
+but in most cases happen apparently capriciously, or at least according
+to laws not sufficiently simple for us to be able to unravel. Often one
+or more become indistinct, or even wholly invisible, whilst others in
+their vicinity increase to the point of becoming conspicuous even in
+telescopes of moderate power. The first of our maps shows all those that
+have been seen in a long series of observations. This does not at all
+correspond to the appearance of Mars at any given period, because
+generally only a few are visible at once.[C]
+
+Every canal (for now we shall so call them) opens at its ends either
+into a sea, or into a lake, or into another canal, or else into the
+intersection of several other canals. None of them have yet been seen
+cut off in the middle of the continent, remaining without beginning or
+without end. This fact is of the highest importance. The canals may
+intersect among themselves at all possible angles, but by preference
+they converge toward the small spots to which we have given the name of
+lakes. For example, seven are seen to converge in Lacus Phoenicis,
+eight in Trivium Charontis, six in Lunae Lacus, and six in Ismenius
+Lacus.
+
+The normal appearance of a canal is that of a nearly uniform stripe,
+black, or at least of a dark color, similar to that of the seas, in
+which the regularity of its general course does not exclude small
+variations in its breadth and small sinuosities in its two sides. Often
+it happens that such a dark line opening out upon the sea is enlarged
+into the form of a trumpet, forming a huge bay, similar to the estuaries
+of certain terrestrial streams. The Margaritifer Sinus, the Aonius
+Sinus, the Aurorae Sinus, and the two horns of the Sabæus Sinus are thus
+formed, at the mouths of one or more canals, opening into the Mare
+Erythraeum or into the Mare Australe. The largest example of such a gulf
+is the Syrtis Major, formed by the vast mouth of the Nilosyrtis, so
+called. This gulf is not less than 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) in
+breadth, and attains nearly the same depth in a longitudinal direction.
+Its surface is little less than that of the Bay of Bengal. In this case
+we see clearly the dark surface of the sea continued without apparent
+interruption into that canal. Inasmuch as the surfaces called seas are
+truly a liquid expanse, we cannot doubt that the canals are a simple
+prolongation of them, crossing the yellow areas or continents.
+
+Of the remainder, that the lines called canals are truly great furrows
+or depressions in the surface of the planet, destined for the passage of
+the liquid mass and constituting for it a true hydrographic system, is
+demonstrated by the phenomena which are observed during the melting of
+the northern snows. We have already remarked that at the time of melting
+they appear surrounded by a dark zone, forming a species of temporary
+sea. At that time the canals of the surrounding region become blacker
+and wider, increasing to the point of converting at a certain time all
+of the yellow region comprised between the edge of the snow and the
+parallel of 60 degrees north latitude into numerous islands of small
+extent. Such a state of things does not cease until the snow, reduced to
+its minimum area, ceases to melt. Then the breadth of the canals
+diminishes, the temporary sea disappears, and the yellow region again
+returns to its former area. The different phases of these vast phenomena
+are renewed at each return of the seasons, and we were able to observe
+them in all their particulars very easily during the oppositions of
+1882, 1884, and 1886, when the planet presented its northern pole to
+terrestrial spectators. The most natural and the most simple
+interpretation is that to which we have referred, of a great inundation
+produced by the melting of the snows; it is entirely logical and is
+sustained by evident analogy with terrestrial phenomena. We conclude,
+therefore, that the canals are such in fact and not only in name. The
+network formed by these was probably determined in its origin in the
+geological state of the planet, and has come to be slowly elaborated in
+the course of centuries. It is not necessary to suppose them the work of
+intelligent beings, and, notwithstanding the almost geometrical
+appearance of all of their system, we are now inclined to believe them
+to be produced by the evolution of the planet, just as on the earth we
+have the English Channel and the channel of Mozambique.
+
+It would be a problem not less curious than complicated and difficult to
+study the system of this immense stream of water, upon which perhaps
+depends principally the organic life upon the planet, if organic life is
+found there. The variations of their appearance demonstrated that this
+system is not constant. When they become displaced or their outlines
+become doubtful and ill defined, it is fair to suppose that the water is
+getting low or is even entirely dried up. Then, in place of the canals
+there remains either nothing or at most stripes of yellowish color
+differing little from the surrounding background. Sometimes they take on
+a nebulous appearance, for which at present it is not possible to assign
+a reason. At other times true enlargements are produced, expanding to
+100, 200 or more kilometers (60 to 120 miles) in breadth, and this
+sometimes happens for canals very far from the north pole, according to
+laws which are unknown. This occurred in Hydaspes in 1864, in Simois in
+1879, in Ackeron in 1884, and in Triton in 1888. The diligent and minute
+study of the transformations of each canal may lead later to a knowledge
+of the causes of these effects.
+
+But the most surprising phenomenon pertaining to the canals of Mars is
+their germination, which seems to occur principally in the months which
+precede and in those which follow the great northern inundation--at
+about the times of the equinoxes. In consequence of a rapid process,
+which certainly lasts at most a few days, or even perhaps, only a few
+hours, and of which it has not yet been possible to determine the
+particulars with certainty, a given canal changes its appearance and is
+found transformed through all its length into two lines or uniform
+stripes more or less parallel to one another, and which run straight and
+equal with the exact geometrical precision of the two rails of a
+railroad. But this exact course is the only point of resemblance with
+the rails, because in dimensions there is no comparison possible, as it
+is easy to imagine. These two lines follow very nearly the direction of
+the original canal and end in the place where it ended. One of these is
+often superposed as exactly as possible upon the former line, the other
+being drawn anew; but in this case the original line loses all the small
+irregularities and curvature that it may have originally possessed. But
+it also happens that both the lines may occupy opposite sides of the'
+former canal and be located upon entirely new ground. The distance
+between the two lines differs in different germinations and varies from
+600 kilometers (360 miles) and more down to the smallest limit at which
+two lines may appear separated in large visual telescopes--less than at
+intervals of 50 kilometers (30 miles). The breadth of the stripes
+themselves may range from the limit of visibility, which we may suppose
+to be 30 kilometers (18 miles), up to more than 100 kilometers (60
+miles). The color of the two lines varies from black to a light red,
+which can hardly be distinguished from the general yellow background of
+the continental surface. The space between is for the most part yellow,
+but in many cases appears whitish. The gemination is not necessarily
+confined only to the canals, but tends to be produced also in the
+lakes. Often one of these is seen transformed into two short, broad,
+dark lines parallel to one another and traversed by a yellow line. In
+these cases the gemination is naturally short and does not exceed the
+limits of the original lake.
+
+The gemination is not shown by all at the same time, but when the season
+is at hand it begins to be produced here and there, in an isolated,
+irregular manner, or at least without any easily recognizable order. In
+many canals (such as the Nilosyrtis, for example), the gemination is
+lacking entirely, or is scarcely visible. After having lasted for some
+months, the markings fade out gradually and disappear until another
+season equally favorable for their formation. Thus it happens that in
+certain other seasons (especially near the southern solstice of the
+planet) few are seen, or even none at all. In different oppositions the
+gemination of the same canal may present different appearances as to
+width, intensity, and arrangement of the two stripes; also in some cases
+the direction of the lines may vary, although by the smallest quantity,
+but still deviating by a small amount from the canal with which they are
+directly associated. From this important fact it is immediately
+understood that the gemination cannot be a fixed formation upon the
+surface of Mars and of a geographical character like the canals. The
+second of our maps will give an approximate idea of the appearance which
+these singular formations present. It contains all the geminations
+observed since 1882 up to the present time. In examining it it is
+necessary to bear in mind that not all of these appearances were
+simultaneous, and consequently that the map does not represent the
+condition of Mars at any given period; it is only a sort of
+topographical register of the observations made of this phenomenon at
+different times.[D]
+
+The observation of the gemination is one of the greatest difficulty, and
+can only be made by an eye well practiced in such work, added to a
+telescope of accurate construction and of great power. This explains why
+it is that it was not seen before 1882. In the ten years that have
+transpired since that time, it has been seen and described at eight or
+ten observatories. Nevertheless, some still deny that these phenomena
+are real, and tax with illusion (or even imposture) those who declare
+that they have observed it.
+
+Their singular aspect, and their being drawn with absolute geometrical
+precision, as if they were the work of rule or compass, has led some to
+see in them the work of intelligent beings, inhabitants of the planet. I
+am very careful not to combat this supposition, which includes nothing
+impossible. (Io mi guarderò bene dal combattere questa supposizione, la
+quale nulla include d'impossibile.) But it will be noticed that in any
+case the gemination cannot be a work of permanent character, it being
+certain that in a given instance it may change its appearance and
+dimensions from one season to another. If we should assume such a work,
+a certain variability would not be excluded from it; for example,
+extensive agricultural labor and irrigation upon a large scale. Let us
+add, further, that the intervention of intelligent beings might explain
+the geometrical appearance of the gemination, but it is not at all
+necessary for such a purpose. The geometry of nature is manifested in
+many other facts from which are excluded the idea of any artificial
+labor whatever. The perfect spheroids of the heavenly bodies and the
+ring of Saturn were not constructed in a turning lathe, and not with
+compasses has Iris described within the clouds her beautiful and regular
+arch. And what shall we say of the infinite variety of those exquisite
+and regular polyhedrons in which the world of crystals is so rich? In
+the organic world, also, is not that geometry most wonderful which
+presides over the distribution of the foliage upon certain plants, which
+orders the nearly symmetrical, star-like figures of the flowers of the
+field, as well as of the sea, and which produces in the shell such an
+exquisite conical spiral that excels the most beautiful masterpieces of
+Gothic architecture? In all these objects the geometrical form is the
+simple and necessary consequence of the principles and laws which govern
+the physical and physiological world. That these principles and these
+laws are but an indication of a higher intelligent Power we may admit,
+but this has nothing to do with the present argument.
+
+Having regard, then, for the principle that in the explanation of
+natural phenomena it is universally agreed to begin with the simplest
+suppositions, the first hypotheses of the nature and cause of the
+geminations have for the most part put in operation only the laws of
+inorganic nature. Thus, the gemination is supposed to be due either to
+the effects of light in the atmosphere of Mars, or to optical illusions
+produced by vapors in various manners, or to glacial phenomena of a
+perpetual winter, to which it is known all the planets will be
+condemned, or to double cracks in its surface, or to single cracks of
+which the images are doubled by the effect of smoke issuing in long
+lines and blown laterally by the wind. The examination of these
+ingenious suppositions leads us to conclude that none of them seem to
+correspond entirely with the observed facts, either in whole or in part.
+Some of these hypotheses would not have been proposed had their authors
+been able to examine the geminations with their own eyes. Since some of
+these may ask me directly, "Can you suggest anything better?" I must
+reply candidly, "No."
+
+It would be far more easy if we were willing to introduce the forces
+pertaining to organic nature. Here the field of plausible supposition is
+immense, being capable of making an infinite number of combinations
+capable of satisfying the appearances even with the smallest and
+simplest means. Changes of vegetation over a vast area, and the
+production of animals, also very small, but in enormous multitudes, may
+well be rendered visible at such a distance. An observer placed in the
+moon would be able to see such an appearance at the times in which
+agricultural operations are carried out upon one vast plain--the
+seed-time and the gathering of the harvest. In such a manner also would
+the flowers of the plants of the great steppes of Europe and Asia be
+rendered visible at the distance of Mars--by a variety of coloring. A
+similar system of operations produced in that planet may thus certainly
+be rendered visible to us. But how difficult for the Lunarians and the
+Areans to be able to imagine the true causes of such changes of
+appearance without having first at least some superficial knowledge of
+terrestrial nature! So also for us, who know so little of the physical
+state of Mars, and nothing of its organic world, the great liberty of
+possible supposition renders arbitrary all explanations of this sort and
+constitutes the gravest obstacle to the acquisition of well-founded
+notions. All that we may hope is that with time the uncertainty of the
+problem will gradually diminish, demonstrating if not what the
+geminations are, at least what they cannot be. We may also confide a
+little in what Galileo called "the courtesy of nature," thanks to which
+a ray of light from an unexpected source will sometimes illuminate an
+investigation at first believed inaccessible to our speculations, and of
+which we have a beautiful example in celestial chemistry. Let us
+therefore hope and study.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote A: Pyrois I take to be some terrestrial region, although I
+have not been able to find any translation of the name.--Translator.]
+
+[Footnote B: This observation of the dark color which deep water
+exhibits when seen from above is found already noted by the first author
+of antique memory, for in the Iliad (verses 770-771 of Book V) it is
+described how "the sentinel from the high sentry box extends his glance
+over the wine-colored sea, [Greek: _oinopa phonton_]." In the version of
+Monti the adjective indicating the color is lost.]
+
+[Footnote C: In a footnote the author refers to a drawing of Mars made
+by himself, September 15, 1892, and says, ... "At the top of the disk
+the Mare Erythraeum and the Mare Australe appear divided by a great
+curved peninsula, shaped like a sickle, producing an unusual appearance
+in the area called Deucalionis Regio, which was prolonged that year so
+as to reach the islands of Noachis and Argyre. This region forms with
+them a continuous whole, but with faint traces of separation occurring
+here and there in a length of nearly 6,000 kilometers (4,000 miles). Its
+color, much less brilliant than that of the continents, was a mixture of
+their yellow with the brownish gray of the neighboring seas." The
+interesting feature of this note is the remark that it was an unusual
+appearance, the region referred to being that in which the central
+branch of the fork of the Y appeared. Since no such branch was
+conspicuously visible this year, it would therefore seem from the above
+that it was the opposition of 1892 that was peculiar, and not the
+present one.--Translator.]
+
+[Footnote D: This map may be found also in La Planète Mars, by
+Flammarion, page 44.--Translator.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars
+by L. P. Gratacap
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