for ages been my joy—a happy abode. Earth I had trodden on and traversed, even in places where man's foot had never wandered, in Arctic snows, up to the very Pole itself. I had twice gone round your earth, had seen its cities, mountains, oceans, its sin, its misery, its follies, its conceits. Your satellite I had visited and wandered, as I told you, over the rugged slopes of Tycho, and clambered the lunar crater range, and crossed the crater of Copernicus.
And now I stood upon another world—a world that seemed most beautiful, although further removed than ours or yours from the great source of life and beauty, i.e., the glorious centre of our system—the light-giving Sun.
We found ourselves on the summit of a small ice-formed mountain, partially filled with snow. Here we placed our ether-car and buried it in the snows, so that it might not be disturbed by any Martian who might come across it. Then we took flight to the loftiest peak of the ring, from which we surveyed the country.
In the foreground of the strange scene before us was a vast succession of mountains, not unlike icebergs, or the lunar mountains of the South pole. They were all white with
