Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/163

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The Voyage of Circumnavigation.
141

of the many cities we were passing till, crossing the equator, we pushed on out of sight of land to the great Newton Ocean. We crossed the "tropic of the Lion" (for that is the southern tropic of Mars, as yours is the tropic of Capricorn), then came to the great island of the Southern Ocean, which you call Secchi's Land. The winter was coming on. Thousands of vessels filled with their freights were sailing down the Zollner Sea to bear the Martians of Secchi's Land to more favoured lands. The snow was already appearing. However, we pushed on rapidly to near the antarctic circle, where the sea was already nearly a mass of ice-floes, into Philipp's Sea, just sighting the antarctic isle (now clad in snow) of Rossland. Then pushing down the Terby Sea, we once more came in sight of Webb Land. ****

"Tell me," I said, " how you arrange your exchanges of material things. On earth there is a use of bits of gold and silver, which are stamped to represent a certain amount of things which are wanted, as food or clothes, and people who have many of these bits of gold are called rich; but in our world of Venus there is by a beneficent providence such an abundance of everything that there is little