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CHAPTER II.

SATURN.

Here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge and chaos to retire,
As from her outmost works a broken foe
With tumult less and with less hostile din.

Milton's Paradise Lost.

On, on we went through space towards that vast belted globe, the great rings rising overhead like a huge aurora, and the moons in a vast corona around. It grew huger and huger, till its glistening clouds formed a vast expanse before us, and the belts of Saturn grew into huge openings. Into one of these we dashed. The scene of that outer region of mist was not unlike that of the great planet we had left—Jupiter. It seemed as if we were ever going on and on for hundreds of miles, with the huge seas of mist rising around us. At length we came to a resistance, as of some solid expanse of matter, through which we dashed, and then felt our further progress stopped in a great