earth, I had seen all its beauties and its sorrows; I had mixed with men, and been undetected by them; I had added immensely, not merely to my own, but to my fellow-creatures' field of knowledge. Now they would be able to classify and criticise my information, and by it advance in their grasp of the knowledge of creation."
Such thoughts passed through my mind as I directed my vessel through space to my own city, near the great Southern Ocean. Then I turned on the gravitating power, and dashed, at the speed of a cannon-ball, towards the glorious and brilliant globe before me. Down, down I rushed, till the sea of vapour was close under my feet. It reminded me then of the scene I more than once had lingered over in the Alps. The white sea of mist stretched before me, with here and there, like islands in a lake, a few of the glittering mountains of our South Polar continent. "After all, the solar system is really akin," I said to myself. "Surely our world is like to the earth, its sister in space."
Down, down I rushed. The clouds were round me, one sea of white mist; and then I had dashed through the veil, and our glorious, our lovely world, the "queen of beauty" in the
