Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/79

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74
LIFE IN A THOUSAND WORLDS.

During the past one thousand years, the Jupiterites have made numberless attempts to establish communication between these moons and their planet, but all their efforts have failed. Either the Moonites are too stupid, or the Jupiterites are not expert enough in throwing out signals or in building air ships.

For no one thing more than another did I envy the astronomers of Jupiter than for their marvelous magnifying lenses. I knew that if we had such lenses, or the material to make them, we could watch with ease the inhabitants of the Moon or of Mars, and we could study the intelligent life on Mercury and Venus, to say nothing of the great advantages we should have in observing comets and all the numberless starry systems scattered throughout illimitable space.

The religious life of Jupiter proved to be intensely interesting to me. They have a sacred book which corresponds to our Bible, and it has always remained in its original form because there is but one language.

Since I left my own world I had not felt so kindred a touch in spirit as when I invisibly entered one of their great temples of