The Certaintyof a FutureLife in Mars

_Being the Posthumous Papers of_

BRADFORD TORREY DODD

EDITED BYL. P. GRATACAP

BRENTANO'S1903

PARISCHICAGOWASHINGTONNEW YORK

PREFACE BY EDITOR. 

The extraordinary character of the story here published, which somepeculiar circumstances have fortunately, I think, put into my hands, will excite a curiosity as vivid as the incidents of the narratives arethemselves astonishing and unprecedented. To satisfy, as far as I can, afew natural inquiries which must be elicited by its publication, I begto explain how this unusual posthumous paper came into my possession. 

It was written by Bradford Torrey Dodd, who died at Christ Church, NewZealand, January, 1895, after a lingering illness in which consumptiondeveloped, which was attributed to the exposure he had experienced inreceiving some of the wireless messages his singular history details. Iwas not acquainted with Mr. Dodd, but some information, acquired sincethe reception of his manuscript, has completely satisfied me, that, however interpreted, Mr. Dodd did not intend in it the perpetration ofa hoax. His scientific ability was undoubtedly remarkable, and the factsthat his father and himself worked in an astronomical station nearChrist Church; that his father died; that his acquaintance with theDodans was a reality; that he did receive messages at a wirelesstelegraphic station; that he himself and his assistants fully accreditedthese messages to extra-terrestrial sources, are, beyond a doubt, easilyverified. 

A mutual friend brought me Mr. Dodd's papers, which I looked over withincreasing amazement, culminating in blank incredulity. On rereadingthem and considering the usefulness of giving them to the public, I havebeen influenced by two motives, the desire to satisfy the ferventlyexpressed wish of the writer himself and the reasonable belief that ifthey are preposterously improbable their publication can only furnish anew and temporary and quite harmless diversion, and that if Mr. Dodd'sexperiment shall be in some future day successfully repeated his claimsto distinction as the first to open this marvelous field ofinvestigation will have been honorably and invincibly protected. 

L. P. GRATACAP. 

CONTENTS. 

Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd

Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan

Note by the Editor

The Planet Mars--By Giovanni Schiaparelli

POSTHUMOUS PAPERS

OF

BRADFORD TORREY DODD. 

THE CERTAINTY

OF

A FUTURE LIFE IN MARS. 

CHAPTER I. 

In the confusion of thought about a future life, the peculiar factsrelated in the following pages can certainly be regarded as helpful. Spiritualism, with its morbid tendencies, its infatuation and deceit, has not been of any substantial value in this inquiry. It may afford tothose who have experienced any positive visitation from another world avery comforting and indisputable proof. To most sane people it is ahumiliating and ludicrous vagary. 

At the conclusion of a life spent rather diligently in study, and inassociation especially with astronomical practice and physicalexperiments, I have, in view of certain hitherto unpublished facts, decided to make public almost incontrovertible evidence that in theplanet Mars the continuation of our present life, in some instances, hasbeen discovered by myself. I will not dwell on the astonishment I havefelt over these discoveries, nor attempt to describe that felicity ofconviction which I now enjoy over the prospect of a life in anotherworld. 

My father was the fortunate possessor of a large fortune, which freedhim of all anxieties about any material cares, and left him to pursuethe bent of his inclination. He became greatly interested in physicalscience, and was also a patron of the liberal arts. His home was storedwith the most beautiful products of the manufacturer's skill in fictilearts, and on its walls hung the most approved examples of the painter'sskill. The looms of Holland and France and England furnished him withtheir delicate and sumptuous tapestries, and the Orient covered hisfloors with the richest and most prized carpets of Daghestan andTrebizond, and of Bokhara. 

But even more marked than his love for art was his passion for physicalscience. His opportunities for the indulgence of this taste wereunlimited, and the reinforcement of his natural aptitude by his greatmeans enabled him to carry on experiments upon a scale of the mostmagnificent proportions. These experiments were made in a largebuilding which was especially built for this object. It contained everyfacility for his various new designs, and in it he anticipated manyadvances in electrical science and in mechanical devices, which havemade the civilization of our day so remarkable. I recall distinctly as aboy his ingenious approximation to the telephone, and even the recentadvances in wireless telegraphy, which has been the instrumentality bywhich my own researches in the field of interplanetary telegraphy havebeen prosecuted, had been realized by himself. 

It was in the midst of a life almost ideally happy that the blow fellwhich drove him and myself, then a boy and his only child, into aretirement which resulted in the discoveries I am about to relate. Myfather's devotion to my mother was an illustration of the most beautifuland tender love that a man can bear toward a woman. It was adoration. Though his mind was employed upon the abstruse questions of physicswhich he investigated, or edified by new acquisitions in art, all hisknowledge and all his pleasure seemed but the means by which heendeavored to gain her deeper affection. She indeed became his companionin science, and her own just and well regulated taste constantlyfurnished him new motives for adding to his wide accumulations of art. 

I can recall with some difficulty the day when with my father in a roomimmediately below the bedroom in which my mother was confined he awaitedthe summons of the doctors to see his wife for the last time. It was arainy day, the clouds were drifting across a dull November sky. Throughan opening in the trees then leafless, the Hudson was visible, even thenflaked with ice, while an early snow covered the sloping lawn andwhitened the broad-limbed oaks. I remember indistinctly his leading meby the hand through the hallway up the stairs, and softly whispering tome to be quite still, entered the large room dimly lit where my mother, attended by a nurse and a doctor, lay on the white bed. I remember beingkissed by her and then being led from the room by the nurse. My fatherdoubtless lingered until all was over, and the dear associate of hislife, whose tenderness and charity had made all who approached hergrateful, whose genial and appreciative mind had supplied the stimulusof recognition he needed for his own studies, passed away. After that Iseemed dimly to recall a period of extreme loneliness when I was left incharge of a private instructor, while my father, as I later learned, bewildered by his great loss, and temporarily driven into a sort ofmadness, wandered in an aimless track of travel over the United States. 

On his return the sharp recurrence to the scenes of his former happinessrenewed the bitterness of his spirit, and he reluctantly concluded toabandon his home. His own thoughts had not as yet clearly formed anydecision in his mind as to where he would go or what he would do. It wasinevitable, however, that he should revert to his scientificinvestigations. He found in them a new solace and distraction, but eventhen his passion for research would not have sufficed to adequately meethis desperate desire to escape his grief, if in a rather singular mannerthere had not come to him an intimation of the possibilities of somesort of communication with my mother through these very investigationsin electricity and magnetism in which he had been engaged. 

I had become quite inseparable from him. He found in me many suggestionsin face and manner of my mother, and particularly he was interested inmy peculiar lapses into meditation and introspection which in many wayssuggested to him a similar habit in her. On one occasion when, as washis wont, before we finally left the old home at Irvington, he had takenme in the summer evenings to the top of the observatory, then situatedabout half a mile west of the Albany road, we had both been silentlywatching the sun sink into a bank of golden haze, and the black band ofthe Palisades passing underneath like a velvet zone of shadow, I turnedto my father and in a sudden access of curiosity said:

"Father, if mother had gone to the Sun, would she speak to us now with aray of light?"

My father smiled patiently, half amused, and then standing and lookingat the sun's disk, disappearing behind the Jersey hills, said, "My son, it was a curious thought of a well-known French writer, Figuer, who losthis son, who was very dear to him, that his soul with armies and hostsof other souls, had departed to the sun and that they made the light andheat of this great luminary, and this wise man felt some comfort in thethought that the heat and light of the sun as he felt himself bathed inradiance and warmth were emanations from his boy, and his eyes and bodyseemed then in a figurative, and yet to him, very real way, communicating with his boy. You smile. I know it is with interest. Letme read to you from Figuer's singular book what he has written aboutit. "

He disappeared and left me also standing and looking upward at a faintwreath of cloud, tinged in rosiness, which floated almost in thezenith. I was then about eleven years old, precocious for my years andgifted with a sympathy for occult and difficult subjects that becameonly intensified through the peculiar concentrated companionship I hadfrom day to day, and month to month enjoyed with my father. 

This narrative may be inadvertently classed with those ephemeralfictions in which the reader is constantly conscious that the dialogueand the incidents are veritable creations. It may here be asked howcould I recall with any literalness the conversations and events of atime so long past. I do not pretend or wish it to be thought that theseinterviews with my father are here literally related. That, of course, is beyond the limits of reasonable probability. But I do insist that inthe following pages the occurrences described are very faithfultranscripts of those connected with the peculiar inquiry and experimentsmy father and myself began, and brought to a startling conclusion. Although conducted in the form of an imaginative story the reader isimportuned to give them his most implicit credence. 

My father soon returned with the small volume of Figuer and read, Iimagine, that passage which runs as follows in Chapter XIII:

"Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe; since it is, aswe have shown, the origin of life, of feeling, of thought; since it isthe determining cause of all organized life on the earth--why may we notdeclare that the rays transmitted by the sun to the earth and the otherplanets are nothing more or less than the emanations of these souls?that these are the emissions of pure spirits living in the radiant starthat come to us, and to dwellers in the other planets, under the visibleform of rays?

"If this hypothesis be accepted, what magnificent, what sublimerelations may we not catch a glimpse of, between the sun and the globesthat roll around him; between the Sun and the planets there would be acontinual exchange, a never broken circle, an unending 'come and go' ofbeamy emissions, which would engender and nourish in the solar worldmotion and activity, thought and feeling, and keep burning everywherethe torch of life. 

"See the emanations of souls that dwell in the Sun descending upon theearth in the shape of solar rays. Light gives life to plants, andproduces vegetable life, to which sensibility belongs. Plants havingreceived from the Sun the germ of sensibility transmit it to animals, always with the help of the Sun's heat. See the soul germs enfolded inanimals develop, improve little by little, from one animal to another, and at last become incarnated in a human body. See, a little later, thesuperhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains ofether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that will graduallylead him to the highest round of the ladder of spiritual growth, whereall material substance has been eliminated, and where the time has comefor the soul thus exalted, and with essence purified to the utmost, toenter the supreme home of bliss and intellectual and moral power; thatis the Sun. 

"Such would be the endless circle, the unbroken chain, that would bindtogether all the beings of Nature, and extend from the visible to theinvisible world. "

From that moment, moved more and more by the strangeness of the fancy, which evidently fascinated him, he buried himself in the indulgence ofthe thought of the possibility of some sort of communication with hiswife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to thefruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliatingintercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men andwomen almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated in thoughtwith themselves. 

In 1881 electrical science had well advanced toward those perfectedtriumphs which give distinction to this century. Electric lighting waswell understood, the Jablochkoff and Jamin lamps were then in use, theincandescent and Maxim light, or arc light were employed, and indeed thepanic caused by Edison's premature announcement of the solution of theincandescent system of lighting had then preceded by two years, theexcellent results of Mr. Swan in England in the same field. Edison'sfirst carbon light and his original phonograph were exhibited toward theend of 1880 in the Patent Museum at South Kensington. 

The daily News of New York in April of 1881 published the victory of theEdison Electric Lighting Company over the Mayor's veto in words that maybe read to-day with considerable interest. It said "the company willproceed immediately to introduce its new electric lamps in the officesin the business portion of the city around Wall Street. It consists of asmall bulbous glass globe, four inches long, and an inch and a half indiameter, with a carbon loop which becomes incandescent when theelectric current passes through. Each lamp is of sixteen candle powerwith no perceptible variation in intensity. The light is turned on oroff with a thumb screw. Wires have already been put into fortybuildings. "

My father had anticipated the incandescent light in its fuller laterdevelopment and had used, before it was announced by Prof. Avenarius ofAustria, a method of dividing the electric current, by the insertion ofa polariser in a secondary circuit connected with each lamp, a method, it need not be said to electricians, now utterly obsolete. 

The rooms of our physical laboratory at Irvington were almost all lit byelectric lamps constructed somewhat on the principle of Edison's, butusing platinum wires, and the old residents of that village may recallthe singular, lonely house half hidden in broad sycamores, sending outits electric radiance late at night while my father and frequentlymyself, then a boy of thirteen years, worked at experimental problems inphysics. 

My father gave my precocity for science a very successful impetus andleft me at his death fully in possession of the ideas and projects hecherished. Amongst these projects, one partially realized, was theacceleration of plant growth by means of electric light, and heating byelectricity. 

Dr. Siemens of England, it may be recalled, had very ingeniouslyexperimented upon the influence of the electric light upon vegetation. In a paper read by that distinguished man before the Society ofTelegraph Engineers in June, 1880, he referred to his conclusion that"electric light produces the coloring matter, chlorophyll, in the leavesof plants, that it aids their growth, counteracts the effects of nightfrosts, and promotes the setting and ripening of fruit in the open air. "

I find in an old note book of my father's, dated 1879, "chlorophyllousmatter in leaves encouraged by electric energy, presumably by the bluerays. " In heating and cooking by electricity my father had made someprogress though he had not in 1880 employed his time in this direction. 

Perhaps more remarkable than anything else presenting my father's greatscientific ingenuity was his improvements of the dynamo and theinvention of a new successful small traction engine. 

In 1880 the complete distinction between alternating and direct currentshad not been made, and the device of a successful converter, for thechange of the former comparatively inert to the latter's dynamiccondition, only dreamed of. Yet in my father's notebook I find thissuggestive sentence: "It seems possible to devise an apparatus whichwould deliver from an alternating circuit a direct current to a directcurrent circuit. "

I have dwelt somewhat upon my father's scientific acquirements andgenius in order to impress upon the reader the strictly legitimatetraining I received in scientific procedure, and I have instancedsomewhat the status of his scientific development in 1880, because itwas at that time that he concluded to leave Irvington and locate hislaboratory and observatory elsewhere. And for the sake of hisastronomical interests he determined to find some place peculiarly wellfitted, on account of its atmospheric advantages, for astronomicalobservations. It is necessary likewise to recall some of the facts thenknown to astronomers and my father's own theories, in order to weaveinto a logical sequence the incidents leading up to my positivedemonstration of a future life for some of our race in the planet Mars. 

Astronomy had a great charm for my mother. Her enthusiasm was sooncommunicated to my father who found his wealth was a requisite inestablishing the observatory he had erected at Irvington and in itsequipment. Telescopes are expensive playthings. 

The Lick Observatory was begun in 1880 and my father throughcorrespondence with the directors of the University of California hadlearned many of the details pertaining to this great project. Influencedby the splendid prospects of this undertaking my father determined ifpossible to surpass it. He wrote to Fiel of Paris and expected to beable to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of theLick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterlyabortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leavingIrvington examining the various possible locations for his newobservatory. The requisites were nearness to the equator, an equableclimate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During this year my fatherheard that Prof. Hertz of Berlin had generated waves of magnetism andthat it was hoped that these might ultimately prove efficacious as ameans of direct communication between distant points without theintroduction of wire conductors. 

This thought of communicating with distant points without fixedconductors greatly impressed my father and led him along a line ofspeculation upon which finally rested my own success in securing themessages detailed in this book from the planet Mars. 

I recall that one evening in the winter of 1881 while he was yet engagedin making preparations for his departure from the United States to NewZealand, which he finally chose for the erection of his laboratories, and especially his observatory, I heard him read with the greatestsatisfaction of the attempt made in the siege of Paris to bring thebesieged French into telegraphic communication with the Provinces bymeans of the River Seine. 

It was proposed to send powerful currents into the River Seine frombatteries near the German lines and to receive in Paris upon delicategalvanometers, such an amount of their current as had not leaked away inthe earth. Profs. Desains, Jamin, and Berthelot were interested in theseexperiments, although the suggestion had been made by M. Bourbouze, andafter some interruptions when the attempt was to be carried out, thearmistice of Jan. 14, 1871, brought their preparations to a close. 

How often my father spoke of these attempts, and half smilingly on oneoccasion as we watched the starry skies "thick inlaid with patterns ofbright gold" said to me: "It seems to me within the reach of possibilityto attain some sort of connection with these shining hosts. If we mustassume that the disturbances on the Sun's surface effect magnetic stormson ours, it is quite evident that a fluid of translatory power orconsistency exists between the earth and the sun, then also between allthe planetary inhabitants of space, and I cannot see why we may not hopesome day to realize a means of communication with these distant bodies. How inspiring is the thought that in some such way upon the basis of anabsolutely perfect scientific deduction we might be brought intoconversational alliance with these singular and orderly creations, andactually look upon their scenes and lives and history, and bring toourselves in verbal pictures a presentation of their marvellousproperties. "

I think it was on this occasion that my father expressed his thoughtupon some form of interplanetary telegraphy in a manner that left it inmy own mind a very impressive and majestic idea. He had read at somelength the address of Sir William Armstrong before the BritishAssociation in 1863, when that distinguished observer speaks of thesympathy between forces operating in the sun, and magnetic forces in theearth and remarks the phenomenon seen by independent observers inSeptember, 1859. The passage, easily verified by the reader, was to thiseffect:

"A sudden outburst of light, far exceeding the brightness of the sun'ssurface was seen to take place, and sweep like a drifting cloud over aportion of the solar surface. This was attended by magnetic disturbancesof unusual intensity and with exhibitions of aurora of extraordinarybrilliancy. The identical instant at which the effusion of light wasobserved was recorded by an abrupt and strongly marked deflection in theself-registering instruments at Kew. "

My father then pausing and walking impetuously across the roomdeclaimed, as it were, his views:

"Here we are, a group of limited intelligent beings circumscribed by aboundless space, and placed upon a speck of matter which is whirledaround the sun in an endless captivity, bound by this inexorable law ofgravitation, like a stone in a sling. About us in this ethereal oceanfloats a host of similarly made orbs, perhaps, in thousands of cases, inhabited by beings throbbing with the same curiosity as our own toreach out beyond their sphere, and learn something of the nature of theanimated universe which they may dimly suspect lies about them in theother stars. Why must it not be part of this immeasurable design whichbrought us here, that we shall some day become part of a celestialsymposium; that lines of communication, invisible but incessant, shallthread in labyrinths of invisible currents these dark abysses, and bringus in inspiring touch with the marvels and contents of the entireuniverse. "

He turned to me and gazing intently at my upturned face which I am surereflected his own in its enthusiasm and delight, continued: "You, myson, and I, will put this before us as a possible achievement and workincessantly for that end. Prof. Hertz has generated these magneticwaves; we will; and by means of some sort of a receiver endeavor to findout a clue to _wireless telegraphy_. " These closing remarkable wordswere actually used by my father, and in view of the marvellousrealization of Marconi's hopes in that direction, as well as my ownstupendous success in reaching the inhabitants of Mars, was a distinctprophecy. 

It was a few months later that my father completed all of hisarrangements in regard to the disposition of his investments, andperfected the necessary arrangements for being constantly supplied withfunds by his bankers in New York. He also had agreed upon the apparatusto be forwarded, expecting to be largely supplied at Sydney in new SouthWales, as it was from this point he intended to sail or steam to NewZealand. Much of the equipment for his observatory was to come fromParis, and he relied upon intelligent assistance both in Sydney andChrist Church, in New Zealand, for the erection and furnishment of hisvarious houses. 

He finally concluded to place his station on Mount Cook at an elevationof 1, 000 feet upon a well protected plateau, which was described to himby a Mr. Ashton who had extensive acquaintance and some five years'experience in New Zealand. We found this position ideal, and in theperfection of all the conditions necessary for our experiments possessedby it, made the realization at that time utterly unsuspected by eitherof us, of our final designs, commensurately more simple. 

I left New York with my father filled with a curious expectancy. Iseemed to cherish no regret at leaving my childhood's home. I only felta vague wondering delight to go abroad and see strange and new things. My seclusion with my father had developed in me a singular inaptitudefor companionship with boys of my own age, and furthermore from theinfluence of his rather poetic and dreaming nature, I began to show ahalf wistful intensity of interest in things occult, mysterious anddifficult. We left New York in 1882, and it was then that I read fordiversion in my long ride to California, Colonel Olcutt's EsotericBuddhism. 

The whole central fancy of reincarnation affected me deeply. But Imodified the idea as displayed by Blavatsky and Theosophists generally. From a long familiarity with the stars, in conjunction with theinevitable creative and anthropomorphic sensibility of youth, I began tothink that this reincarnation did not occur on the earth, but had itsstages of transmutation placed elsewhere. In short, I amused myselfincessantly with placing the poets in one star, the novelists inanother, the scientists in a third, the mechanicians in a fourth, and ineach I imagined a Utopia. A very little mature thought and the mostordinary observation of plain men, men who at 20 have far more practicalsense than I possess to-day, would have demonstrated the hopelessness ofthis arrangement, and the deplorable social chaos it would have led to. 

I think, however, that along this line of feeling I grew more and morein sympathy with my father's dimly expressed hopes to achieve somethingtangible in the way of interstellar or planetary communication. So thatgradually he, by reason of a desire that slowly invaded every emotionalrecess of his being, and I, through the vagaries of an imaginative mindreached successively an intense conviction that we should work in thisdirection. 

There was much in our scientific work also that encouraged a certainhigh mindedness and liberty of speculation, a careless audacity beforethe most difficult tasks. The resolution of matter into a phase ofenergy, the interpretation of light as an electric phenomenon, themysteries of the electric force itself, the peculiar hypotheses aboutthe force of gravitation, lead men, studying these subjects, and endowedwith speculative tendencies to conceive, moved also by a quasisensational desire to reach new results, that the most extravagantachievements are possible to science. 

With us, regarding the physical universe as a unit, recognizing thenotes of intelligence of a deep coercive and comprehensive plan involvedthroughout, feeling that our human intelligence was the reflex ormicrocosmic representation of the planning, upholding mind, that if so, no conceivable limitation could be placed upon its expansion andconquests, that further it would be incomprehensible that the colonizing(so to speak) of the central mind occurred only on one sphere, when itdoubtless might be embodied in other beings, on hundreds or thousands ormillions of other spheres; that continuance of life after death was atruth; feeling all this, their concomitant influence was to make uspositive that the human mind in an intelligent, satisfactory, self-illuminating way some day would reach mind everywhere in all itsspecific forms; and that the abyss of space would eventually thrill withthe vibrations of conscious communion between remote worlds. 

With feelings of this sort excited and reinforced by my father'spassionate hope to learn something of his wife's life after death wereached Christ Church, New Zealand, in June, 1883. 

I may now revert to the line of suggestions that led my father andmyself to locate in Mars the scene, at least, as we surmised in part, ofthose phases of a future life which I am now able to reveal with, Ithink, positive certainty. 

The planet Mars as being the next orb removed from the Sun after our ownworld in the advance outward from our solar center, has always attractedattention. At perihelion, when in opposition with the earth, it is 35millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known fromthe drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli, Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation ofland and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions, such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of itsoccupation by rational beings as altogether possible. 

During the opposition of Mars in 1879-80, Prof. Schiaparelli at Milandetermined for the second time the topography of this planet. Thetopography revealed the curious long lines or ribbons, commonly calledcanals, which seamed the face of our neighboring planet. In 1882 thisobservation was enormously extended. He then showed that there was avariable brightness in some regions, that there had been a progressiveenlargement since 1879 of his _Syrtis Magna_, that the oblique whitestreaks previously seen, continued, and, more remarkable, that there wasa continuous development day after day of the doubling of the canalswhich seemed to extend along great circles of the sphere. In 1882Schiaparelli expected at the evening opposition in 1884 to confirm andadd to these observations. 

My father had read Schiaparelli's announcements with absorbed interest. They fed his burning fancies as to the extension of our present life, and offered him a sort of scientific basis (without which he wasinclined to view all eschatology as superficial) for the belief that wemay attain in some other planet an actual prolonged second existence. 

His great reverence for Sir William Herschell was indisputable. Hequoted Herschell's own words with appreciation. These pregnant sentenceswere as follows:

"The analogy between Mars and the earth is perhaps by far the greatestin the whole solar system. Their diurnal motion is nearly the same, theobliquity of their respective ecliptics not very different; of all thesuperior planets the distance of Mars from the sun is by far thenearest, alike to that of the earth; nor will the length of the Martialyear appear very different from what we enjoy when compared to thesurprising duration of the years of Jupiter, Saturn and the GeorgianSidus. If we then find that the globe we inhabit has its polar regionfrozen and covered with mountains of ice and snow, that only partiallymelt when alternately exposed to the sun, I may well be permitted tosurmise that the same causes may probably have the same effect on theglobe of Mars; that the bright polar spots are owing to the vividreflection of light from frozen regions; and that the reduction of thesespots is to be ascribed to their being exposed to the sun. "

"In the light of these larger analogies, " my father would continue, "whyare we not further permitted to conclude that there is a more intimateand minute correlation. Why can not we predicate that under similarclimatic and atmospheric vicissitudes, with a very probably similar oridentical origin with our globe, this planet Mars, now burning red inthe evening skies, possesses life, an organic retinue of forms like ourown, or at least involving such primary principles as respiration, assimilation and productiveness, as would produce some biologicalaspects not extremely differing from those seen in our own sphere. 

"If we imagine, as we are most rationally allowed to, that Mars hasundergone a progressive secularization in cooling, that contraction hasacted upon its surface as it has on ours, that water has accumulated inbasins and depressed troughs, that atmospheric currents have beenstarted, that meteorological changes in consequence have followed, andthat the range of physical conditions embraces phases naturally verymuch like those that have prevailed in our planet, how can it beintelligently questioned that from these very identical circumstances, an order of life has not in some way arisen. "

My father had an interesting habit of snapping his fingers on both handstogether over his head when he declaimed in this way, always circlingabout the room in a rapid stride. I remember he stopped in front of meand continued in a strain something like this:

"For myself I am convinced that there has been an evolution in the orderof beings from one planet to another, that there is going on a stream oftransference, from one plane of life here to planes elsewhere, and thatthe stream is pouring in as well as out of this world, and that it maybe, in our case, pouring both ways, that is, we may be losingindividuals into lower grades of life as well as emitting them tohigher. See, what economy!

"Instead of wasting the energies of imagination to account for thedestinations of millions upon millions of human beings, the countlesshost that has occupied the surfaces of this earth through all thehistoric and prehistoric ages, we can, upon this assumption, reduce thenumber of individuals immensely, allowing that spirits are constantlyarriving, constantly departing, and that the sum total in the solarsystem remains perhaps nearly fixed, just as in the electrolysis ofwater we have hydrogen rising at one electrode and oxygen at the otherby transmission of atoms of hydrogen and atoms of oxygen toward eachelectrode through the water itself, in opposite directions, while for asensible time the mass of water remains unchanged. 

"Let us suppose that in Mercury some form of mental life exists, that itis individualized, that it expresses the physical constants of thatglobe, that its mentality has reached the point where it can make use ofthe resources of Mercury, can respond to its physical constants so faras they awaken poetry or art or religion or science. Suppose that thislife is one of extreme forcefulness, of stress and storm, like someprehistoric condition on our globe, but invested with more intellectualattributes than the same ages on our earth required or possessed, perhaps reaching a permanent condition not unlike that depicted in theNiebelungen Lied or the Sagas of the North. It might be called the_brawn_ period. Then the spirits born upon our planet or on any otherplanet in an identical condition, would find after death theirdestination in Mercury, where they could evolve up to the point wherethey might return to as, or to some other planet fitted for a higherlife. 

"Then Venus, we may imagine, succeeding Mercury, carries a higher type, an emotional life, though of course I am not influenced by heraccidental name, in suggesting it. Here in Venus, a period perchanceresembling a mixture of the pagan Grecian life and the troubadour lifeof Provence may prevail and again to it have flown the spirits which inour planet only touch that development, which from Venus flow to us, those adapted for the religious or intellectual phase we present. ThisVenus life might be called the _sense_ period. 

"And now our world follows, with its scientific life which probablyrepresents its normal limit. Beyond this it will not go. As we havedeveloped through a _brawn_ and _sense_ period to our present stage, soin Mercury and Venus, ages have prevailed of development whicheventuated in their final fixed stages at brawn and sense. In Venus, too, the brawn stage preceded the sense period. In us both have precededthe scientific stage. There has been, may we not think, constantinterchanges between these planets of such lives as survive materialdissolution, and they have found the _nidus_ that fits them in each. Souls leaving us in a brawn _epoch_ have fled to Mercury, souls leavingus in a _sense_ epoch have fled to Venus, and all souls in Mercury orVenus, ready for reincarnation in a _scientific_ epoch, have come to us. 

"But there is an important postulate underlying this theory. It is, thatupon each planet the possibilities of development just attain to themargin of the next higher step in mental evolution. That is, that onMercury the period of brawn develops to the possibility of the period ofsense without fully exemplifying it, so in Venus the period of sensedevelops to the possibility of the period of science without attainingit, and in our world the period of science develops to the period of_spirit_, without, in any universal way, exhibiting it. 

"These are steps progressively represented, I may imagine, in theplanets. And, in the further progress outward, we reach the planet Mars. Let us place here the period of spirit. On Mars is accomplished insociety, and accompanied by an accomplishment in its physical features, also, of those ideals of living which the great and good unceasinglylabor to secure for us here and unceasingly fail to secure. O my child, if we could learn somehow to get tidings from that distant sphere, ifonly the viewless abyss of space between our world and Mars might bebridged by the _noiseless and unseen waves of a magnetic current_. "

We reached Christ Church in June, in 1883, and for one year were mostbusy in completing the station we had selected, in receiving apparatus, getting our observatory built and a useful, but not large telescopemounted. 

The position taken by us was attractive. It was upon a high hill, aglacial mound which had been smoothed upon its upper surface into a longand broad plain. The prospects from this position were exceedinglybeautiful. Christ Church was some ten miles distant and the irregularshores northward outlined by ribbons of breaking waves lay upon theseaward margin of our vision, while the broken intermediate landscape, with interrupted agricultural domains and forests was in front of us andfar above us rose the grander peaks of the New Zealand Alps, a constantcharm through the changing atmosphere, now brought near to us throughthe optical refraction of the clear air, and again veiled and shadowedand removed into spectral evanescent forms. The picture was intenselyinteresting and like all commanding views where the most expressiveelements of scenery are combined, the remote sea, reflecting every moodof light and color, and the snowy peaks carrying to us the opalineglories of rising or setting sun was a comparison that stimulated andcontrolled the spectator with its wonderful charm and strength andpoetic changes. 

To me whose emotional nature, inherited from a mother gifted withdelicate tastes and a refined enthusiasm for the beautiful had beencuriously discouraged by association with my father's scientificpursuits, this lively panorama constantly fed my dreams with pleasingpictures. 

My life has been an isolated and repressed one, except for the oneincident I am about to bequeath to posterity. I had not enjoyed the playof youthful companions except in a fugitive way, I had not gone toschool nor passed three years of muscular and buoyant activity in theusual pastimes and pleasures of childhood. I had a precocious nature andit had been unfolded in an atmosphere of strictly intellectual ideas. Mymother had been a constant joy to me during the short years of her lifeon earth, but somehow by reason of sickness I had not enjoyed even herendearment as I might have. 

So in my father and his aspirations, and the later hopes of his excitedand passionate longing to regain some trace of my mother, my life fromfour years of age was actually and potentially concentrated. My fathercherished me with a great consuming love. He saw in me therepresentation in face and partially in temperament of his wife. Helavished on me every care. Yet because of his eager affection, and hiscomplete suspense from social connections I was made too largelydependent on him alone. I lived in his companionship only. Myconversation became prematurely advanced in terms and principles, and mychildish confidence was nurtured by nothing less wonderful than booksand theories, experiments and dissertations. 

The wonderful beauty of our new surroundings, the strangeness of oursudden removal from America, the long distances travelled, awoke in menew thoughts and I readily surrendered myself at times to the incoherentstruggles of my nature, to find someone, something, more responsive tomy young feelings than essays on magnetism, and a man, father though hewas, immersed in demonstrations and problems. It was then that thisdistant picture in the days of the fragrant and reviving springtime, filled me with unutterable and touching ecstacy. 

My father, as I had said, fully intended to arrive at some definiteconclusions as to the possibilities of wireless telegraphy. At one endof the grassy plain I have alluded to, our chief stations were erectedand, at the distance of two miles, almost at the other extremity, weplaced a smaller station. Our whole work was to achieve telegraphiccommunication between these points without wires. At night my fatherbent his telescopic gaze upon the heavens, and as the earth approachedopposition to Mars in 1884 I remember his eagerness and his repeatedadjurations that if we failed in the task in his lifetime I shoulddevote my life, separated from all other occupations and indulgences, tocarrying on his designs. 

At first he only dimly intimated his great ambition, the union of ourworld with others by magnetic waves, but as it slowly assumed atheoretical certainty he talked more and more boldly of this portentousand transforming possibility. 

I cannot refrain from noticing another important scientific activity ofmy father's. It was the use of photography in stellar measurement. As iswell known to photographers, in 1871 Dr. R. L. Maddox used gelatine inplace of collodion from which innovation rose the present system of dryplate photography. My father had always felt the greatest interest inthe use of photography in astronomy. He was acquainted with the splendidwork done by Chapman for Rutherford, New York, in his careful andexquisite photographs of the moon. As early as 1850 Whipple of Bostonmade photographs of the stars. 

It was, however, the incomparable advantages, furnished in speed, bythe dry plate photography which made my father realize early as anyone, the boundless possibilities thus opened in human attainment for thepenetration of the Sidereal firmament. He had made a great number ofphotographs at Irvington, and the photographic laboratory was a charmingillustration of my father's ingenuity and precision. At Mt. Cook weenjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere for work of this sort, andamongst the first thoughts of my father was to provide the mostsatisfactory means for the continuance of our stellar photography. Besides our visual telescope we had a photographic telescope which wasused, instead of connecting the visual lens on one and the sameinstrument, as in the Lick Observatory. 

The innovations introduced by photography have revolutionized theprocesses of stellar measurement. Instead of the laborious task ofmeasuring the stars through the telescope, the photographic plate can bestudied at ease as a correct and identical chart of the heavens and theresults thus obtained placed at the disposal of astronomers. My fatherappreciated this and amongst his numerous projects of scientificusefulness the preparation of photographs of the stars fully occupiedhis mind. 

We had no Meridian Circle, as it was less in the direction of thedetermination of the position of stars than in the elucidation of thesurfaces of planets, that my father's astronomical predilections lay. Our telescope was a refractor and had an objective of two feet diameter. It was firmly supported on a trap rock pedestal. The eye pieceadjustment was unusually successful, and the remarkable freedom of theobjective from any traces of spherical or chromatic aberration gave usan image of surprising clearness. The photographic results wereadmirable. I imagine few more satisfactory photographs of the face ofMoon have been made than those we secured, so far at least as definitionis concerned, and the detail within the limits of our powers ofmagnification. 

The telescope was very slowly installed and it was well in 1885 beforewe were able to use it for either observation or photography. 

As the surprising messages detailed in the following pages came by meansof wireless telegraphy, I will dwell for an instant for the benefit ofthe non-scientific reader, upon the investigations made by my father andmyself in this subject. 

The installation of a wireless telegraphic station is not necessarilydifficult. The progress made since my father and myself began theseexperiments has been, of course, considerable, and yet so far as I amable to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largelyanticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which theinterception of messages is prevented was certainly forestalled by us, though in the communications with Mars herein detailed the ordinary[_non-syntonic_. --Editor] receiver was employed. 

We employed an induction coil, emitted a wave by a spark, and had a wirerod [_antenna_. --Editor] which was in turn part of an induction coil. This was the sender (transmitter) and we could regulate the wave lengthso that a receiving wire adjusted for such a wave could only receive it. [There seems to be implied in these words an arrangement known as theSlaby-Arco system, which American readers have had described for them byM. A. Frederick, Collins, Sci. Amer. , March 9 and Dec. 28, 1901. --Editor. ] The receiver consisted of iron filings in which latercarbon particles were added. 

My father died in 1892 and we had not at the time of his death learnedof Popoff's microphone-coherer in which steel filings were mixed withcarbon granules. The magnetic waves received at first by us presumablyfrom Mars, and later, as the communications indisputably show, from thatplanet, were taken upon a Marconi receiver, or what was practicallythat. 

My father became more and more interested in the direction ofinterplanetary research by means of the magnetic wave. He arguedvehemently, buoyed up by his increasingly augmented hopes as our ownexperiments improved, that the electric wave through space moving in anethereal fluid of the extremest purity would progress more rapidly thanin our atmosphere, that the tension of such waves would be greater, thatthey could be so "heaped up" as he expressed it--(_In the Slaby-Arcosystem an apparatus is employed consisting of a Ruhmkorff coil with acentrifugal mercury interrupter, by which a steeper wave front of thedisruptive discharge is secured_. --Editor)--that their reception overthe almost impassable distances of space would be made possible. 

This idea of piling up the waves was suggested by purely physicalanalogies. The enormous waves generated by severe storms upon the oceantravel farther than the smaller waves, and are less consecutivelydissipated by the resistance of the water, the traction of its moleculesand the occasional diversion of cross disturbances from other centers. 

Again some experiments made invacuo upon a limited scale seemed to showthe accuracy of his predictions. Through a glass tube one foot indiameter and ten feet long we sent magnetic waves both when the tubewas filled with air and when it was exhausted. Our means of measuringthe time required in both cases were quite inadequate--perhaps there wasno appreciable difference--but the records in the latter case, securedupon a Morse register, were unmistakably more vigorous and audible. 

At last our various results had reached a point where we felt justifiedin extending the limits of our investigations. We had up to this timeonly tried our messages between the two stations upon the plateau of Mt. Cook. My father now proposed that I go to Christ Church, install asender (transmitter) and send messages to him at the observatory. I didso and the experiment was convincing. The day before I was ready totransmit a message I had attended an attractive church service--it wastoward the close of Lent in the year 1889--and as my father was entirelyunprepared for the account I proposed to give him of the function, Ithought its correct transmission would afford an indubitable proof ofour success. I wrote out the description. It was received by my fatherwith only ten imperfect interpretations in a list of 1, 000 words. 

From this time forward our plans for erecting a receiver in theobservatory were pushed to a completion. We had discovered thenecessity of elevation for the senders (transmitters) and receivers forlong distance work, and a tall mast, fifty feet in height, was put up atthe observatory, which--needlessly I think--was to serve as theterrestrial station for the reception of those viewless waves which myfather thought might be constantly breaking unrecorded upon theinsensitive surfaces of our earth. 

The eventful night came. It was August, 1890. Mars was then inopposition. The evening had been extremely beautiful. Nature united inher mood the most transporting contradictions of temperament. It wasAugust and the day had been marked by changes of almost tropicalseverity, although, as we were south of the equator (the latitude ofChrist Church is S. 44 degrees) August was, with us, mid-winter. Athunderstorm had broken upon us in the morning, itself an unusualmeteorological phenomenon, and the downpour of black rain, shutting offthe views and enclosing us in a torrential embrace of floods, had lastedan hour when it passed away, and the Sun re-illumined the wideglistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remoteshore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, andislands, was readily seen; the northern Alps shone in their erminerobes, greatly lengthened and deepened by the season's snows, the washedcountry side below us was a patch work of rocks and fields and denudedforestland. Christ Church like a vision of whiteness sprang out to thewest upon our vision, and immediately about us the mingling rivuletspoured their musical streams through and over the icy banks of halfconsolidated snow. 

As night came up, the stars seemed almost to pop out in theirappropriate places, like those stellar illusions that appear soappropriately upon the theatrical stage, and the low lying moon sent itsflickering radiance over the yet unsubdued waters. It was the time ofthe opposition of Mars which brings that planet nearest to us. As iswell known to astronomers, the perihelion of Mars is in the samelongitude in which the earth is on August 27; and when an oppositionoccurs near that date, the planet is only 35 millions of miles from theearth, and this is the closest approach which their bodies can evermake. 

Our magnetic receiver had been placed in position, the Morse registerwas attached; the whole apparatus was in one of the upper rooms of theobservatory, in proximity with the telescope through whose glass fordays we had watched the approach of our sister planet. As the nightsettled down upon us we had taken our seats for a few instants at atable in a lower room engaged in one of those innumerable desultorytalks upon our project and their, even to us, somewhat problematiccharacter. Everything connected with that evening, apart from its havingbeen carefully recorded in my diary and notebooks, is very distinctlyremembered by me. I recall my father reading from a letter to Nature, May 15, 1884, by Mr. W. F. Denning, discussing "The Rotation Period ofMars. " From my note-book I find the passage literally transcribed:

It read--"Notwithstanding his comparatively small diameter and its slowaxial motion, the planet Mars affords especial facilities for the exactdetermination of the rotation period. Indeed, no other planet appears tobe so favorably circumstanced in this respect, for the chief markings onMars have been perceptible with the same definiteness of outline andcharacteristics of form through many succeeding generations, whereas thefeatures, such as we discern on the other planets, are either temporary, atmospheric phenomena, or rendered so indistinct by unfavorableconditions as to defy measurement and observation. Moreover, it may betaken for granted that the features of Mars are permanent objects on theactual surface of the planet, whereas the markings displayed by ourtelescopes on some of the other planetary members of our system are mereeffects of atmospheric changes, which, though visible for several yearsand showing well defined periods of rotation cannot be accepted asaffording the true periods. The behavior of the red spot on Jupiter mayclosely intimate the actual motion of the sphere of that planet, butmarkings of such variable, unstable character can hardly exhibit anexact conformity of motion with the surface upon which they are seen tobe projected. With respect to Mars' case, it is entirely different. Nosubstantial changes in the most conspicuous features have been detectedsince they were first confronted with telescopic power and we do notanticipate that there will be any material difference in their generalconfigurations. 

"The same markings which were indistinctly revealed to the eyes ofFontana and Huyghens in 1636 and 1659 will continue to be displayed tothe astronomers of succeeding generations, though with greater fullnessand perspicuity owing to improved means. True, there may possibly bevariations in progress as regards some of the minor features, for it hasbeen suggested that the visibility of certain spots has varied in amanner which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on ordinarygrounds. These may possibly be due to atmospheric effects on the planetitself, but in many cases the alleged variations have doubtless beenmore imaginary than real. The changes in our own climate are so rapidand striking, and occasion such abnormal appearances in celestialobjects that we are frequently led to infer actual changes where nonehave taken place; in fact, observers cannot be too careful to considerthe origin of such differences and to look nearer home for some of thediscordances which may have become apparent in their results. "

It was just as he finished reading this extract that the shrillfluttering call of the maxy bird was heard from the bare branches of apoplar near the station, and in the next instant, in that intense quietthat succeeds sometimes a sudden unexpected and acute accent, the Morseregister was audible above us, clicking with a continuity and evident_intention_ that, weighted as we were with vague sensational hopes, drewthe blood from our faces, and seemed almost like a voice from the redorb then glowing in the southeastern sky. We sprang together up thestairs to the operating-room and saw with our eyes the moving lever ofthe little Morse machine. We had made ourselves familiar with theordinary telegraphic codes, the international Telegraphic Code and thatin use in Canada and the United States. They were useless. Thesuccession of short or long intervals was entirely different and themessage, if message it was, defied our persistent efforts attranslation. The disturbance of the register continued some three hours, and though we were unmistakably in communication with some externalregulated and _intentional_ source of magnetic impulses we werehopelessly confused as to their meaning. 

I can never forget our excitement. We were certainly the recipient ofexact careful conscious messages. Their terrestrial origin, strange andincredible as it might appear, did not seem likely, for the two codes sogenerally in use were not represented in it. Could it be--the thoughtseemed to stop the beating of our hearts--could it be that we had indeedreceived an extra-terrestrial communication? The register of the dotsand dashes cannot be all reproduced here, though a very long record ofthem, indeed almost complete, was made by myself. During the whole timethat the register moved hardly a word of conversation escaped our lips. We were fixed in mute amazement. We were full of unexpressed imaginings, which were told, however in my father's face, so flushed with eagerness, as with half-parted lips he bent over the instrument or interrupted hisattention by walking to the window and gazing far out into the heavens. 

The record we obtained is here reproduced, in part, as the whole wouldoccupy altogether too much space. I am interested in giving it as it mayeffectually remain a proof of my sincerity in this matter, and will, Ihave the firm conviction, be repeated in the future, not exactly or atall, as I have written it, but some message similarly received willcorroborate the statement here made, and the still further marvellousfacts I am yet to relate. 

The record I will select for reproduction is as follows:

. . . - . . . -- . . . - - - . - - . . . - . . . . . - - - - . . . . . - - - . . . . . . . . . . - - . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - . . . - - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - -- . . - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - - . -. . . . - - - . . . - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- . . . - . . . - - - . . . - . . . - . . . - - - - - . . . . - - - . . . . - - - -

CHAPTER II. 

As I now know there is a Martian language, if this communication camefrom that planet, which was my own and my father's deepest conviction, it would be impossible to interpret the foregoing record with anycertainty, or indeed, in any way. Absolute ignorance of that language, except the brief mention in my father's communications, received bymyself from that body--whose publication before I die is the solepurpose of this manuscript--make it quite certain that it is in the maina vowel language, consisting of short vocalic syllables. In such a caseit is probable that some abbreviation has been used, and the problem ofits resolution simply is placed out of the question. I may herepartially forestall the facts communicated to me by my father from Mars. In those unparalleled messages he has told me of the desire of theMartians to communicate with the earth, and as the Martians themselvesare largely made up of transplanted human spirits, the possibility ofdoing so would have been completely expected. But the singularevanescence of memory amongst these humans which absolutely displacesdetails of strictly mnemonic acquirements, except in certain directionsof art and invention, has apparently precluded this. 

We remained at the register almost the entire night taking turns in ourtireless vigil. But no more disturbances occurred. My father was deeplymoved and I scarcely less so. Accustomed as we had become to the thoughtthat wireless telegraphy would place us more readily in touch with thesidereal universe than with distant points upon our earth, presumingindeed, that, except for the intervening envelopes of atmosphereattached to our or any neighboring planet, the path of transmission ofmessages through space would be inconceivably swift, we saw nothingreally impossible in the impression that we had that night receivedcommunications from extra-terrestrial sources. 

The thought was none the less stupendous, and it seemed almostimpossible for us to allude to the subject without a peculiar sense ofreverential self-suppression, at least for a week or so. Examination andinquiry showed us no contiguous source of the message and it seemed mostimprobable that it had come to us from any distant part of the earth, aswe had become acquainted with the difficulty or impossibility ofbridging our very great distances with the resources then at humancommand, and with the unavoidable exigence of the earth's convexity. 

 * * * * *

It was a few months after this that my father, returning from a climb inthe neighboring hills, complained of great weariness and a sort of mildvertigo. I had become exceedingly endeared to him. I found him a mostunusual companion, and unnaturally separated as I had been from moreordinary associations, our lives had assumed an almost fraternaltenderness. 

I was greatly troubled to see my father's illness, and begged him totake rest; indeed, to leave the observatory for a while; to visit ChristChurch. We had made some very congenial acquaintances in Christ Church. A family of Tontines and a gentleman and his daughter by the name ofDodan had often visited us, and while we had become somewhat a subjectof perennial curiosity, and were more or less visited by curiosityhunters and others, actuated by more intelligent motives, the Tontinesand the Dodans remained our only very intimate friends. 

Indeed, Miss Dodan had come to me, buried in scientific speculations anddenied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light througha sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almostirksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedlyenthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories wasboundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescopeadjusting everything with--oh! such exquisite precision--and thensometimes discovered my hand resting upon hers, or my head touchingthose silken brown curves of hair that framed her white brow andreddening cheeks, the throbbing pleasure was so sweet, so unexpected, sostrange, that I felt a new desire rise in my heart, and the newness oflife lifted me for a moment out of myself, and started those fires ofambition and hope that only a lovely woman can awaken in the heart of aman. I mention this circumstance that led to the fatal train ofoccurrences that led to my father's death. 

I urged my father to go to Christ Church and stay with the Dodans. Mr. Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and hercheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long tohis lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the homeand scenes of his former happiness. 

He at last consented, and in October, 1891, accompanied by the Dodans, whom he had summoned from Christ Church, he went down the steep hillsidethat slanted from our plateau to the lowlands, and was soon lost fromview in a turn of the road, which also robbed me of the sight of awaving, small white handkerchief, floating in front of a half-loosenedpile of chestnut hair. 

A few days later I received a visit from Miss Dodan. I was then workingat some photographs in the dark room. My assistant told me of herarrival. I hurried to our little reception room and library, where a fewof my father's "Worthies of Science" decorated the walls, which for themost part were covered with irregular book cases, while a long squarecovered table occupied the center of the room, littered with charts, maps, journals and daily papers. 

Miss Dodan sat near the wide window looking toward Christ Church and thequickly descending road over which only a few days ago my father hadjourneyed. I caught in her face, as I entered, an anxious and disturbedglance, and I felt almost instantly an intimation of disaster. Sheturned to me as I came into the room and with a quick movement advanced. 

"Mr. Dodd, your father is ill. I hardly know what is the matter withhim. He is quite strange; does not know us when we talk to him, andwanders in a talk about 'magnetic waves' and 'his wife' and 'differentcode. ' Won't you come to see him? You may help him greatly. "

The kind, clear eyes looked up into mine and the impulse of realsympathy as she pressed my hand seemed unmistakable. I asked a fewquestions and was convinced that my father was the victim of some sortof shock, perhaps precipitated by the continuous excitement caused byour unaccountable experience in the observatory. 

I was but a few moments getting ready for the drive to Christ Church. Iremember the cold, crisp air, the rapid motion, and can I ever forgetit--the nearness and touch of Miss Dodan's person, perhaps only ahurried brushing past me of her arm, the stray touch of her floatinghair, or the accidental stubbing of her foot against my own. It seemed ashort, delicious drive. I fear my heart was almost equally dividedbetween apprehension for my father's health and the joy of simplenearness to the woman I loved. At last we reached Christ Church. TheDodans lived in the suburbs in a pretty villa on a high hill, from whosetop the city lay spread before them in its modest extent with itsneighboring places and Port Lyttelon eight miles away. 

I found my father better, but it required my own zeal and affection tothoroughly restore him, and bring him back to his characteristicinterest and alertness, which made him so original and delightful acompanion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan andmyself were frequently together, becoming more and more attached to eachother, my father renewed his wonted studies, and strongly desired toreturn to the "plateau. "

I almost regretted, harsh as the thought may seem, our return. Suchincidents are now a kind of sweet sadness to recall, for as I writethese words, I hear nearer and nearer the summons that must put me alsoin the spirit world, while she, in whose heart my own trustingly lived, has been taken away, I think wisely and prudently, to live with herfather's people in a charming, rustic village of Devonshire. But oh! sofar away! and this picture which daily I draw from beneath the pillow ofmy sick couch must alone serve to replace the companionship of her faceand voice. 

I can permit myself in this last record of an unrecoverable past todescribe a treasured incident just before I left the Dodan home with myfather. I was coming out of my room when I found Miss Dodan alsoemerging from her own bedroom at the opposite end of an upper hall. Wemet and I said: "Miss Dodan, it is a treacherous confession, but I wishyou were going back with us, or that my father would stay a littlelonger here. I shall miss you. "

"Yes, " she answered. "Aren't you a good nurse?"

"Oh, I think you need not misunderstand me, " I insisted. 

"Misunderstanding is rather an English trait, you Americans say, " sheretorted. 

"But in this case, " I continued, "I hoped any disadvantages of that sortwould be overcome by your own feelings. "

She blushed and looked quite dauntlessly into my eyes: "You mean, " sheinquired, "that you are sorry to leave me?"

My face was very red, I knew, and I felt a puzzling sensation in mythroat, but I did not hesitate: "Of course, I am sorry to leave you, more sorry than I can say, but I fear more, that leaving you may meanlosing you. "

This time confusion seemed struggling with a pleased mirth in her face, and with a laugh and a quick movement toward the stairway she exclaimed:"Well, Americans, they say, never lose what they really care to win. "

I darted forward, but she was too quick for me and the chase ended inthe lower hall in a group of people--her parents, my father, visitorsand servants--and I saw her disappear with a backward glance, in which, I could swear, I saw two pouting lips. 

My father was overjoyed to return to our really very comfortablequarters on "Martian Hill, " as Mr. Dodan, in reference to my father'sinfatuation over his imaginary (?) population of Mars, was accustomed tocall our professional home. 

It was, I think, only a few weeks after this that my father called me tohis room. He was standing in his morning apparel, a strange garb whichhe sometimes affected, made up of a black velvet gown brought togetherat the waist by a stout yellow cord, a bright red skull cap, a sort ofsandal shoe, picked out with silver ornaments, his arms covered withloose, puckered sleeves of lace, dotted with black extending up to theclose fitting sleeves of the velvet gown which only descended to hiselbow. Beneath the gown, when he was thus theatrically attired, he worea shirt of pale blue silk with a flat collar, over which came a blackvest meeting his black trunks and blue hose. 

My father was a really striking and beautiful picture in his incongruoushabiliment. His strong and thoughtful face, over which yet clustered thecurly hair of boyhood, just touched with gray, lit up by his earnest, sad eyes, seemed--how distinctly I recall it--almost ideally lovely thatmorning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola, only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I camein, and as his eyes encountered mine, I detected the traces of tearsupon his cheeks. My heart was full of love for my father, or childlikeadoration it might have been called. I hurried to him and embraced him. The tenderness overcame his habitual self-restraint and he seemed tofall sobbing in my arms. 

"My son, " he finally whispered, "my days are drawing very fast to aclose. The shock I experienced at Christ Church prepared me to believe Iwould die in some attack of paralysis. A slight aphasia occurred thismorning. It, too, as suddenly disappeared. But these warnings cannot beneglected. I and you must at once make preparations for that futurecolloquy which we must endeavor to establish between ourselves, when Ihave left this earth and you yet remain upon it. 

"I have been thinking a good deal on this subject and my reflectionshave resulted in this conclusion. "

His voice had now resumed its usual melody and power, and we sat downwhile he turned the pages of Prof. Bain's little work entitled "Mind andBody. " He read (I marked at the time the passage): "The memory risesand falls with the bodily condition; being vigorous in our fresh momentsand feeble when we are fatigued or exhausted. It is related by Sir HenryHolland that on one occasion he descended, on the same day, two mines inthe Hartz Mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second mine hewas so exhausted with inanition and fatigue, that his memory utterlyfailed him; he could not recollect a single word of German. The powercame back after taking food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs thememory in ninety-nine men out of a hundred. "

My father then continued: "It seems to me quite clear that our memory, at any rate, however little of our other mental attributes is engaged inmatter, is quite constructed in a series of molecular arrangements ofour nervous tissues. No doubt there is memory also in that subtle fluidthat survives death, but, inasmuch as memory is so closely expressed inphysical or material units or elements, does it not seem plain that asspirits we shall probably lose memory?

"The material structure in which it existed, which in a sense was memoryitself, is dissipated by death. Memory disappears with it. But perhapsnot wholly. Some shadow of itself remains. What will most likely betreasured then? The strongest, deepest memories only. Those which areso subjectively strong as to leave even in the spirit _flesh_ animpression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs:'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuingin the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the originalagent, and of recalling them at after-times by purely mental forces, Ishall remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed impressions. Itmust be considered as almost beyond a doubt that the _renewed feelingoccupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the originalfeeling_, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can beassigned. '

"It seems to me, my son, in view of all this, that, as the fondest hopeof my life is to send back to you from wherever I may be, a message, andas we both believe the means must be something like this wirelesstelegraphy, I must imbed in my mind the whole system we have developed, and especially make myself almost intuitively familiar with the Morsealphabet. Beating, beating, beating upon my brain substance thisceaselessly reiterated mechanical language, it will become soincorporated, that even in the surviving mind I shall find its tracesand be able to use it. 

"So I have concluded to put aside almost everything else and think andlive in the thought only of this coming experience. You understand me?You sympathize in this? Yes, yes, I shall get ready for this supremeexperiment which may at last, to a long waiting world, bring somereasonable assurance that death does not end all. As I think of it, as Ilook forward to meeting your mother, the whole prospect of death growswonderfully interesting and sublimely welcome. And yet, my son, you, youwho have been so patient, so kind, giving up your life for myconvenience and pleasure, I dread to leave you. But I will speak to you!Watch! wait! and at that instrument upstairs, which I know responded tosome waves of magnetism crossing the oceans of space, I shall be heardby you in English words, opening up the mysteries of other worlds!"

He stopped in sheer exhaustion with his whole face charged with almostfrantic ecstacy. It seemed to me so natural, nurtured in the sameimpossible dreams, that I saw nothing ludicrous in his hopes. 

From that day on we gave ourselves up to telegraphing from our twostations, while my father again and again consulted models of ourtransmitters and receivers. This excitement lasted a long time and itdid seem psychologically certain that in any disembodied condition myfather would be likely to recall some important parts or all of thiswell learned lesson. 

For years my father, as I mentioned before, in his astronomical studies, had limited himself to the study, photography and drawing of thesurfaces of our planetary neighbors. Mars particularly fascinated him, for he had, by some illusion or accident of thought fixed his belieffirmly that Mars represented his future post mortem home. 

The progress of study of the physical features of Mars had beenconsiderable. With these results my father and I were very familiar, hadbeen in correspondence with certain astronomical centers with regard tothem, and had even contributed something toward the elucidation of theproblems thus presented. 

In 1884, before the Royal Society, some notes on the aspect of Mars, byOtto Baeddicker, were read by the Earl of Rosse. They were accompaniedby thirteen drawings of the planet and showed many features representedon the Schiaparelli charts. W. F. Denning in 1885, remarked upon "theseeming permanency of the chief lineaments on Mars, and theirdistinctiveness of outline. " Schiaparelli confirmed his previousobservations upon the duplications of the canals and Mr. Knobelpublished some sketches. 

In 1886, M. Terby presented to the Royal Academy of Belgium notes ondrawings made by Herschell and Schroeter, indicating the so-calledKaiser Sea. M. Perrotin at the Nice Observatory was able to redetectSchiaparelli's canals, which elicited the remark that "the reality ofthe existence of the delicate markings discovered by the keen-sightedastronomer of Brera seems thus fully demonstrated, and it appears highlyprobable that they vary in shape and distinctness with the changes ofthe Martial seasons. "

These observations of M. Perrotin were detailed at length in the_Bulletin Astronomique_, and the distinguished observer called attentionto the fact that these markings varied but slightly from Schiaparelli'schart, and indicated a state of things of considerable stability in theequatorial region of Mars. M. Perrotin recorded changes in the KaiserSea (Schiaparelli's _Syrtis Major_). This spot, usually dark, was seenon May 21, 1886, "to be covered with a luminous cloud forming regularand parallel bands, stretching from northwest to southeast on thesurface, in color somewhat similar to that of the continents but notquite so bright. " These cloud-like coverings were later more distributedand on the three following days diminished greatly in intensity. Theywere referred by Perrotin to clouds. 

In March and April of the year 1886 a study was made of the surface ofMars by W. F. Denning in England. Mr. Denning's drawings corroborated thecharts of Green, Schiaparelli, Knobel, Terby and Baeddicker. He foundthe surface of Mars one of extreme complexity, a multitude of brightspots in places, but with a general fixity of character which led him tobelieve that the appearances were not atmospheric. He indeed attributedto Mars an attenuated atmosphere and thought that some of the vagariesin its surface characters were due to variations in our own atmosphereHe did not find the Schiaparelli canals as distinct in outline as givenby that ingenious observer. He noted many brilliant spots on Mars andindicated the disturbing influences of vibrations produced by winds onthe surface of our earth in connection with changes in the earth'satmospheric envelope. 

In 1888 M. Perrotin continued his observations on the channels of Marsand noted changes. The triangular continent (Lydia of Schiaparelli) haddisappeared, its reddish white tint indicating, or supposed to indicate, land, was then replaced by the black or blue color of the seas of Mars. New channels were observed, some of them in "direct continuation" withchannels previously observed, amongst these an apparent channel throughthe polar ice cap. Some of these seemed double, running from near theequator to the neighborhood of the North Pole. The place called Lydiadisappeared and reappeared. A strange puzzling statement was made thatthe canals could be traced straight across seas and continents in theline of the meridian. M. Terby confirmed many of these observations. Later the so-called "inundation of Lydia, " observed by M. Perrotin, wasdoubted. Schiaparelli himself, Terby, Niesten at Brussels, and Holden atthe Lick Observatory, failed to remark this change. These observers didnot double the canals satisfactorily, but all agreed upon the strikingwhiteness and brightness of the planet. 

M. Fizeau (1888) argued that the Schiaparelli canals were really glacialphenomena, being ridges, crevasses, rectilinear fissures, etc. , ofcontinental masses of ice. Again (Bulletin de l'Academie Royale deBelgique, June) M. Nesten averred that the changes on the surface ofMars were periodic. 

In 1889, Prof. Schiaparelli reviewed what had been observed upon thesurface of the planet in a continued article in _Himmel und Erde_, apopular astronomical journal published by the Gesellschaft Urania andedited by Dr. Meyer. 

Some remarkable photographs taken by Mr. Wilson in 1890 were commentedon by Prof. W. H. Pickering in the "Sidereal Messenger. " They showed theseasonal variations in the polar white blotches. 

In 1889 there reached us from Chatto and Windus of London a mostentertaining book by Hugh MacColl, entitled "Mr. Stranger's SealedPacket. " It was a work of fancy, ingeniously constructed upon scientificprinciples. It described a hypothetical machine, a flying machine, whichwas made up of a substance more than half of whose mass had beenconverted into repelling particles. Such a fabric would leave the earth, pass the limits of its attraction with an accelerating velocity and movethrough space. In such a way Mr. Stranger reached Mars. He found itinhabited by a people--the Marticoli--happy in a state of socialism, andwith abundance of food manufactured from the elements, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen, with electric lights, phonetic speech, but withoutgunpowder or telescopes. 

Its inhabitants had been derived from the earth by a most delightfulscientific fabrication. A sun and its satellites in its course aroundsome other center draws the earth and Mars so together that on someparts of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome thatof the earth and gently suck up to itself inhabitants from the earth, who would not suffer death from loss of air, as the atmosphere of bothbodies would be mingled. 

These observations and this last scientific myth have some interest inview of the actual knowledge now vouchsafed to the world through myfather's messages. I have very briefly reviewed them. 

My father's premonitions were fully realized. He grew sensibly weaker asthe months of 1891 passed. His mind became eager with the cherishedexpectation which grew day by day into a sort of a mild possession. Itseemed to me that there was a moderate aberration involved in his deeplyseated convictions, and when sometimes I saw him walking past thewindows on the plateau with his head thrown back, his arms outstretchedas if he were inviting the stars to take him and his murmuring voice, repeating some snatches of song, I felt awed and frightened. 

My father was stricken with paralysis on September 21, 1892, becamespeechless the following day, but for a day thereafter wrote on a padhis last directions. Some of these were quite personal, and need not bedetailed here. It was indeed pathetic to see his strenuous and repeatedefforts to assure me that he remembered all the parts of the telegraphicapparatus, and his smile of saddened self-depreciation when hehesitated over some detail. At last he sank into a torpor with the usualstertorous breathing, flushed face and gradually chilled extremities. His last words were scrawled almost illegibly by his failinghand--"Remember, watch, wait, I will send the messages. "

Miss Dodan came to the plateau and was helpful; to me especially. Shekept up my breaking spirits, and her womanly tenderness, her bravegrace, and the joy my loving heart felt in seeing her, enabled me to gothrough the trial of death and separation. 

All was finished. My father was buried in Christ Church cemetery by hisown request, although thus separated by a hemisphere from his wife. 

 * * * * *

A year had passed. I had received nothing. Mr. And Miss Dodan came tothe observatory. They both were acquainted with the singularprepossessions which controlled both myself and my father, and I thinkMr. Dodan was himself, though he admitted nothing, most curious andinterested in the whole matter. Miss Dodan frankly said she was. But Iknow, to Miss Dodan's fresh, healthy, human life there was somethingweirdly repellent in this thought of communication with the dead. Shethought of it with a nervous dread and excitement. It just kept me inher thoughts a little shrouded in mystery and superiority and closed alittle the avenues of absolute confidence and peaceful self-surrender. 

I had forgotten nothing, although at first an overwhelming sense of theuselessness of the attempt, the almost grotesque absurdity of expectingto hear from beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere any wordtransmitted through a mechanical invention, upon the earth's crust, mademe feel somewhat ashamed of my preparations, yet I arranged everyportion of the receiver and exercised my best skill to give it the mostdelicate adjustment. 

Whenever I had occasion to rest I either sent an assistant to the post, or kept on my pillow, adjusted to my ear, a telephone attachment to theMorse register, so that its signals might instantly receive attention. At length as time wore on I arranged a bell signal that might summon usto the register. 

On the occasion of this visit by the Dodans I was in the loft at thereceiver which was in a room to one side of that we called "theequatorial, " where the telescope was suspended. I was as usual waitingfor a message that never came, and my failing hopes, made more and moretransitory by the brightness of the southern spring and all the instantpresent industry of the fields below me on the low-lands, seemed todissolve into a mocking phantom of derisive dreams. 

I stood up hackneyed and forlorn. Had I not done everything I could? HadI not kept my promise? I heard the voices below me; one, that musicaltone, that made the color come and go upon my cheeks, and as I turnedhastily to descend to them while the breathing earth seemed to sendupward its powerful sensitizing odors that turn energy into languorousdesire, and touch the senses with indolence; at that moment the Morseregister spoke!

Could my ears have deceived me? No! It was running, running, running, intelligible, strong, definite; it seemed to me of almost piercingloudness, although just audible. I bent over, seized my pad and wrote. The Abyss of Death was bridged! From behind the veil of that inexorablesilence which lies beyond the grave came a voice--and what a voice! Theclicking of a telegraphic register in signals, that the whole world knewand used. I was quiet, preternaturally so, I think, as I took down themessage. I became almost aged in the intense rigidity of my absorption. 

I was told the Dodans came up and saw me, heard the telltale clicks ofthe register, and unnoticed left me. Still I wrote on, unheeding thetime. My assistants, pale with wonder, stood around me. The measuredtappings were the ghostly voices of another world. This message began at10 a. M. , Sept. 25, 1893. It ended at 10 p. M. On the same day. It camequite evenly, though slowly, and was unmistakably intended to beinerrantly recorded, as indeed it was. 

CHAPTER III. 

"My son, " it began, "I am indeed in the red orb of light we have sooften looked up to when we were together on the earth, and about whichour wondering minds hazarded so many fruitless guesses. I have been herea short time, and now am able to return to you, by that cipher we sofortunately printed upon the tablet of memory, word of my existence. 

"I can hardly describe to you my occurrence on this planet. I foundmyself here without any recollection of whence I had come, without atraceable thought of anything I had ever heard before. 

"I was suddenly sitting in a high room, brilliantly lighted by a soft, tranquillizing radiance, listening to a chorus of most delicatelyattuned voices, indescribably sweet, penetrating and moving. Around meupon white ivory chairs arranged in an amphitheatre sat beings likemyself, all looking outward upon a sloping lawn where were gatheredbeneath blossoming fruit trees an army, it seemed, of half shiningcreatures, unlike myself, singing these wonderful choruses. 

"I have since learned that I did not reach Mars in that identical momentwhen I found myself sitting in the hall. I had come to it, as alldisembodied spirits from the earth come to it at one receiving point, ahigh hill not far from the tropic of Mars. This hill, crowned andcovered with glass buildings, is known as the hill of the Phosphori. Here, for nearly one of our months, the incoming souls, which are littlemore than a sort of ethereal fluid, presenting a form only observable byrefracted light, or I should say polarized light, are bathed in amarvellously phosphorescent beam procured by absorption from the sun. These souls are intermingled in a chaotic stream that I may liken to thestreaming currents of heated air in convection from a source of heatupon our earth, and this continuous tide is caught in a great sphericalchamber or a series of chambers extending over five miles around thebald summit of this eminence. 

"In these colossal chambers the phosphorescent light from enormousradiators beats incessantly through and through the slowly, oscillating, vibrating, revolving soul matter. And here the process ofindividualization is achieved. A soul, or many souls, are separatedfrom the great tide, by flashing, under the bombardment of thephosphorescent blaze into shining forms. They assume a shape outlined bylight, and just slightly subject to gravity from the atomic compressionnecessary to maintain their illumination, they fall lightly out from thedomes of the spheres, touch the floors beneath, and are led away. 

"In this way I found later I had arrived at Mars. When the spirits, thusshaped in light and otherwise almost immaterial and unclothed, emergefrom the Hill of the Phosphori, they are taken along wide, white roadsto some of the many chorus halls which fill the City of Light, where Iam now, and from which I am sending this magnetic message. They remainfor hours, even days and weeks in these halls listening in a sort ofstupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one greatrecreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocalgift in beings who have never enjoyed its exercise on earth. 

"Gradually under the influence of this musical immersion, as under thebombardment of the phosphorescent rays, a mentality seems developed;voice and language come, and the soul moves out of the concourse oflistening souls, moved by a desire to do something, into the streets ofthe city. This is called, as we might say, the Act Impulse. From thattime on the soul rushes, as it were, to its natural occupation. Itsmentality, aroused by music, becomes full of some sort of aptitude, andit enters the avenues of its congruous activity as easily, as quickly, as justly as the growing flower turns toward the Sun wherever it may be. 

"Let me present to you the curious scene my eyes encountered as I sat inthe great Chorus Hall. I say my eyes. It is hard perhaps for you torealize what an organ can be in a creature, so apparently, as we are, little more than gaseous condensations. The physiology and morphology ofa spirit is not an easy thing to grasp or define. I am yet ignorant uponmany points. But dimly, at least, I may make your natural sensescognizant of it. 

"You have seen faces and forms in clouds. How often you and I from MountCook on the earth have watched their changing and confluent lineamentsin the clouds above the New Zealand Alps. It is the same way withMartian spirits. They are tenuous fluids, but the individual pervadesthem and a material response is evoked, and the light from theirsurfaces is so halated, intensified, or reduced as to form a figure witha head and arms and legs. 

"In some way I imagine the organs are optical effects, ruled by mind, which is located in this luminous matter. Later I will describe theprocess of _solidification, the resumption of matter_, for these spiritforms slowly concrete into beings like terrestrial men and women. Thereis, therefore, a dual population here, the extreme newly transplantedsouls, and the flesh and blood people, and between them the transitionsfrom spirit to corpuscular bodies. But all this takes place in the Cityof Light. Elsewhere over the whole planet the spirits are seldom seen, but only the vigorous and beautiful race of material beings into which, they--the spirits--have _consolidated_. 

"To return to my first experience in the Chorus Hall in the City ofLight. I seemed to be in a great alabaster cage enormously large andvery beautiful. Its shining walls rose from the ground and at a greatheight arched together. The front was a network of sculpture, it heldthe rising rows of what seemed like ivory chairs on which the motionlesswhite and radiant assemblage were seated. The whole place glowed, andthis phosphorescent prevails throughout the City of Light, just as itdoes in the Hill of the Phosphori, when we first landed in this strangeexistence. 

"The music came from a field in front of the Chorus Hall, which held awonderful array of beings who, while not radiant as we were, had a_lustrous_ look over their smooth and lovely bodies, which were tightlyclad in the palest blue tunics and leggings. These creatures wereconsolidated spirits. They are constantly augmented by new arrivals, and, as the number remains almost unchanged, as new arrivals appear, others leave and then move off from the City of Light into the vastregions of Mars outside and beyond the city. 

"A word of explanation would make this all clear. The Hill of thePhosphori begins the transmutation of the psychic fluid which makes upthe souls as they flow into Mars from space. At the Hill the verymoderate condensation begins, just enough to bring them to the ground bygravity. The psychic fluid is susceptible to the light, absorbs andemits it, and so the spirit forms are shining like great _ignes fatui_on our old earth. The spirits thus individualize, pass in companies tothe City of Light, and come to the huge chorus halls which surround thecity on its outskirts, in the country margin. 

"They reach these chorus halls by a sort of suasion produced apparentlyby their sympathy with music. Music and Light are the energies, which atfirst and measurably throughout all the latter days of Martian life, direct work and thought and being. The music is quite audible for longdistances, especially in the direction of the Hill of the Phosphoriwhere the spirits land. Drawn by it they move unconsciously toward thesinging centers. Now there are perhaps a hundred of these chorus hallsabout the City of Light grouped in the direction of the Hill of thePhosphori, and the music is quite different in them. There are fourprincipal sorts, the grave, the gay, the romantic and the harmonic. Bytheir interior sympathy the kinds of spirits move to the choruses whichafford the music they respond to and it is wonderful how infallibly thisattraction acts. 

"The bands separate and strings and lines of the phosphorized spiritstrain away without direction to the choruses that attract them, althoughonly a sort of subdued and confused murmur reaches them from the halls. 

"Throughout the first stages of life here, the spirits are somnambulous. They move and act unconsciously and in obedience to their imbeddedinstincts and tastes. Only, as under the influence of music and lightand afterwards occupation, they are transmuted by consolidation into thefair material race, which outside of the City of Light controls theplanet, does consciousness and curiosity and language arise. I sat along, long time in the chorus hall, to which I was drawn, whichproduced _grave_ music. I knew nothing, felt nothing, was but dimlycognizant of what was about me, but I thrilled with the music. 

"I felt the process of condensation going on, and it was a processexquisitely blissful. Now and then, a spirit form would arise and stepdown the rising forms and go out, another and another, while as silentlyspirits from the Hill of the Phosphori would enter and take their seatand bathe in the almost unbroken surges of music that come from thefield outside, from the multitude beneath the almond blossom ladentrees. Movement is without volition in the spirit stage; attraction thatfollows a hidden impulse, that seems indescribable at first, directsthem. It is only as the process of consolidation in the City of Lightindividualizes, that the spirits become, as you would say, human. But itis a humanity of great beauty. Material particles invade or transfusethem, replacing the diaphanous phosphorescent spirit fluid, and theygrade into supple white and rosy figures, strong, strenuous andsplendid. 

"After remaining a long time, perhaps, in the chorus hall, I felt therestlessness that causes one after the other of the spirits to go out. Ifollowed the solitary line out into the city, the solemn, swaying musicstill heard as I stepped out upon the broad steps which face the city. I was now more observant, something like sight and feeling and memorywere slowly generated within me, and I noticed that whereas the arrivingspirits moved like apathetic ghosts, those with whom I now was, turnedwith interest this way and that, seemed apprehending and alive. 

"The spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori came on the broad avenuesleading to the chorus halls like waifs of cloud driven by a zephyr, withno visible distention of parts, no leg, or arm, or head or body motion. Now they moved with some anatomical suggestions. 

"I stood amid a colonnade of arches, the white shining columns rosearound me to the high, shining roof, before me a long descent of steps, and beyond me and around on a softly swelling eminence was spread theCity of Light. It was a marvellous picture. 

"The City of Light is simple and monotonous in architecture, but itscomposition and its radiance quite surpass any earthly conception. Thebuildings are all domed and stand in squares which are filled with fruittrees, low bush-like spreading plants, bearing white pendant lily-likeflowers or pink button-shaped florets like almonds. Each building issquare, with a portico of columns, placed on rising steps, a pair ofcolumns to each step. Vines wind around the columns, cross from oneline of columns to another and form above a tracery of green frondsbearing, as it was then, red flowers, a sort of trumpet honeysuckle. 

"The walls of the buildings are pierced on all sides with broad windowsor embrasures, filled, it seemed, with an opalescent glass. Avenuesopened in all directions, lined on both sides with these wonderfulhouses, which are made of a peculiar stone, veined intermittently withyellow, which has the property of absorbing and emitting light. 

"It is indeed a phosphori as, if I recall it aright, the sulphides ofbarium, strontium, and calcium were upon our earth. Later I shall seethe great quarries of this stone in the Martian mountains. Anotherstrange feature in these Martian houses was the hollow sphere of glassupheld above each house. It is a sphere some six feet in diameter madeup of lenses. It encloses a space in the center of which is a ball ofthe phosphorescent stone. During the day the rays of the sun areconcentrated upon this ball of stone, and at night the stored-upsunlight is radiated into lambent phosphorescent light. 

"It was the close of a Martian day that I felt the returning impact ofvolition and left the chorus hall. I emerged, as I said before, upon thebroad platform with its colonnade of columns and arches and saw thecity as the night drew on. It is difficult to put in words, my son, thewonderful effect. 

"Each house built of this strange substance, which throughout the dayhad been storing up the energies of light, now, as the fading day waned, became a center of light itself. At first a glow covered the sides ofthe houses, the colonnade and dome, while the glass prisms above themsent out rays from their imprisoned balls of phosphori. The glow spread, rising from the outskirts of the city in the lower grounds to thesummits of the hills where the sun's last rays lingered. It becameintensified. The green beds of trees were black squares and the houses, pulsating fabrics of light between them. A slight variety ofarchitecture in places was accentuated by diverse and varying lines orsurface light. 

"The whole finally blended and a sea of radiance was before me in whichthe beautiful houses were descried, the illuminated groves, and likeenormous scintillations the glassy spheres--the Martians call them the_Plenitudes_ above them. Many other developing beings were around me, and voiceless, mute, impassioned, with an admiration which we had as yetno adequate organs to express we gazed upon the throbbing metropolis, ourselves luminous spectres in the vast eruption of glorious lightbefore, above, around us. 

"As the night settled down the light grew more intense, more beautiful. I could discern the opalescent glasses in the houses sending out theirparti-colored rays, patching the trees with quilts of changing colors, and far away there came, still unsubdued by the night, the continuouselation of music. 

"All night, all day, the choruses kept on with intermissions, but thesingers change. This musical facility is the mental or emotionalcharacteristic of the Martian. There is more in music than youearthlings know or dream of. It is a part of the immortal fiber of men, and in Mars it _creates_ matter, for the slow assumption of materialparts, as I have said, is propagated and accomplished by music, and theparts thus made are the most perfect expression of matter the divineform of man or woman can know, I think. They are tuned to health, tobeauty, to inspiration, but all of this you shall know. 

"So I went down the steps into the city. I was with a group of spiritswho noticed me, and whom I noticed, but as yet the listless, strange, doomed expression was on our faces, and though memory was beginning tolight its fires within us, though the transmission of viewless particlesof matter into our fluent bodies of spirit had begun, though mind anddesire were awakened, not a word passed our shining lips, and we movedon in silence. 

"The City of Light is often called in the Martian language also the Cityof Occupation, for here the forming spirits work. I have told you thatas _consolidation_, through Music and Light, goes on, the aptitudes ortastes are awakened, and this first birth of desire in Mars carries thespirits off from their ivory seats in the Chorus Halls to the City, where like an animal ferreting its purpose by intuition, they seemimpelled whither their needs are best satisfied. 

"I now know that the City of Light is generally divided, --not exactly, but as association would naturally impel, into four quarters, thequarter of art, the quarter of science, the quarter of invention, thequarter of thought. This is simply that the artists, the scientificminds, the designers, and the philosophers are somewhat by themselves. The population of the City of Light is made up of a fair, white race ofMartians, and of the forming spirits. As the forming spirits attainmaterialization through occupation, they may remain in the City or goout into the other cities, and into the country to work and live. 

"Besides the quarters I have mentioned, there is the business sectionand the offices of the government. 

"In the light of all I have learned since I came, I may at once explainsomething about the actual life and social organization of this strangeworld. 

"The Martian world is one country. There are here no nationalities. Thecenter of the country is in the City of Scandor, quite removed from theCity of Light. Business is carried on as with you on the earth, but itsnature and its physical elements vary, as you will see. There is acirculating medium, banks and business enterprises, but it is moreveiled, more hidden, less, far less, insistent than with you. A greatsocialistic republic is represented in Mars, and the limits ofindividual initiative are very narrow. Still they exist. 

"One prime element of difference is in the nourishment and the area ofpopulation. The Martian lives only on fruit, and he lives only a fewdegrees on either side of the Equator. All the businesses that in yourearth arise from the preparation and sale of meat and all the variousconfections, disappear there, and also all the mechanism of househeating and lighting. Also there are no railroads, but innumerablecanals, which form a labyrinth of waterways, and are fed from the tidesof the great northern and southern seas. 

"The business is largely agricultural, but in the cities the pursuit ofknowledge still continues. There is, however, on Mars a much lessenedintellectual activity than on the earth. It is a sphere of simplifiedneeds and primal feelings exalted by acutely developed love of Music. Mars is the music planet. There are not on Mars newspapers, journals, magazines, books. The tireless production of these things on the earthhas but one analogy in Mars, the publication of music scores, therecitation of poetry and symposia, and the great illustrated journal, Dia. But these things I will explain later. 

"I wandered on that night through the city with other spirits. We wentthrough the city streets in the radiance of the _Plenitudes_ above thehouses. The night air was blowing through the trees, and the city wasfilled with people. They were the Martians. We were scarcely noticed. Inthe City of Light the new arrivals are not questioned until they beginto "take shape, " as they say here, and then they are closely examined, and their origin, if it can be traced, is written down and kept in greatregisters. 

"The groups were moving in streams toward the higher ground, and as mycompanions were gradually separated from me and were lost like wisps ofmoving light here and there, I went on alone. I came up long, wonderfulavenues between walls of light, regularly punctuated by the dark squaresof trees, and the spherical radiations of the Plenitudes above thehouses. 

"The people about me seemed all young, or scarcely more than, as we say, in middle life. They speak less than the earth folk, and when they speakthey utter very simple sentences, and seem very sincere. I often stoodby little groups gathered at the corners of cross streets, and listenedto their musical intonations. The language is vocalic and monosyllabic. It sometimes suggests a Mongolian tongue, but without the gutturalclicks and coughs. The Martians are all gifted in music. It fills theirlives. 

"From point to point crowds were assembled about platforms where singingwas in progress, and every now and then a man or woman in the streetwould sing loudly and passionately with such power and beauty that theimpressionable Martians would follow the refrain of the song and thewhole street for blocks and blocks would resound in waves of delightfulmelody. There are no mechanical modes of propulsion in the streets ofthe City of Light. _The Martians all walk_. 

"I approached the top of the broad hill on which the City is built, andcame suddenly out into a square filled again in its park-like centerwith trees. From amid these trees rose a massive building, which Iinstantly recognized as an observatory; the many round domes, as onearth, were unmistakable. 

"I passed up the walks of the square to the building and entered it. 

"It was illuminated by balls of phosphori in glass globes, and its cool, broad halls and stairways were, in the soft light, very beautiful. Buttheir wonderfulness consisted in the insertion upon the walls ofilluminated plans and maps of the heavens. These miniature firmamentswere all afire, so that each opening, carefully graded in size torepresent stars of the first or second or third magnitude, was filledwith a beaming point of light, and I walked in these noble corridorsbetween reduced patterns of the universe of stars. I can hardly tell youhow astonished and entranced I was. 

"I had for the first time since I reached the planet the impulse ofspeech, and I raised my hands with that motion of snapping the fingers, which you recall was characteristic of me on earth, and _spoke_. Icried, 'Here is my home. '

"As my hands dropped to my sides I felt resistance. I looked down uponmyself and could behold the changing surfaces of my body. Under thiscompleting stroke of volition the work begun upon the Hill of thePhosphori and the Chorus Hall in reducing the intangible spirit fluid tocorporeal expression was now hastening to an end. I do not stop here toconsider the reflections this suggests as to the nature of matter, thoseabstruse speculations we indulged in so often over the pages of Muir andHelmholz and Tait and Crookes. 

"I had reached the ascending stairway, when my hand--for hand it nowseemed to be--was taken in a friendly pressure, and I turned and saw atall figure with a face of extreme nobility, somewhat scarred, Ithought, dressed in the usual Martian attire of a flowing tunic andclosely fitting body clothing. He said in English, 'You are from theearth as I am. '

"My son, how can I, in this dull, mechanical method of conversation withyou, ignorant, indeed, whether the magnetic waves loaded with mymessage, are traversing or not the millions of miles of space to yourear, how can I make you realize the wonderful and blessed feelings ofamazement and happiness that the stranger's words brought me. Here Iwas, a disembodied soul from Earth, which at that moment I only dimlyrecalled, undergoing the strange process of re-establishment in fleshand blood, and slowly appropriating those natural appetites which comewith flesh and blood, a waif of spiritual being in the great voids ofcreation, impelled by some implanted power of affinity to this remote, strange, phantasmal and unreal place, overwhelmed in a stupor ofconfusion, like some awakening patient from the vertigo of a terrifyingdream!

"I looked upon my friend, and in the rapidly rising flood of emotionsthat came with the acting members of my body, flushed and throbbing withexcitement, and with a wild joy besides, I flung myself upon his neckand pressed him with arms that seemed once more those natural physicalties that have held upon my breast those I best loved on earth. 

"The stranger led me slowly up the stairway and past great celestialspheres which filled the higher hallways, conducting me to a room at onecorner of the great structure. The room was a singular and uniqueapartment. It consisted of a large central space, furnished with theusual ivory chairs, and a broad, massive center table, also of ivory, curiously inlaid with particles of the omnipresent _phosphori_, whichgave out a liquid light and imparted indescribable chasteness and beautyto the carved ornaments upon them. The floor was dark, a leaden color, lustrous, however, like black glass, and made up in mosaic. Around theroom were alcoves lit by lamps of the phosphori, and in each alcove aglobe of a blue metal upon which were painted sketches like charts ormaps. A chandelier of this blue metal was pendant from the ceiling, andin its cup-like extremities, arranged in vertical tiers, were roundballs of the phosphori, glowing softly. 

"Wide windows, unprotected by glass or sashes, just embrasures framed inwhite stone which everywhere prevails in Mars, looked out upon themarvellous City, which thus seemed a lake of glowing fires, over which, rising and refluent waves of light constantly chased each other to itsdark borders, where the surrounding plain country met the City's edges. But throughout the distance I could trace lines of light markinghighways or roads leading interminably away until quite extinguished atthe optical limits of my vision. 

"The walls of this beautiful room rose to an arched ceiling which wasinlaid with this wonderful blue metal, seen in the globes, designed inscrolls and waving ribbons, and just descending upon the wallsthemselves in attenuated twigs and strings. The walls were bare andshining. 

"My friend led me to one of the great windows and placed me in a chair. Drawing another beside me, placing his hand on mine, and leaning outwardtoward the burning splendor below us, above which in the still, clearheavens shone those stellar hosts you and I have so often watched withwonder, he said:

"'Ten Martian years ago I came to this world as you have come. As aspirit I entered the chambers on the Hill of the Phosphori. I sat in theChorus Hall. I entered the City and slowly changed, as you are changing, into one of the Martian white people. I found my work, as you will, inthis Patenta, for by that name in Mars is called this home of astronomyand physical philosophy. Here, amid telescopes and apparatus ofexperiment and investigation, I have spent the years, mapping with manyothers the skies, and above all beating the earth we left, as have many, many, whom you will meet, with magnetic waves, hoping against hope, thatsome response might be gained, some hint of that connection throughspace which the physicists of this planet expect, ere long, may make allthe beings of the universe one great sidereal society. '

"He stopped and leaned away from me, perusing my face with interest. Words came to my lips, memory again asserted its triumphant declarationthat I was the same being as had lived upon the earth, and with it thesudden turbulence of hope that she, your mother, whom we so oftenexpected to regain, might, as I had, have reached this planet, too, andto me, renewed in youth, might come the glory and the joy of knowing heragain. 

"I turned to him and spoke: 'Kind friend, I am yet dazed and strickenwith the marvellousness of my being here. It seems but a short time, alapse of even a day, that I bade good-bye to my son on the death-bed inmy home on earth. I am too tormented with wonder to speak to you much. Ican tell all I know of myself in a little while. But now as I growstronger, tell me of this new world, and oh! give me, sir, food. I feelthe quickening fevers of appetite and desire. '

"The man arose and left the room. In a few moments he returned followedby a boy and a young woman bearing a basket. They spread a yellow clothupon a small ivory table and set down two plates of the bright bluemetal; upon one they placed a pile of small round cakes and on the othera number of red and yellow gourd shaped fruits. At a signal from mycompanion I arose and sat at the table. 

"He remained at the window and continued: 'While you break your longfast, let me tell you what I know about this new world which will now beyour home for a long time. You will learn all, but I am not watchingto-night. In seeing you and hearing the familiar English speech I ammoved myself by currents of retrospection; my earth home comes back tome. I will satisfy your curiosity, and, you in turn, must tell me whathas happened in the old home. '

"He paused; from the streets of the city rose a sacred song. It camelike a slowly increasing torrent of sound, soft and low, rising withimpetuous fervor until it seemed to engulf us in its melodic tide. Individual tones were heard in it, but its solidity and mass were mostimpressive. I shook and trembled beneath the impact of its vibrations;in its surging glory of sound I became fully reincarnated. I awoke nakedand ashamed. The man saw my confusion. He hurried to a niche in the walland handed me the tunic of the Martians with its girdle of blue cord andits cap and shoes of the blue metal exquisitely wrought and light. I putthem upon me and lifting the cakes and the mellow-soaked pears to mylips, listened. 

"'The Martians, ' he continued, 'are both a natural and supernaturalrace. The natural race are largely prehistoric, though many yet exist;the supernatural race are made up of beings from other worlds and agreat majority come up from the earth. How reincarnation first began onMars is unknown, though the natural people, the Dendas, have traditionsabout it, vague and contradictory. It must have been slow. Thesupernatural people thus brought to Mars have created its civilization, discovered the phosphori, and established Music, which is so much oftheir life, and accelerated in the way you have learned the process ofmaterialization. 

"'They built this City of Light from phosphorescent stone quarried fromthe Mountains of Tiniti. Formerly the spirits came helter skelter toMars all over its surface and went wandering about, helped toreincarnation by the various villagers or citizens. The great newimprovement in the last half century has been the creation of thereceiving station at the Hill of the Phosphori, the building of theChorus Halls, and the establishment of the City of Light. Light drawsthe spirits, and though spirits reach other points of Mars, thecentralization of Light here, draws most of them to this side. TheMartians are not immortal. They vanish in time. 

"'As reincarnated all spirit becomes young but nourishment has undergonea change. The physiological process is singular. I need not dwell uponit. Evaporation replaces defecation. Love enters the Martian world, butit has lost much of the earthly passion. The physiological effects arealso different. There are no children here. 

"'We live in the tropical regions mostly of Mars, and the polar andnorth temperate zones are empty. The natural Martian races are foundmore plentifully there. They are strong and small and work under thesupervision of the supernaturals. They are like the earthlings and eatmeat. Our food is bread and fruit. Our language does not lend itself tocomposition; it only sings. Literature, as we knew it on earth, does notexist here. The natural Martians have tales and stories and plays andsome books. These things no longer interest the supernaturals. Our lifeis quite simple, almost expressionless, except for the power of ourmusic. The souls from different parts of the earth recognize each otherand converse in human language, but, unless practiced, it is forgottenand our euphonies take its place. I have used my earth language with afriend and still speak English well. 

"'We have art here, but it is almost wholly sculpture and architectureand design. Color, except in glass, does not greatly please the Martiansand there are few painters. They survive from other worlds, but cannotsecure pigments, and draw only in black and white for the most part. They are cartoonists, as we would say, on the earth. But we grow fruitsand flowers, the former in varieties and richness unknown upon theearth and the latter in delicate tints with blues and yellows, the onlyprimary strong tints the Martians admire. 

"'Mechanical invention is discouraged, except as it assists astronomy. Astronomy is the great profession. Cars, railroads and conveyances, asyou say on earth, do not exist. We walk or sail and float upon ourcanals. Our industry is agriculture and building. Architecture isstudied and advanced beyond all you have ever known on the earth. Marsis filled with beautiful cities. Its whole government consists in acouncil at the City of Scandor, from which representatives issue to itsvarious departments. One is here in the City of Light. His motives arealways just. There are no parties, for there are no policies. Life is sosimple. Beauty and knowledge only rule us. Character, as you, as I, knewit on the earth, does not exist. There are no temptations, and we liveas children of Light, in a sort of childhood of feeling, with greatgifts of mind. But even living is noble. There is indeed rivalry. Yes, envy is with us. We worship God in great temples in services of song. Sermons are never heard. 

"'In this city the great designers live, also the men who work at thedeep problems of life and thought and matter; and the sculptors. It isthe next largest city to Scandor. Scandor is far away. I never saw it. Glass work is done here and throughout Mars. Making the blue metal whichyou see, quarrying stone and ore and coal for the smelters and glassfactories, the fabrication of dress material and fabrics for houses, making our boats and canal ships, cutting down the forests in theMartian highlands, cultivating fruits and flowers and the great wheatfields are the chief industries, and there are lesser lines of work, asthe potteries and the instrument makers. 

"'There are no industries in the City of Light. It is employed as I toldyou. Its population is constantly changing, for spirits like you arereincarnated here, and these new multitudes come and go. To-morrow, theships on the canals will carry many away. The spirits, as you did, whenthey enter the city, wander as they will; they enter the houses, theworkshops, the laboratories, everything in obedience to theirinstinctive choice. The people of the City of Light are thereforelargely engaged in caring for them as they fall into bodily forms, clothing, feeding, housing them. 

"'Each householder and all citizens report to the Registeries whatspirits have come to them, and whence they came, and the great diversionand entertainment of our people is to listen to the stories of otherworlds, which these new arrivals bring. Memory does not survive longand they soon forget their past history. It is best so, except infugitive and dreamlike fragments, unless they are great. 

"'According to their desire or aptitudes, the spirits are sent away whenMartianized to the different parts of Mars, and many stay here with usin the workshops and laboratories. 

"'Besides Music, the people of Mars delight in recitation, and in theCity of Scandor I hear there are great theatres or public places whererecitations and concerts and even noble operas are held. Many of theseare brought to us by great spirits from other worlds, their own works inpoetry or prose or music. In Scandor there are great orchestras with allthe instruments we had upon the earth, and the paper, Dia, is publishedthere, which is read everywhere in Mars. There are few books, no schoolsin the common sense. The thinkers have assemblies and there areannouncements and explanations of discoveries. 

"'Our life in many ways is like the life on earth, but less active, morecontemplative, and sin and money-making are almost absent. The wicked ofall sorts have one fate; they are fired off the planet. We can overcomethe attraction of gravitation by our Toto powder. These executions arestrange to earth eyes. You will see them. The Toto powder is also amotive power. 

"'We have a medium of exchange, silver, and there are rich and poor withus, but no poverty. There can be no armies nor navies. The governmentcarries on extensive works of improvement and keeps the canals and paysits laborers. The government supports this City of Light and the peoplehere are paid for the number of spirits they care for and assist. Happiness reigns on Mars, but it is a pensive happiness. We never, because of the singular physiology of our bodies, can know theboisterous and passionate joys of earth, neither do we know many of theills of the flesh. We have sickness and there are accidents. We have adeath, but it is like evaporation. We decline again after a long life tothe spirit stage and vanish. So there are partings here, and the oldsadness of the end as on earth; but the gaiety of children, the ambitionof youth, the devotion of parents is unknown. '

"His voice sank, he bent his head upon his hands, and a sort of tremorran through him, and when again he looked upon me his eyes shone withmoisture, and the hot tears ran down his cheeks. Memory might befleeting on Mars, but the loved ones of the earth were yet remembered, and the abysses of the eternal void of space could never be crossed bythe wave of speech or recognition. This was the pathos of the Martianlife. 

"I was shown by him, as the slowly arising sweetness of fatigue showeditself within me, to a bedchamber of charming simplicity. The gracefulbedstead of the blue metal was covered with snowy covers, curtains hungat the windows also white. The furniture of the room was of a sort ofpale, red wood obtained in the great Martian forests where the treesknown as the Ribi grow, whose leaves and flowers have a pink tint, whichin seasons of fruitage is more intense, and present enormous areas ofextraordinary beauty. 

"This room was at the top of one of the many branching wings of thiscomposite astronomical laboratory. To reach my room we walked throughhallways all illuminated with the phosphorescent glowing balls while theradiant patterns in the walls shone also with a pale beauty. These ballspossess a wonderful lighting power and besides their self-illuminationcan be stimulated into the most intense brilliancy by electric currentswith which the Martians are profoundly acquainted. The electricaldisplays on Mars surpass description and the waves of magnetism I am nowutilizing to send to you these messages are ten miles in amplitude. 

"I fell asleep, quickly lulled into an almost death-like slumber by thecadence of innumerable fountains. Near the _Patenta_ is the Garden ofFountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was theplash and rivulous current of these water courts that brought on sleep. 

"I awoke when the Martian dawn was coming on. Slumber had given me thelast reassurance of identity of body, and I awoke with a delightfulsense of health and youth. I stood at the wide window near my bed andgazed out upon the yet luminous City of Occupation. The picture was ofsurprising strangeness and beauty. Far off, until melting into theencroaching edges of an outer blackness, the City extended its folds andsurfaces of light. The streets were empty, the music of the Chorus Hallsstilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets, a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thicklyleaved trees and the firmament shone with the larger stars, beginning topale before the rising sun. As the sun rose higher, the effulgence ofthe City died away, the light of the same great orb which brings thedawn to you, covered with its rays the white and glorious City, themusic seemed again revived, and from the doorways of the houses I couldsee forms issuing, while far off the Hill of the Phosphori raised itsglass domes in the air, where the homogeneous tide of spirit wasundergoing differentiation, as we might say, into separate cognizable, discreet beings. An unspeakable delight filled me. I felt the power ofmind and with it the radiant energy of manhood. "

No more words came. The message ended. Not a motion or sound succeededthis wonderful trans-abysmal dispatch. 

Well, here, at last, was the long expected, impossible, amazing reality. When I had deciphered the last word, when I had it borne fully in uponme, the significance of it all, I turned to the one natural effort toanswer this Martian communication. I sent out from the battery of ourtransmitter the longest wave of magnetic oscillation I could emit. Themessage was simple: "Have received all. Await more. Transmissionperfect. "

CHAPTER IV. 

Again for weeks I watched the station. My assistants relieved me, andamongst them was now included Miss Dodan. It was only a few days afterthe Dodans found me at the register, absorbed in receiving my father'smessage, that Miss Dodan called. She ran toward me at the open door ofthe station, her face fixed in an anxious expression of half-alarmedexpectation. 

"Did you really, Mr. Dodd, hear anything? Is it true that something camefrom your father. Oh, tell me, can it be possible?"

I took her clasped hands in my own, looked into her face and told hereverything. She was the first visitor to the station since the day ofthe marvellous experience. My assistants had promised secrecy, which Ireinforced effectively by doubling their salaries. I felt I ought not tohave revealed this thing to Miss Dodan, and when in the first impulse ofconfidence everything so unwittingly passed my lips, I took her arm inmine and walked out upon the broad plateau toward the opposite endwhere our smaller experimenting station had been built. 

"Miss Dodan, " I said, "I am going to ask a great favor of you. "

"Yes, " she answered, half musingly, for the tremendous fact I hadrelated had half robbed her of her consciousness of passing things. 

"I want you solemnly for the present to promise me not to reveal thestrange thing I have told you. It would hardly be believed. No, I amsure it would be laughed at, and I would become in the eyes of everyonea foolish, impossible dreamer. This would give me a deep sorrow. Myfather's name would be dragged into the mire of this common ridicule. You revered my father. "

I bent more closely over her, I felt her breath upon my cheeks, her eyesseemed fixed in mine, and then I did what I had never done before, Ikissed the lips of a woman and it was also the lips of the woman Iloved. There was no resistance, no withdrawal; a tremor--was itpleasure?--seemed to disturb her for a moment and again I kissed her. This time with a quiet effort toward release she separated herself fromme, and while I still held her hands, our walk stopped and we faced eachother, just where looking westward the spires, and flocking houses ofChrist Church came fully in view. 

"Miss Dodan, " I began, fearful to use her first name through areluctance that was itself the expression of the deep love I bore her, "Miss Dodan, I may for some time yet be engaged in this now imperativework. I cannot, you know, now leave it. It is the most marvellous thingthe world has ever known. It means so much to me, indeed to us all. These messages are erratic--fitful. I have now waited for weeks for arenewal of these strange communications and there is nothing. But in themidst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and tormentme. I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you allthe devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every momentthat voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreantto the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem nowto shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited aninstant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait, until the depthless power of my love for you can be made clear. "

I would have sunk upon my knees in the abasement and passion of mydesire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her armsabout my neck and placed her head where--well, I am no connoisseur inlove scenes--but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gaveher heart to me. 

We passed back in silence, and when she left me the flutteringhandkerchief that had so often waved back its salutation on the windingdistant road was now in my hands, and its signals sent by me came to herfrom the plateau. It was the simple pledge of our mutual love, a pledgethat even now as I prepare these last pages of a manuscript that is atestament to the world, soothes my pain and renews the happiness of thatday, forever and forever lost. 

The next message came a few days after my interview with Miss Dodan. Itwas a rainy day in November--the spring time of that Southern land. Theregister was heard by one of my assistants, Jack Jobson, a man who hadunremittingly taken my place when I was absent, and who seemed more thananyone else dazed and wonder stricken over the experience we had. Hecame running to me, a wild terror in his face, exclaiming, "It's goingagain, sir. Hurry! It's running slow. " I sprang upstairs, and before Ihad reached it heard the telltale clicks. It was not altogether asheltered position, and as I reached the table I felt the bleak andchilly air penetrating the crevices of the window, a raw ocean breezethat in a few instants crept through my bones. But I was againunconscious of everything; that marvellous ticking obliterated allthought of earth, its affairs, accidents, dangers, loves, hopes, despairs, all forgotten, swallowed up in the immeasurable revelation Iwas about to receive. 

The second message began at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of November25, 1893, two months exactly after the first. Its very opening sentencesI failed to get. It lasted late into the morning of the next day. Thestrain of taking it was somehow singularly intense upon me. I was takenfrom the table the next morning unconscious. I had fainted at the close. It began, as I received it, a few opening sentences having been lost:

". .. Was sent to you I was in the City of Light, and now I am in the Cityof Scandor. 

"The morning of that wonderful night in which I became a flesh and bloodMartian, strong and young and beautiful, dawned fair. My friend came forme, and we went together to the great 'Commons' of the Patenta, a superbhall where all the professors, investigators, and students in the greatAcademy sit at many tables. This huge dining room is at the center ofthe group of buildings which make up the Patenta. Corridors lead into itfrom the four sections of the Patenta, and as we entered, from thedifferent sides there were many men and some women taking the ivorychairs at the side's of the long tables of marble, on which rose inbeautiful confusion of color crowded vases of fruits. 

"Surrounding the room are niches instead of windows, and in each nicheone noble symbolic figure in white or colored marble. 

"Light fell in a torrent of glory through the faintly opalescent glasscompartments of the ceiling, from which, at the intersection of thebroad and long rafters of blue metal, hung chandeliers formed inbranching arms with cup-like extremities, and holding spheres of theomnipresent _phosphori_. 

"I stood a moment with my companion at the entrance of the great diningroom, and watched the groups and individual arrivals, as they assortedthemselves into companies or engaged in some short interchange ofgreetings. It was a very beautiful scene. The faces of all werewonderfully clear and strong, and in the commingling of forms, the bold, intellectual features of some, the more rare, delicate outlines of otherfaces, the flowing of the graceful tunics and robes, the pleasant, musical confusion of voices, with the quick, glancing movements ofattendants, the heaped up chalices and baskets, vases and broadspreading plates of fruit, the many carelessly arranged and profusebunches of radiant flowers in tall receptacles of glass or alabaster, inall this, with the strong, simple architectural features of the Hall, the eye and mind and senses seemed equally stimulated and satisfied. 

"Amongst the glorious throng my companion pointed out to me many ofthose great men and women whom I seemed to know by their writings andportraits when on the earth. At one table sat Mary Somerville, Leverrier, Adams, La Place, Gauss and Helmholz; at another Dalton, Schonbeim, Davy, Tyndall, Berthollet, Berzelius, Priestly, Lavoisier, and Liebig; here were groups of physicists--Faraday, Volta, Galvani, Ampere, Fahrenheit, Henry, Draper, Biot, Chladini, Black, Melloni, Senarmont, Regnault, Daniells, Fresnel, Fizeau, Mariotte, Deville, Troost, Gay-Lussac, Foucault, Wheatstone, and many, many more. At asmall table immediately beneath a dome of glass, through whose softlyopaline texture an aureole of light seemed to embrace them, satFranklin, Galileo and Newton. It would be impossible to describe to youmy amazement at the astonishing picture. 

"It almost seemed as if the air vibrated with the excitement of itsimpact and use, as these giant minds conversed together. Endowed againwith youth, scintillating, brilliant, the flush of a semi-immortalityimpressed upon their faces, which again bespoke the eminence of theirintellects, in picturesque and effective, almost pictorial groupings, this wondrous gathering filled me with new rapture. My comrade led me toother branching halls similarly occupied. Chemists were hereconspicuous--Chevreuil, Talbot, Wedgewood, Daguerre, Cooke, Fresenius, Schmidt, Avogadro, Liebig, Davy, Berthollet, and many, many more. 

"It formed an equally striking scene. I turned to my companion and askedhim how it was that the mathematicians, chemists, physicists, astronomers, were so crowded together. He said, 'The Patenta covers, with all its buildings, a space about one mile square, and here inlaboratories and in the great observatories these men have flockedbecause of a sympathy in their tastes and talents. Although astronomy isthe great profession, and, as I will show you, the marvels of theUniverse are being more and more fully known, yet the study of theelements and the laws of matter is popular and also followedunremittingly. It is true that we know these people are from your earth;they have reported all that to the Registeries, to whom I will soonconduct you; they yet retain strong memories of the earth, though it isconfined more largely to knowledge than to experience. In some, theMartian life and habit has almost obliterated their earthly notions anddesigns. It is singular that of the scientific workers of the earth theastronomers, physicists, and chemists alone reach Mars. The biologists, zoologists, botanists, geographers, and geologists rarely are booked atthe Registeries as coming from the Earth. Their lives may be prolongedelsewhere, they seldom reach us. 

"'There are some exceptions. The plants of Mars are numerous, its rocksand animal life curious, and they are well understood. A few doctorsfrom the earth are here, but medicine and surgery are not so muchneeded, yet in the study of life our philosophers have made greatstrides. Your thinkers and poets, artists, composers, dramatists, musicians, come here, but of all the wonderful students of Nature theearth has produced, as far as I know or have heard, Lamarck and Agassiz, Owen, and Cuvier alone have been reincarnated on our globe. And thewarriors and generals of the earth are unknown here. '

"We had reached a table unnoticed, unheard. There was a constant rush ofwords about us. The melodic charm of the Martian tongue, like the softvocalization of Italian pleased me. If the Martians are without booksor papers, they possess all the resources of conversation. Animation, pleasure, salutation, cheerfulness and joy was everywhere, the perfumeof flowers filled the air, the shafts of sunlight broken into the mostenticing iridescence filled the great noble rooms with lovely colors, and the clear white tables, beautifully spread with fruit, seemed tochasten appetite into something ethereal and rare. 

"As we stood an instant at our places the people arose, and from somedistant and concealed place, so situated I afterwards learned, as togain access to all the dining halls, there came a swell and burst ofjubilant music. It was so fresh and free and bewitching in its glee andringing cadences, so consonant and accordant with the glad andillustrious feeling of the place and time, that my heart seemed to leapwithin me; and then it softened, and changing into notes of melodicgravity, ended in a splendid outcry of soaring, piercing notes--thesalute to the morning. Long after the voices had finished, the rollingnotes of an organ continued the loud outburst. 

"As we sat down, the conversation was again resumed and I noted then thesingular clearness and suavity of this Martian language. I must hastenmy narrative. I have so much to tell you. We ate the great cereal ofMars--the Rint--a delicious food, in which, as it seemed to me, thesubstance of a sort of rice was mingled with a creamy exudation in allof which was enclosed the flavor of the orange and the peach. This, witha fruit, a kind of milk, and many wines, forms the nourishment of theMartians. The fruits are most various, and every hidden or patent fancyof the gourmet seems elicited or satisfied in them. I cannot nowdescribe them even if I recalled them. One commended itself to my tastestrongly, a sort of nodular banana, holding a fragrant nucleus, like alarge strawberry immersed in a savory juice, and coated with a rindstripped from it by the hand. It is of most stimulating qualities. It iscalled Ana. 

"Few implements are in use; the Rint is taken in short spoons and thefruit is usually manipulated with the fingers. The milk and wine aredrunk from the most ingeniously devised and ornamented glasses, napkinsof the Tofa weed are used, a pale green cloth, and large bowls ofacidified water in which floats a morsel of soap are served at the endof meals. Great variety prevails, and individual fancy, taste, desire, or invention sway as with you on earth. 

"The breakfast over, the companies arose and moved out in clusters andtrains to the avocations of the day. Many of these workers in thePatenta have houses throughout the city, while others living singlycongregate in the numerous apartments, and enjoy these commons. Theextraordinary assemblage I saw here is repeated in the other greatcommunal halls where the artists, philosophers and inventors congregate. But the Halls are of quite different construction in each quarter of theCity. 

"Accompanying or associated with these Halls are the Courts ofAnnouncement and Recreation. Here lectures, conferences, entertainments, are given, and the people of the City flock in droves not infrequentlyaccompanied by numbers of the new Spirits who here are often enabled togain their final solidification; '_Gell_' as the Martians say. 

"My companion led me out of the Hall. Men and women were moving slowlyin various directions and as we made our way over the campus and betweenthe many noble buildings I saw many of the lambent spirits half emergentinto fleshly shapes accompanied by the watchers, who are in greatnumbers in the City, carrying over their arms the white and blue dresseswith which to clothe them as the spirits fall into solid forms. 

"Amongst these buildings I easily noted the marvellous observatorieswhere objectives twenty feet in diameter are used with which theastronomers actually discern the life of our earth. The reports theymake from week to week of their inspection of the Solar system, and ofthe commotions, changes, births and demolition of Stars, are thesensations of Mars. These Reports are read aloud in the Halls ofAnnouncement and Recreation. But astounding beyond belief, theyphotograph the surfaces of these distant bodies, and report in movingpictures the disturbances of the cosmic universe. No wonder that thewhole Mind, as it were, of Mars is concentrated on the fabulous resultsof their cosmic studies. 

"We descended from Patenta Hill in an avenue that led between the whitecolumned houses with their spheres of Phosphori and their umbrageoussquares around them. It was a season of flowers, though I understoodthat by the use of fertilizing injections the number of flowers in ashrub and even in an herb can be here greatly multiplied. The windows ofthe houses were open and their sills crowded with blossoms. The use ofthe red blossoming vine was strangely extravagant. In many cases it hadthrown its branches over an entire house, clambering over the roof andencircling the phosphoric cage, so that the white house was dissected byits twigs and tendrils, while the red honeysuckle flowers depended inclusters from the walls, the roof gutters, and the light house globesabove them. 

"The Court of the Registeries was a long low structure made of theprevalent white stone with a roof of what seemed to be red copper. Itwas built upon one of the canals which here enter the city and formedone side of a long pier or dock to which and from which interestinglittle boats were constantly approaching and as constantly departing. 

"A hum of business and everyday work surrounded the place, and it seemedrefreshing to note the stir and bustle of affairs. Streams of peoplewere entering the Court as we arrived. They were inhabitants andwatchers bringing the new incarnations to the Registeries to have theirorigin recorded if they could recall it. Indeed many spirits failutterly to remember their former condition, and happen, as we might say, upon Mars, unexplained and inexplicable. They even are without speechand learn the Martian language as a child learns to talk. 

"We pushed in with the jostling crowd, and even as I entered I couldhear the murmurous chant of the Chorus Halls, borne hither-ward on themorning wind. It now seemed a long time, although but one day apparentlyhad elapsed since I sat, a trail of luminous ether, undergoing thestrange process of materialization. 

"How incredible it all was, how incomprehensible. I pinched myself untilI could have cried out with pain, and at that very instant a voicesaluted me, calling me by name and a rushing figure encountered me. Istood transfixed. Before me was Chapman, the mechanic, workman, andphotographer for Mr. Rutherford, in New York in the seventies, a manwhom I knew well, from whom I had learned much, and whose skill helpedso largely in the production of Rutherford's negatives of the Moon. Myrepulsion was over in an instant. I clasped him heartily. It seemed sogood, so human, to embrace something in this strange world. An equalresistance met my own. We were indeed substance. 

"'Mr. Dodd, ' exclaimed my old acquaintance, 'are you here? This iswonderful. Have you just become one of us? What luck! what a greatprovidence for me! I am in the observatory. Must sail to-morrow toScandor to report a sudden confusion in Perseus. They call it here_Pike_. You shall go with me. I have a long leave of absence I will showyou many marvels. And you can tell me everything about Tony. He was ababy when I knew you. ' Turning to my smiling companion, he spoke inMartian, of which to give you some semblance I cipher these words: 'Arumeta voluca volu li tonti tan dondore mal per vuele vonta bidi ami. '

"I returned Chapman's hearty salutation. I yet retained the human speechof earth and I was struck with the miraculous incident that in theplanet Mars, in a populous city, I was addressing a friend in theEnglish tongue. 

"But the joy of it was inexpressible. Oh, the sweetness of oldacquaintanceship in strange, and as here, impossible surroundings! Igazed on him with unspeakable curiosity. I talked to him just to hear myown voice and his in response, to realize if words were still words withthe old meaning, if the intangible mutation I had undergone was areality, if I was indeed alive, if my lungs and throat, theconfiguration of my mouth, the vocalic impact of the air, was a fact, asound, a meaning, or whether it all was some phantasmagoria, beautifuland fair indeed, to be dispelled with a shock of annihilation. 

"No! we were breathing, sensate things, were human kin and kind. Thesudden vertigo sent me throbbing, like a stricken animal, against thehigh pillars of the room we had entered, and a reflex tide of emotionswept over me in a storm that shook me with convulsive sobs. 

"My companion handed me a black wafer. I took it, it dissolved, afierce acridity seemed formed in my mouth, and in an instant I feltstrong and bold. 

"The Registeries were offices in the alcove-like openings in the sidesof this very long building. In the same building were the Courts, whichare few, and here the rooms for the reception and storage of suppliesfor the City. The Hall of Registeries is prolonged into a series of hugebuildings extending along the walls of the Canal. 

"I was led by my unknown friend and Chapman to one of these recesses onwhich I recognized a globe of our earth with its continents in relief. Here upon simple tables were spread great bound books made up of thickcreamy leaves of white paper. These were the Registers. The originalhome, planet, world, or star, from which each emigrant spirit haddeparted was, as far as possible, determined, and appropriatelyrecorded. The details of their lives were inquired into, the conditionand history of the sphere they had left examined, and thus by therevision and comparison of these narratives the history of the variousworlds was in a fair way known, almost as accurately as their presentinhabitants knew them. 

"The alcoves of the Registeries were really ample rooms. Cases holdingvoluminous records were ranged upon their walls; maps, charts, evenpaintings and drawings, as made by the arriving spirits hung upon thewalls, and in broad albums were gathered the portraits, in small size, of the incarnated persons. The Registeries were young men who, from longintercourse with the affairs and occupants of each of the differentextra-Martian bodies, whence spirits came, had become familiar withtheir languages and circumstances and avocations. 

"The keeping, indexing, compiling, illustration, of these extraordinaryrecords is a difficult and inexhaustible task. 

"The results are often reproduced to the Martians in lectures, bulletins, or in sections of the great newspaper Dia. 

"The young men approached us as we entered the room, and after salutingmy guide and also Chapman with the Martian cry, Tintotita, led me to achair, and giving me one of the black wafers, whose acidity had a shorttime before so vigorously renewed my consciousness, began their inquiry. 

"The photograph of each visitor is taken, and a process quite like ourcollodion or wet process is used. The portraits are more permanent thanwith the perishable dry plates. It is a curious thing to learn that for100 years these records and pictures have been taken, and that thereare on Mars hosts of unidentified spirits, who entered its wondrousprecincts before that time. 

"The duration of life in Mars is very various. There seems here anundiscovered law, and a group of observers in Mars are to-day trying topenetrate this mystery. It is asserted that there is evidence thatEgyptians of the ante-Christian epoch are to-day living in Mars, buttheir identification is now almost impossible. On the other hand, it isa fact ascertained and recorded that in one hundred years many Martiansdie, while others scarcely survive the ordinary limit of our human lifeon earth. This gives a great interest to Martian society. Here for ageshave possibly flown disembodied spirits from our earth; in theirreincarnation they have assumed the features and faculties of youth;they have also, under changed conditions of life, and moderatedfunctions and activity in living, been physically, perhaps mentally, modified. Their own memory of their past on Earth, however vivid, andthen in exceptional beings, has slowly disappeared or left only vaguecloud-like waverings and congeries of reminiscences. 

"So that great human souls that have entered Mars in the early centuriesof our earth's historic periods may be living here almost unrecognized. They have drifted into occupations suitable to their genius in some ofthe many great cities, and no vestige of their past remains. The systemof the Registeries is scarcely a century old, and while now from themarvellous industry and persistence of the investigators, the great onesof the neighboring worlds, and even the most obscure are in somecognizable way identified, yet from the long ages before that there isalmost no authentic registration. 

"This is more to be regretted as the law of life on the planet mightthen be better formulated. Essentially it seems necessary for existencehere to be in unison with the conditions; contentment means longevity. Of course, the remarkable men and women I saw at the Patenta were allwell known. They had made themselves known, and not only were theirearthly names and lives put down on the pages of the Registers, but alltheir knowledge had been as inquisitively and scrupulously impressed. Nor is this all. From many worlds and earths there is flowing constantlyto this planet new, strange, wonderful beings. Here is a cosmos ofraces, tastes, nationalities, destinies, civilizations, and instincts, from whose amalgamated and fused vortices of tendency this marvellouslife has been formed. 

"However completely the mere memory of detail vanishes, the traits ofnature remain, and these mingling beings present a kaleidoscope ofcontrasted or blending talents. But union of beings comes in here as inour States to combine all together and create this unique expression ofsocial beauty, tenderness, scientific power, progress and spiritualexaltation. Marriage is here as with us, and love holds its deathlesssway among the white and noble Martians as on earth, while the affectionof friendship seems to weave every atom of society to every other atomin a social texture over which only moves the refining powers of thoughtand aspiration. 

"Mars does indeed seem a sort of Paradise, for it is quite certain thatthe best, the truest, the deeper and emphatic souls come here; and whilea sort of sin or social incompatibility is found here, and there arecrimes, and while death and sickness and accidents occur here, as I havetold you, yet these things have a moral or mental, rather than physicalexpression. At least, in a great measure, and they are rare. No!accidents of matter pertain to Mars; its materiality is complete. As Isend this to you I feel my warmth, the heat of my body, the expirationof my breath, the movements of my eyes, the beating of my heart, all, all, these bodily phenomena seem unchanged--their physiology is changed, their corporate reality seems the same, their corporeal consequencesare different. But I cannot explain clearly this to you. Do I know itclearly myself?

"I was questioned by the Registeries, both of whom had come from theearth, though in them, as in all the less highly endowed, memory wasfading. Because of this, Registeries quickly succeed each other, sincethe later arrivals from the other worlds are better adapted to elicitthe information needed from the new spirits. And this applies to otherworlds, to Mercury and Venus, etc. , whose Registeries are, so far aspossible, appointed from previous occupants of those spheres. 

"The larger, far larger percentage of spirits come from the threeplanets, Mercury, Venus and the Earth; but there are singularinexplicable arrivals from distant stars, and of these the records arein many instances of extraordinary wonderfulness. I must not pause torecount this. I know it very imperfectly. 

"My examiners had little to do. My memory seemed of great power, and Itold them the story of our experiments, discoveries and our compact tocommunicate with each other. This portion of my story was listened towith admiration. Chapman, my guide, and the two Registeries leaped totheir feet, exclaimed with delight and embraced each other in ecstacy. 'At last! At last!' cried out all of them, while hastily callingofficers of the building to them they rapidly explained my singularannouncement. It seemed to run like fire through the throngs. A greatcrowd was soon pressing in upon us on every side, while the Martianejaculation '_Hi mitla_' rang in all directions. I was astounded. Whatwas this strange excitement, and why had my simple tale awakened thisfierce commotion?

"My guide noting my dismay and alarm, laughingly explained the reason ofthe confusion. 'For years and years, ' he said, 'it has been hoped by theMartians to send some message to the Earth. We understand wirelesstelegraphy, we can bridge almost infinite distances with the monstrouswaves of magnetic disturbances, it is possible for us to generate. Wehave bombarded the earth with magnetic waves, but no response, no singleindication has been returned to us that our messages were received. Ourknowledge of the earth language is complete, even our knowledge of thetelegraphic codes is partially so. But we have hopelessly repeated, areeven now repeating these efforts. 

"'You, my friend, are the first man from Earth who tells us thatwireless telegraphy is understood upon Earth, that receivers have beeninvented; but above all it amazes and transports us to know that youhave perfected means, before leaving the Earth, to have such messages asyou may deliver from Mars properly received. There is, though, ' heexclaimed, as he turned to the eager, shining faces about me, 'still agrave doubt whether our good friend can assure us of the ability of the_Earthlings_ to send us back any communication. They may be unable toforce through this enormous distance waves of sufficient magnitude toreach us. '

"There was a loud murmur of disappointment, mingled with exclamations ofdissent and reproach. Once more I was plied with questions, and then, myson, there came to me, singularly clouded in forgetfulness until thatinstant, the memory of that fruitless message which we received about ayear before my death on Earth. 

"I arose, and amid a hush of expectation excited by this motion, accompanied as it were with a gesture inviting silence, spoke aloud inEnglish:

"'My friends, I recall a night in August, 1890, in the Earth'schronology, when my son and myself, then hoping against hope that thecarefully adjusted receiver we had, would ever be called upon to heralda message from another world, were suddenly surprised to see and hearthe register of our instrument move and sound. It was indeed animatedby some extra terrestrial power. Could that power have come from yourMars; were we the first to receive one of your messages that you have solong been raining on the Earth?'

"I looked around in enthusiasm, and with a conscious sense ofcompanionship, pride and affection. I do not think I was altogetherunderstood, except by a few, but the contagion of my own pleasure seizedthe multitude, and a great melodious shout arose, while cries of '_Himitla_' echoed in the Hall, and then, carried away with an emotionalimpulse, these excited Martians broke into a song, a swinging chant, that brought to the doors of the room new accessions of spectators whoseinstantaneous sympathy was expressed by the added volume of sound theycontributed, until beneath the vibrant power of the great chorus thebuilding seemed itself to tremble. 

"And then a curious and astounding thing happened. My old acquaintance, Chapman, leaped up in the dense clusters, and springing on a tableshouted, 'To the Patenta. ' The words seemed understood by almost all. Iwas seized by powerful arms, swung upon the shoulders of two splendid, vigorous youths. While by one impulse the throng surged through thedoors in a sort of triumphal progress, I found myself moving in themidst of the excited populace up a broad avenue to the central hill ofthe city again, which was crowned by the many towers, halls, domes andaggregated arms and facades of the wonderful Patenta, the great communalhome of Experiment and Observation. 

"The clamor of our approach brought to the scene the dwellers in thehouses and the wanderers in the streets. And amongst the great densityof forms and faces I saw the phosphorescent figures of many formingspirits swept on in this friendly anarchy of delight and anticipation. 

"My son, as I send these words out into the ether-filled realms of spaceacross the millions of miles that intervene between that speck of lighton which even now I know you lament my departure, and this new home ofmine, which to you also is but a speck of light, I feel in a desperationof doubt that you will never hear them. 

"How thrilled and awe-struck I became as I gazed around me, and lookingover the surging mob beheld their multitudinous lineaments, the faces ofthe races of our earth, its many nations, the faces of men or women whohad lived in Venus, in Mercury, in the fixed stars, perhaps, as we callthose globes from whose lambent surface light reached the earth afterthe expiration of a century of years. What a beautiful exhilaration offeeling it imparted, these flushed and shining faces, the liquid eyes ofthe south now charged with the fires of transporting expectation, thesteady gaze of blue-eyed northerners firm and rapt and steadfast; thepower of huge, colossal frames of muscle, the sinuous activity of spareand slender forms all attired in that consummate garb of blue and white, their caps of metal reflecting the light in cerulean lustres. 

"On, upward, we moved, impelled by an impulse quite indefinable butsufficient to condense about us by its contagion the Martian populace, quick, responsive, inquisitive, intelligent and excitable as children. We were approaching the Patenta by an ever widening avenue, our rustlingapproach announced by a chant of vociferous and yet melodious notes. 

"The avenue of Approach is known as the _Imprintum_. On either side roselines of marble columns, their lofty capitals crowned with statues, their bases clustering with marble groups, while breaking now and thenthe white monotony, spiral and intertwining pillars of colored glasssprang into the air, like titanic tropical vines holding in extendedfingers the balls of phosphori. 

"The pavement we trod was made of blocks of the phosphori, and at nightthis magnificent, indescribable and transcendent street becomes a pathof flame, showering upon the files of silent marble statues above it thesplendor of this spectral effulgence. 

"As we came near the buildings of the Patenta our outcry and thesonorous pulsations of the singing brought to its windows and doorwaysthe many workers in the laboratories, lecture halls, and offices. Wewere regarded with wonder. But there seems present amongst these peoplea telepathic power, not perhaps what we call that in the Earth, but anintuitive construction of meaning upon the passing of a word or a hint. Forerunners furthermore had given some account of the strange new spiritfrom the Earth, who had prearranged with people on the Earth itself, toreturn to them, if possible, messages of his experiences after a humandeath. It had been the dream of the Martians, the sensation of theirdaily lives, the hope of returning to their former dwelling places, sometoken, word, salutation, indeed to somehow begin that almost apocryphalconception of binding the Universe into a conversational unit. 

"No marvel that they were now excited, transported; no wonder that I, the accidental being, who falling in their world, as it were, fromoutside, should be the agency to lead to the eventual conquest of thesegreat designs. 

"On we swept like a tide that advances upon a coast, encompasses eachsalient rock, island and projection, and evading it by embracing it, rises still further into the bays and harbors, and brings the full tideat last to its most remote limits. So columns and stairways, halls, andwings, and arms, of buildings successively were surged round, and thevast complex pushed its way to the great Hall of Attention. 

"This enormous structure was built somewhat to one side of the greatObservatories. It was rectangular, elevated and attained to by stairs onevery side. It resembles a huge Grecian temple, but the interiortreatment was quite contrasted. Externally it was made of the whitephosphorescent marble with colonnades of columns of the blue metalsupporting its projecting roofs. I was carried as by a cataract ofwaters up its stairways. Already its bronze gates were swung wide open, and through them the Martian army passed with impetuous stride. Learnedmen, the leaders and great physicists, many of those I had seen in themorning had reached the Hall. These were constantly augmented by newarrivals from the more distant Schools of Philosophy, Design and Art, while streaming in at every door came the joyous multitude, and thegreat vault of the Hall of Attention resounded with the rolling chorus. 

"It was a moving, an impossible spectacle. The balconies swept upwardto a wall of polished granite. They were supported by columns of mosaicmarble; the floor of roughened glass was concealed with benches of agray stone, whose backs were carved in a tracery of branches, over whichwere thrown pale yellow rugs or shawls; the broad ceiling was dividedinto deep, rectangular recesses _plafonded_ with opalescent glass, andthese recesses were made by the intersection of huge girders of the bluemetal, while provisions were made throughout for electric lighting bytall glass cylinders, which glow like pillars of lambent flame, andstood upright, affixed to the walls at regular intervals, or concealedin cavities along the ceiling, or grouped like the fasces of the Romanlictors, at the railings of the balconies. 

"A wide platform occupied the center of this vast auditorium, and uponthis I was carried as by a wave of the sea. Here I touched the floor;the accompanying crowds dispersed through the hall, which became filled, and as it filled some unnoticed signal ushered the glow of the electricether in the cylinders, until a glory of radiance mingled with thesunlight and illuminated the audience, whose songs had died away, andwho sat in attitudes of attention, their faces upturned, their bluecaps shining resplendently, like a surface of tempered steel. 

"I stood alone with my former guide, and Chapman. I felt moved by somesingular enthusiasm; the exaltation of the moment possessed me, andunannounced, as yet unquestioned, I rose to my full height upon a narrowrostrum in the platform, and turning from side to side spoke with anelation that seemed to propel my ringing words over the great assemblywith the power and shock of a trumpet:

"'Men and women, ' I cried, 'I have reached your wonderful world fromthat habitation of mortal men known to many of you as the Earth, wheredeath ceaselessly destroys generation after generation, and only theincessant processes of birth as quickly renew the falling ranks of life. To us on earth, the disappearance of those we love and cherish, thesundering of ties which a lifetime of love and companionship hasestablished, the sharp vanishing away into nothingness and silence ofthe faces and spirits of the great and glorious, the good, the helpful, the true and noble, has made death an awful, hideous, to some a hopelessmystery. 

"'We stand on earth speechless before the unseen power which snatchesfrom our caresses all that we most cherish, all that makes our lifethere worth living. There is no solution of the mystery, no voice, noreturn, no message, only a blankness of doubt, misgiving and desperateyearning in those who must continue. There is indeed with those on Eartha partial confidence by reason of religious faith, but strong as thatseems to be, the endless succession of centuries, each crowding theviewless habitations of the dead with the still more and deeper streamsof disembodied souls, unaccompanied by any response, any utterance orreturn, limit or telltale apparition, has somehow filled all minds witha creeping wonder if even the assurances of Revelation can be believed. 

"'Dying on the Earth may have continued in historic, and what is calledprehistoric time, for over 50000 years, and yet from those unnumberedmillions not a cry or a whisper, note, or vision, is heard or seen tobetray their destiny, if destiny beyond the grave there is. 

"'But back of Religion, back of experience, back of rational doubt orinfidelity, the heart keeps up its importunate cry of hope. We dare notcrush out within us the sweet thought of reunion. Upon that earth I losta wife, who summed up to me everything of value, virtue, and beautyhuman life can claim. The passionate desire to regain her, the defiantmutiny of my heart against any thought of her annihilation, made meturn to the shining hosts of heaven for reassurance. In them somewhere Ibelieved the vanished soul of my companion had flown. This wonderfulworld was known to me, and what the wise men of the Earth said of itspossible population. It was then that with my son I devised, followingcertain suggestions, a system of wireless telegraphy. We have both, myson and myself, felt certain that some disturbance was recorded by ourinstrument from some planet beyond the earth. From that moment my sonand myself felt convinced that we might be permitted to bring about arelease of the inhabitants of the Earth from the narrow limits of itsown surface, and launch out upon the spaces of the universe the messagesthat would return to us with some news of other worlds, or bringassurance that the Death of the world was but the swinging door to somenew existence. 

"'Men of Mars, that Death which tore from me my wife set his seal atlast on me, but before the summons was executed, I had made arrangementsin every possible detail to communicate with my son. We agreed upon acypher, and I have so imprinted each measure of our compact upon mymemory that all of it is as clear to my mind as it was before I left theEarth. Give me possession of your great instruments, let me bridge themillions of miles to our earth, and in an instant stir the populationsof the Earth into fierce attention, so that from now on through all thecoming years you Martians shall speak with the people of the earth andagain from Mars, as from some relay station, messages shall pass outwardto the stars, and thus from planet to planet the reinforced utterancemay pierce the universe of worlds. '

"I finished; a great shout arose from the immense multitude; with oneimpulse the light blue metal caps were swung from their heads and tossedupward, while the cheers passing out into the streets were caught up, and in refluent waves of sound rolled back upon me like the murmur of adistant storm at sea. 

"I do not think I was quite understood, but the chief feature of myspeech was realized, and the Martians, quick to respond to anysuggestion, and inflammable of nature, had become enthusiastic over theprospects of this new revelation. 

"I stood an instant uncertain what I should do, or what new developmentwould follow my evident popularity. Suddenly a strong, ringing voicespoke from the gallery immediately in front of me. It said--I could notquite separate the speaker in the moving throng: 'Come to the _Manana_. '

"Chapman and my friend whispered together 'Volta, ' and then turning tome told me to follow them. I followed. Already the hall had becomepartially emptied, and we pushed onward amongst radiant men and women, who received me with smiles and gestures of approval. Once outside theHall of Attention, we hurried through some narrow corridors, up windingstairways, until at length we emerged upon a lofty platform carrying arailing about it, and so elevated above all the surrounding buildings ofthe Patenta that my glance seemed to sweep the circuit of the City, andswept outward over a rolling and low country through which ran widemirror-like ribbons of water, the great canals of Mars, while afar offmelting into the crystalline hazes of the horizon rose dark masses ofmountains. 

"I stood an instant stupified and overcome. The deep voice of asalutation came to my ears, and turning I saw the face of Volta. Besideme was a large induction coil, and above it two huge plates of copperabout ten feet apart. The next instant a flash passed between theelectrodes, and I was caught and turned aside with my companions. Thelight of the spark was intense, and the spark itself of greatdimensions. 

"Volta then spoke: 'My friend, your arrival on the surface of our planetis a sensation. We are all delighted. You have solved our difficulties. With this transmitter you can yourself send to the earth the message youwish. And this receiver will catch the waves of the smallestamplitudes. '

"He pointed to a singular train of tubes, each filled apparently with ashining line of straw shaped metallic bodies. This was raised by somesilk cord passing to a pulley and arm, perhaps a hundred feet above us. 

"Volta spoke with difficulty; he seemed preoccupied, and after I wasshown the transmitter, and its mechanism was explained, he took my handwarmly, pressed it between his own, and then speaking in the Martiantongue to Chapman, left us. 

"I then sent you, my son, my first message. What pleasure! The greatsparks flashed magnificently. Chapman and my friend were in ecstacies. Iworked steadily until the night. And when all was over I waited untilthe stars came out, until again the City of Light shone like some huge, myriad faceted stone, and then there came, while Chapman and my friendstood mute beside me, your faint response. 

"I scarcely caught the lisping ticks, but they came, and it seemedindeed as if the power of the Creator had passed into the hands of men. 

"With a joy too deep for the futile hopelessness of words to express, we both descended from the high station and through the great halls. Ifound my way to the charming, peaceful room above the glowing city andfell asleep with prayers upon my lips for all the dead and dying uponthe Earth. 

"The next day as I awoke I found my friend and Chapman waiting for me. Ifelt wonderfully refreshed, and the exultant mood of the Martianspossessed me. I sang with an interior tumult of excitement. I drewbefore my mind the beauty of your mother reincorporated in this gay, lovely world of Mars, so full of power and light and youthful impulse. Again I sang, and it was the very air your mother so often played to me, 'Der Grüne Lauterband, ' of Schubert. A few passers by, below my window, caught the refrain, my voice rose higher and higher, and theirdisappearing figures seemed to carry the merry, hopping notes far away. How fair and glorious it all was!

"And I was to visit Scandor, to visit the beautiful Martian country, themines, the huge fossil ivory deposits, to sail on those canals, whoseresplendent lines we had detected from the earth. 

"My door was shaken, and almost as if yet living on the earth, I criedout 'Come in. ' Chapman and my friend entered with laughter andcongratulation. Chapman spoke first: 'Dodd, you are summoned to theCouncil of the Patenta. All are anxious to see you. At present it ishoped you will not push further the matter of the telegraphy with theEarth. The disturbances in Pike increase daily--flashing stars seem toemerge from nothing, meteoric showers, like a rain of sparks rush acrossthe fields of the telescopes, gaseous disengagements from what seem likeshining nuclei, shoot upward for thousands of miles from their surfaces;all is chaos, and these disturbances have been noticed in other regionsof the heavens. Again spirits have ceased arriving at the Hill of thePhosphori, the Chorus Halls are almost empty, and the singers have noemployment. Such a dearth of spirits has not been known before formonths. It is not uncommon for long intervals to occur when only a fewspirits arrive, but now there are none. 

"'The Registeries report that many lately reincarnated spirits speak thelanguages of Venus and Mercury, and tell of the terrific physicalconvulsions in both planets, that wars are raging in Mercury, and asingular plague devastating Venus. The country people have sent in wordby the canals that rockets in clusters covering hundreds of square milesare arising from Scandor. The cause is unknown, cannot even besurmised, and last night Herschell and Gauss, at the big telescopes, detected a comet charging towards us with an incredible velocity. TheCouncil believe I should at once start for Scandor to bring the month'sreport, and these new excitements, to the paper Dia, while they urgethat you should recount to the governors at Scandor your story, and themarvellous fact of the answer sent back from the Earth to you by yourson. We will go, after an audience with the Council, together, andbecause of some need of more stone from the quarries, we will stop onour way out and leave orders at Mit and Sinsi, where the quarries are. The trip is full of beauty and wonder, and Scandor, I am told, is Heavenitself. '

"He paused. I thought there was a shade of disappointment in my friend'sface, as Chapman drew me to one side, and I stepped quickly back to him, and said: 'Will you not go with us, too? You first cared for me andbrought me food and raiment. ' His eyes were again bright with peace. 'No, my new friend, I cannot go now. I am waiting, waiting here at theCity of Light, watching the spirits, if perchance my son from your earthis amongst them. Surely he will come some day, and then my happinesswill be all God can make it. '

"We hurried away to the Chamber of the Council. Once more through thedevious paths of the great groups of buildings which make up thePatenta, between the flowering trees and the tulip flowered vines wemade our way, with feet so buoyant and so strong that we seemed almostto fly. 

"The Chamber of the Council of the Patenta was a beautiful room. It wasone of the few great chambers in the City of Light, dressed in color andtapestries. A deep carpet of scarlet Talta wool covered the floor, andthere hung at irregular intervals from a silver cornice deep greencurtains. The furniture was very wonderful. A dark wood, like teak, opulently fitted with silver, formed the great table that occupied thecenter of the room, as also the heavy chairs on which were placedcushions of a golden yellow silk. There were no windows in the room. Thelight entered from above through two simple round apertures covered withwhite glass. Book cases stood about the room filled with large folios, which, as I observed from a few spread upon the table, were not printedbooks, but filled with writing in a round, clear hand, legible at somedistance. 

"But the most extraordinary feature of the room was a marvellouscolossal figure at one end of the room, in a recess richly hung withgreen tapestries. It was cast in silver upon which dull shades andfrosted and polished surfaces were appropriately combined, as theirposition required, in the portrayal of a Being of incredible benignityof expression, attired in flowing robes with an outstretched hand, hisface invested with a harmonious union of power and sweetness. Beneath itupon the enormous black pedestal the letters in silver wereconspicuous--Tarunta--the Deity. This amazing creation arrested theattention of my friend Chapman, and myself, and we stood halfspell-bound under the influence of its seraphic and potent beauty. 

"The next moment we were conscious of the throng filling the room. Therewere many of the great physicists and chemists and astronomers andobservers whom I had seen at the breakfast in the Dining Hall theprevious morning with a few others who were the first men I had seen inMars wearing the expression of age. They almost seemed venerable. Iremembered then what I had learned on my arrival at the Patenta--thatage and death also supervene in Mars. 

"I was observed at once, and friendly hands were extended to me from allsides. I was led to the head of the table. There I was invited toenlarge my story as given in the Hall of Attention, and I was told totell it in English. A scribe near me conveyed to pads of paper mynarrative. 

"When I had finished an audible murmur of approval filled the room, andthe most aged of the older men arising, and speaking in Martian, translated to me by the scribe, said:

"'My friend, you have delighted us. The time is approaching when we can, I trust, receive such visitors from all the worlds, and gradually bringit to pass that the visible universe may be bound together through thepower and sympathy of language. The Council desires that at present yourefrain from sending your second message until you have visited Scandor, and seen something of this new world upon which you have so auspiciouslyalighted. 

"'Heroma (Sir, Sire, etc. , etc. ), Chapman will accompany you. Thegovernment at Scandor should be apprized of certain strange celestialconditions, and we are in receipt of news that at Scandor also unusualthings are happening. While all we know or have observed could betransmitted to Scandor, and all their own knowledge in turn sent to usby wireless telegraphy, for reasons which we are not at liberty toexplain at present, it has been thought best to send the approved diaryof the Patenta to the government, and also learn in return, by word ofmouth, what has transpired at our capital. It will afford you someopportunity to visit the Martian Mountains, and be more informed for thesecond message you are expected to transmit to the Earth when youreturn. '

"After a few salutations, in which interview I found myself face to facewith the reincarnated forms of some of the greatest scientific thinkerswho have lived upon our globe, I left the Council Chamber with my friendand Chapman, to prepare for our coming journey. It was then that Ientered more deeply the City of Light, and saw the unspeakable splendorof the Garden of the Fountains. 

"The Garden of the Fountains lies over toward the great Halls ofPhilosophy, Design and Invention, whose domes and temple-pointed roofsof copper and blue metal I could easily discern. It covers over half asquare mile of space. It is supplied with water from an enormous lakeresting in the hollow of an extinct volcano, fifty miles to the east ofthe City of Light, at an elevation of 5, 000 feet. A great conduit orwater main, as we would say, conveys the water to the garden. The Gardenis built actually upon piers of concrete and stone, connected by archesof brick, and through the subterranean chambers, thus formed, thedivision of the streams is made, and there controlled. The whole wasdesigned by the great Martian artist, Hinudi, whom some aver is thereincarnated Leonardo da Vinci of our Earth. 

"The Garden is approached through a labyrinthine avenue made up ofPalms, which on that side of the City seem to be plentiful, and overthese palms in extraordinary profusion the vines of the red floweredhoneysuckle. You cannot see beyond the wall of green on either side inthis winding way, and only as you gaze upward does the eye escape theimprisonment of its surroundings, where above the waving summits of thepalms you see a lane of the bluest sky. 

"As you draw near the debouchment (into the garden) of this oscillatingroad, the splash and roar of falling waters invades your retreat. Andthen suddenly as if a curtain had arisen or dropped to the earth youemerge upon a great marble terrace of steps, and before you is spread aforest of geysers distributed in entrancing vistas in a lake of tumblingand scintillating waters. The scene is amazing and transporting. Rushingjets of water are enclosed in hollow pillars of glass, whose lines areravishingly combined in the separate clusters of fountains. 

"The heights of these fountains vary from 150 to 200 feet, and they arearranged in a peculiar disorder, which, however, conforms to anelaborate plan. The water rises in these colored tubes in green columns, then breaks into sheets and bubble-laden cataracts of spray above them, pouring far outward like blazing showers of little lamps in the fullsunlight. Many of the tubes are inclined, and the ejected shafts ofwater collide above them, producing explosive clouds of shatteredvesicles of moisture that float off or drop in miniature rains over thelake. This wildness of fountains extends over many a mile. All the jetsare not in tubes. Many uncovered fountains are interjected amongst theglass pillars. 

"The pillars vary in form, and have much diversity of aperture, so thatthe water shoots from them in every posture and form. It makes abewildering picture. The exposure of water in the great lake or pondwhich holds these fountains is broken with waves, and the tempestuousscene with the constant excitement of the rising and flowing avalanchesof water creates feelings of abounding wonder. The marble steps extendaround the lake, and behind them on all sides rises the wall of thepalms, beaten into motion by the wind blowing ceaselessly. Theesplanade-like margin between the top step and the palm enclosureaccommodated great numbers, while the benches in retreating alcoves, were also filled. 

"It was a varied, exhilarating scene. The moving throngs, the wonderfulconfusion of the spouting fountains in their chrysalids of glass againstthe sky line, the perpetually waving fronds of the palms!

"We hurried to the pier of the Registeries after Chapman had secured thesealed envelope, in which were placed the communications to thegovernment at Scandor. The canal which enters the City of Light at thispoint is divided into a number of branches whose confluent arms, about amile from the City, unite into two parallel canals whose course we werenow to follow to the City of Scandor. The small boat we entered was acurious vessel of white porcelain, broad and short, with raised keel, prow, and expanded stern. 

"It was moved by some motor, electric in nature. A pilot took his placeat the bow, and, under a canopy of silk, in the light of a setting sun, followed by the music of the City, we passed away from the City, which, even as we left it, slowly, in the descending darkness of the night, began to kindle into light, and send upward into the velvet zenith itsphosphorescent glows. "

CHAPTER V. 

"It was afternoon when Chapman and I, fully equipped and provisioned, moved off from the long granite pier at the Registeries, after anaffectionate parting from my guide and friend, who returned sorrowfullyto resume his watch for his son, whose coming to Mars seemed to him soassured. 

"How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed! Down the crowdedcanal we slowly moved, amidst the calling crews, the pleasant cheers, and beckonings of sightseers; and back of us rose on its hills the Cityof Light, that, as we passed still further away, and watched it in thefading sunset, began to glow, and finally, to shine like some titanicopal in the velvet shadows of the night. 

"These numerous arms of the canal some miles from the City coalesce andmerge into the enormous trunk canal that passes on to Scandor throughhills and mountains and the plain country, excavated by the wonderfulToto powder. This trunk canal is doubled; upon one member, the boatspass outward to Scandor, and on the other the boats return. Branchespass north and south at centers of population, and of some of thesewhich pass actually into the frozen depths of the polar countries, I maytell you later. 

"As we slowly progressed into the undulating plain country, with itsvillages and farm lands, diversified by woods, and sometimes solitaryprojections of rock, as the stars stole urgently into the sky, as thephosphori lamps began their soft illumination of the decks, and whilemurmurs of songs from merrymakers on the land came to us in snatchesbewitchingly, though incongruously mingled with the delicious odors ofthe Napi grass, I turned to Chapman, and felt that now, throughout thehours of the genial night, I would pour out unchecked the flood ofinquiry that had risen again and again to my lips in this strange newlife. 

"'Chapman, ' I began, 'you must feel that I have a great deal to ask you. This new life, with its surprises and the strange incidents of the twoor three days I have already lived here have suggested so manyquestions, can we not now talk about these marvels?'

"'Certainly, ' replied Chapman, as he lifted a glass of delicate pearlpink, filled with the pungent and keenly stimulating _Ridinda_, to hislips. 'Put on your thinking cap, and perforate me with all the puzzlesyou can think of. I am a trifle rattled myself in this new ranch--havenot been here long--but I tell you, Dodd, Mars is first class. It suitsme. Never enjoyed living so much, never found it so much a matter ofcourse, and as to livelihood, when I think of those freezing nights onthe earth in Rutherford's cheesebox shooting at the moon with wetplates, I can tell you this sort of thing isn't a long call from all Iever hoped to find in Heaven. Open your batteries. To-morrow will befull of sight-seeing, and I guess you will forget all you want to knowto-day in trying to remember what you will see then. ' He took anothersip of the snapping liquid, drew his chair closer to my own, and while asort of musical echo lingered in the air, I began:

"'Chapman, where on Mars are we? I seem to feel neither heat nor cold. Isee these flowers, the palms in the Garden of the Fountains, day passesinto night, and there is no very apparent change of temperature, so faras feeling goes. What are we made of? Is this new body we carryinsensible to heat or cold? I feel indeed my pulse beat. I am consciousof warmth in the sun, and of coolness in the shade. I feel the wind blowon my cheeks, but all these sensations are so much less keen than on theearth, and yet again I realize that sensations are in some ways as vividas on the earth. The pleasure of my ears and eyes is wonderfully deepand exhaustive, the sense of taste rapid and delightful. I am happy, supremely happy, and affection, even the hidden fires of love, burn inmy veins as on the earth. ' Chapman looked at me with that bright smilehe wore on earth, and his gestures of expostulation were amusing. 'Wait, Dodd, don't talk so fast. You remember I had a slow way on the earth. Ihave no reason to think it will prove any less pleasant to stay slow onMars. One thing at a time. My own sense of position is not so securethat I can tell exactly all you want to know, and there are a good manythings that the heavyweights up here don't pretend yet to explain. Now, where are we? Well, the City of Light is about 40 degrees south of theMartian equator, not so far from what on earth would be the position ofChrist Church, where you "shuffled off the mortal coil. " Don't frown. Mars is a serene, sweet place, but I am not yet so intimidated by thelofty life here as to drop my jokes. Some Martians strike me as a trifleheavy in style, just a suggestion of a kind of sublimated Bostoneseabout them, don't you know. Curious! However, the ordinary Martian isgamy, good company, full of happiness, with a considerable fancy forjokes, absurdly addicted to music, and as credulous as a child. Somehow, Dodd, a good deal of my earthly nature has stuck to me, and I revel in adual life. I have my Martian side, but I can't, and this life can't, knock the old foibles of the world you left, out of me yet. I may getthe proper sort of exultation in time, but just now I've importedconsiderable human horse sense. '

"He looked at me whimsically; I walked away, and watched the recedingcity. 

"The motion of our white boat was so smoothly rapid, that soon, andalmost unnoticed we had threaded all the many lanes, windings, and locksthat led to the broad canals some twenty miles from the city. We hadpassed laden barges, flat and storied boats carrying excursions orfreight, and trains of smaller craft crowded with fruit brought in fromdistant farms for the great population of the City of Light. The sceneassumed a fairy-like unreality as night settled down, and the boatsswarming with light, or else carrying a few red lanterns, passed uswhile their occupants or owners chanted the lonely lullaby of theMartians, which begins: 'Ana cal tantil to ti. '

"It was yet to me all a wonderful dream, from which each moment Idreaded awakening. It was all so beautiful!

"I sat again with Chapman under the canopy, talking of the earth. Strange Mystery! Here we were with our earth memories yet vivid, recalling incidents of life in New York City, and summoning amid all theappealing charm of this strange new life, the little, sordid variancesand trials, vexations and minor sufferings that had marred his own lifeon earth. We turned to these things, not because they were grateful orpleasing to remember, but because it seemed to _establish_ us, or ratherme, to give me identity, and build up the growing certainty that I hadcome from the earth, and was re-embodied in this new sphere of activefeeling and experience. 

"I told him of you, of the death of your mother, of our flight to NewZealand, our experiments, the Dodans, and then turning to him, as we sawthe Martian moon rise in ruddy fullness far away over the hill of_Tiniti_, I said, searchingly: 'Chapman, you remember Martha? Howbeautiful and good she was! I have kept one long, sad, and stilldeathless hope in my repining heart. I shall see her again! It must be!I have felt so certain of this that no argument, no appeal to reason, can drive away the keen sense of its realization. Have you seen her onMars amongst the thousands you have met, and is there on this entrancingorb any other place than the Hill of the Phosphori, for the disembodiedof other worlds to enter this new world?

"Chapman smiled. 'Yes, ' he answered, 'I remember your wife very well. Icould pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet inthe City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion, and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelingshave a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughingskepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; itmay yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accountstold me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at differentpoints; many indeed have been received near Scandor, and on one or twooccasions the prehistoric peoples, the little strong men of themountains and the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif thathas become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! Andquite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and bloodmight startle a rational being into a rigid course of religiouspractices, not to say superstition. But look, how fair the night hasbecome. '

"The landscape about us was wonderfully illuminated by the twosatellites, Deimos and Phobos, which, as you well know, were made knownto astronomers on the earth by Prof. Asaph Hall in 1877. What amarvellous spectacle they presented, moving almost sensibly at theirdiffering rates of revolution through a sky sown with stellar lights. The combined lights of these singular bodies surpassed the light of ourterrestrial moon, by reason of their closeness to the surface of Mars, while the more rapid motion of the inner satellite causes the most weirdand beautiful changes of effect in the nocturnal glory they both lend tothe Martian life. 

"We were sailing in a broad river-like canal, perhaps one mile or morewide. On all sides the undulating ground, covered with cultivation, varied with thick patches of trees, with here and there shining lightsfrom villages and isolated homes, carried the eye onward to a risinghill country, beyond which, again, silhouetted against the shining skywhere Phobos began to rise mountain tops were just discernible. 

"Deimos, the outer moon, was already shining, and its pale, sick lightimparted a peculiar blueness impossible to describe upon all surfaces ittouched. Here was the phenomenon we witnessed with increasing pleasure. Phobos was emerging from a cloud and its yellow rays possessing agreater illuminating power, mingled suddenly with the blue and spectralbeams of Deimos and the land thus visited by the complimentary flood oflight from these twin luminaries seemed suddenly dipped in silver. Abeautiful white light, most unreal, as you mortals might say, fell ontree and water, cliff, hill, and villages. The effect was not unlikethat instant in photography when a developing plate shows the outlinesof its objects in dazzling silver before the half tints are added, andthe image fades away into indistinguishable shadow. 

"It was a print in silver, and while we gazed in mute astonishment thesharp shadows changed their position as Phobos, racing through thezenith, changed the inclination of its incident beams. The effect wasindescribable. I walked the deck in an agitation of wonder and delight. Chapman, to whom the novelties of this Martian life were stillwonderful, followed me, and was the first to speak. 

"'Dodd, you know that the strangest thing about this whole place is yourbody. It's body all right enough, but I can't quite understand what sortof a body it is. It hurts in a way, and is pleased in a way, but itseems a better made affair in texture and parts than anything wepossessed on earth. Exertion is so easy. '

"'Well, Chapman, ' I answered, while my eyes rested on the water, throughwhich an approaching barge rose like a vessel of frosted or burnishedwhite metal, 'we were taught on the earth that, with gravitation reducedone-half, the same weight on Mars would seem only half as heavy as onthe earth, and that the effort which there carried us eight feet wouldhere send us sixteen. '

"'It is true, ' returned Chapman, 'but that doesn't explain everything. We sleep less here, we scarcely touch meat, and yet exertion, prolongedby hours, scarcely accelerates the blood or vexes the nerves, andgenerally we don't grow old. Our bodies are light; the texture, apparently firm and resisting, is somehow diaphanous. I've seen thelight through the palm of my hand. And then again I haven't. Somehowmind works in the body here and changes it, and changes it different atdifferent times. Why, Dodd, the other day at the Patenta, a studentjumped up with a cry of delight at something, and stumbled and fell froma window to the ground, but he stood up without a bruise or hurt of anykind. His exultation, his emotional excitement made him buoyant, Ithink, and he fell to the earth like a thistledown. There was noconcussion. '

"'Well, ' I responded, 'I cannot tell. I know very little as yet. I feelwonderfully active and vitalized. My senses are acute. I see further, hear further, smell further than I ever did on earth, and it even seemsto me I can anticipate things. The nerve currents are so rapid, the mindseems so persuasive, that coming events are registered by a propheticfeeling I can scarcely describe. For that reason, Chapman, I growhappier every minute, for now I see approaching that great joy, myreunion with Martha, the one great divine event I hunger and hope for. 

"'Well, ' said Chapman, as a cloud covered the scudding moons, 'I do hopeyou may see her, and somehow I think, too, you will. But, Dodd, ' themoons emerged, and the lower one was in transit across the face of theupper, 'I must call your attention to this strange peculiarity of ourbodies, that we undergo extremes of temperature with almost nonoticeable sense of the great heat or cold. This region we aretraversing is about the latitude of Christ Church, as I told you, and itis the period of harvests, and the heat is moderate, but in the heightof summer the heat seems scarcely more felt than now, and in theclothing I am now wearing, I have sailed through the ice packs of theNorth, and slept thinly covered in its snows, but without unduediscomfort. I tell you, matter in us, and flesh and blood in us are alldifferently conditioned. '

"'Why not ask these questions of the wise men of the Patenta, thedoctors and chemists?' I replied. 'I can think of an analogy that mightmake this Martian constitution intelligible. A close, dense bodyconducts heat or cold; a loose, open texture or cellular mass does not. In our curious embodiment from spirit the substance of our bodies is anetherealized matter, loosely, I might say, flocculently, disposed, andwhile it conveys sensations of a certain tone or key of vibratoryintensity, it will not respond to any violent or coarse shocks. Theysimply cannot be carried. They escape us. Are the people all alikeamongst the Martians?'

"'Oh, no, ' returned Chapman, who pointed to the widening spaces in thebeams between the slow Deimos and the fleeter flying Phobos, 'there aregreat differences. I have seen that. In materialization some seem badlyput together, and these resemble our former terrestrial bodies. Theygrow old, they succumb to disease, they feel changes of weather and theyhave less vitality. Yes, ' and he drew nearer, 'it is these unhappymisbirths in this spirit land who retain the sin of earth and cannotsurvive and get the _Kinkotantitomi_ or irreverently, as the earthlingwould say, the grand bounce. They are fired off the planet. '

"He paused and laughed. How strange this almost human laugh sounded, andyet how pleasant! I looked at him with a deep affection. He noticed theimpression, and quickly drawing me to him, said half timidly:

"'Dodd, that sort of laugh and those words of mine just used, are notMartian, they don't belong to these rarefied beings here. They have ahuman or earthly taint, and they frighten me. I seem so lonelysometimes. My stray fun which I once enjoyed on earth must somehow beforgotten here. I feel so irreverent at times, so full of horse play, but I must keep up the high key and act like the rest. Indeed for themost of the time I feel as they do, I suppose, but sometimes that sortof ribaldry and feelings of the ludicrous that made us joke, and prank, and cut up in genial companionships come over me, and I am suffocatingwith a glee out of place to this exalted society. Ah! it's good to feelyou, my friend, so fresh and new from earth. It's promised here in thelearned talk I have heard, that those who disappear from Mars becomereincorporated upon earth again, if they belong there. Well, I wouldn'tmind if I got returned, wonderful and sweet and happy as all this seems. The dear, dear old Earth!'

"He flung his arms around me, and our faces met, as if we had been lostbrothers. A sort of terrifying melancholy invaded me. I was so distantfrom all I had known and loved, so distant from the surges we hadwatched from our observatory at Christ Church, so distant from the lifeof heat and clothing and genial domesticities; the life even, it mightbe called, of the daily paper, the novel, the new book, the life ofpolitics and human history, and conventionality, the life of ups anddowns, of sickness and health, of individual enterprise, of routine andmechanical fatigue, the life of exertion, contrast and socialinequality, with its picturesqueness, its incessant interest, all thiswas now utterly removed by all the measureless leagues of icy spacebetween me and the floating planet--the old sin-stricken Earth--that wasshining in the Martian skies, so inconspicuous and tiny--soinaccessible. 

"But my heart was pulsating audibly. If I could recover Martha, if, inthis serene atmosphere of good will and fairness and kindness, in themidst of unknown possibilities of knowledge, in the company ofenthusiastic and high-minded men and women, in this arena of scientificwonders, and in the joy and beauty of universal happiness and thrift andpeace and well doing and intuition, I could find a human companionshipin the woman whose face and nature have summed up for me the whole oflife, if I could find her! then, indeed, this new world would be all myearthly home could be, and the endless future with her for guide andfriend would lose its terror and lonely isolation, and--I dared to thinkit--even the presence of God himself become bearable. 

"Chapman had stolen away from me. He had stolen to the little, daintyrooms that were sunk in the cockpit or cabin of our boat, and I wasstanding alone in the light of the midnight moons in Mars, a waif fromthe far earth, incomprehensibly born after death into this humanpresentiment and renewal in youth, and again instinct with revivifiedpassion and desire; and breathing the atmosphere of a planet that foryears I had watched through the tube of a telescope, as a floating flakeof celestial fire. A delicious drowsiness overcame me, and while Inoticed the pilot was changed, his place being taken by another, andthat we were approaching a ridgy or disturbed country, I found my way tothe white couch prepared for me, and sank into a deep and dreamlesssleep. 

"The morning of the next day was clear and beautiful. Shall I everforget that first approach to the mountains of Tiniti, where Mit andSinsi, the villages of the quarries, are located. All day long the boatpropelled through a diversified country, covered with morainalheaps--great hills of drift matter, heaps of worn pebbles and rollingplains of estuarine sediment. Much of this land seemed untouched withcultivation, and sublime forests of the loftiest trees covered it. Thecanal passed through solitudes, where the silence was only broken by thecackling laugh of a crane-like bird, marching in lines along the banks, or perched like sleepy sentinels amid the outstretched branches of thetrees. 

"These wild and fascinating regions were often alternated by miles ofbright plantations radiant with the yellow leaves of the Rint, bearingits deep red pods, while avenues of palms, not unlike the royal palm ofthe Earth, led in long vistas to clustering groups of houses, and we, too, caught glimpses of basking lakes on which, even as in the Earth, the patient fisherman in basket-like circular boats, waited for hisflashing captives. 

"Then, again, there were prairie-like stretches of a sort of pampaswaving in cloudy lines, the glistening pappus of the wild Nitoti, apeculiar, low composite, that grows in abundance and furnishes food tothe strange gazelle of this latitude in Mars. 

"This animal, the Rimondi, could be seen in scampering herds over theseplains, its horns making an hour glass form above its head, as they bentto each other, touched, and then curved outward again to reunite asecond time. 

"We were rapidly moving northward, and just as it would be on the earth, the changing vegetation gave visible notice of our advance. 

"But more interesting than nature were the scenes of life along our way, and the custom of public worship filled me with wonder. Amphitheatresof stone built high above the ground, and approached by encirclingterraces of steps dotted the country at long intervals. These, Chapmanexplained, were the churches of the people. Here they gathered from longdistances around, and, even as he described their meaning, thecongregations were seen assembling, while later we heard the music flungin waves of sound from these houses of song and worship. 

"Chapman did not understand the Martian faith. There seemed little tounderstand about it. It was one national expression of the love ofgoodness and of beauty, but it was all directed to a source ofinfallible wisdom, power and justice. 

"Thus considering the country and its customs we fell again into a longcolloquy:

"'Dodd, ' said Chapman, musingly, 'we should all become as these peopleabout us, and do the same things, and believe and act as they do. Youwill, but I think I remain a little strange. I seem a spectator that acaprice has cast upon this globe, and though I live here, I must succumbto a certain alienation, a lack of mediation between their life and myformer existence, and because of this subtle estrangement, I shallcontract disease, or meet with accident, or waste in age, while youshall stay young, and living, sink into the Martian life and yield toit a spiritual, a mental acquiescence. You will become absorbed, and, with your love realized, the whole rhapsodic life of this world willmingle you forever in its tide of song and science and labor. '

"'Yes, ' I answered, 'I am sure I shall. For whatever period of time Istay here, I am one with this beautiful and strange life. I respondnaturally to all this serenity and joy, this precision of power overinanimate things; this flooded being and the dawning sense that throughthe stepping stone of Mars, I approach yet higher beatitudes of living. At least in Mars the sordid taint of suffering, of ignominious physicaltorture and privation, which spoiled the Earth, is almost unknown. '

"Chapman laughed, and an echo gave back from some hillside its musicalresponse. 'Ah, it may be, I know it is true, and yet--and yet--the Earthpossessed a pictorial, a dramatic power in its contrasts of happinessand suffering, of goodness and sin. It had literary material. Itsconsecutive growth in the ages of social and national and economichistory were so wonderful, so thrilling in interest, in the details ofcharacter and adventure, in the incessant panoramic display it gave oflight and shade. And on it rested the shadow of a strange, patheticdoubt, the mystery of creation. Its romance, its fiction, its fable, andthe animating picture it furnished, with its sceptics and itsbelievers, its haters and its lovers, its tyrants and its heroes. Itswide, verbal immensity! I miss all that, or almost all. This life isevenly celestial, and glowing, and carelessly happy. And here knowledgeis extreme and pervasive and omnipotent. The dear commonplaces of theEarth life are unknown too, the ludicrous is absent, and the sublimityof sacrifice impossible. '

"He laughed again, and I felt for one brief, incredible instant a pang, too, that the blossoming, full, sensual Earth has passed from beneath myfeet forever. 

"But it was past. For me nothing was left behind when Martha had gonebefore. The future for me was the pilgrimage through worlds for her lostface. The sum and substance of a world's growth, of the unintermittentand heraldic progress of the soul was union with her. And deeper in myconvictions than science or faith or desire, lay the consciousness of mysure approach. 

"Again the evening fell. We arrived at the entrance of a gloomy andstupendous gorge. It was the wonderful passage driven through the firstarea of igneous rocks before we reached the quarry country of theTiniti. It pierced the dark and stubborn dike that rose in sheer wallslike the Palisades on the Hudson, 1, 000 and 1, 200 feet above our heads, and it seemed that the darkening tide was carrying us into the bowels ofthe sphere. As the precipitous walls rose on either side, a loud report, followed by another more muffled, startled us. Looking upward, Chapman, shouting '_Golki, tanto_, ' with outstretched hand pointed to a flamingmissile passing over our heads, and apparently in the direction we wereheading. 

"It was a meteor. It was just such a phenomenon as we know of on theEarth. I felt certain that it was a bolide from space, one of thosefiery visitors of stone and iron that collide occasionally with ourEarth, and that somewhere before us, in the country we were approaching, it would be found. 

"Later a few straggling shooting stars appeared. The languor of fatigueovercame me, and I slept prostrate on the cushions of the deck as themurmurous reverberations from the walls of the rock-bound canal rose andfell, with the cadence of the waves, splashing softly against theirfeet. 

"I dreamt of the Earth, the pictures naturally recalled, by thesesurroundings, of my life on the Hudson River in New York, and it seemedso real, that I should find myself with you working away in the oldlaboratory at Yonkers near the Albany Road. Suddenly I was shaken, andopening my eyes I beheld the firmament of heaven falling in coruscatingcascades about us. Starting up, I found myself clutching Chapman, whohad called to the pilot to stop the boat. A few of the attendants weregrouped near us, and the loudly suppressed exclamations made me realizethat these visitations were perhaps infrequent upon Mars. 

"It was a meteoric shower, like our leonids in November. It rainedpellets or balls of fire, these phosphorescent trains gleamingspectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall. Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase anddiminish, and recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the groundof some meteoric mass. 

"It was a marvellous and splendid scene. It lasted till the dawn. Weremained almost unchanged in position, while the tiny comets crowded thesky with their uninterrupted march, and the air was shot through withintermingled lanes of light. 

"As the morning broke, we had passed the great gorge in the canal, andhad entered a wild, savage, almost treeless country. Great weatheredcolumns of rock stood alone in the debris of their own dismemberment, the bare gray or rusty and jagged expanses sloping up steeply from theedge of the canal, sparingly dotted over with gray bushes, and coveredwith an ashen colored lichen. 

"The scene was here forbidding and desolate. We moved for miles throughthe waste of a ruined world. The whole region had been the stage ofgreat volcanic activity, and the monticules of scoriaceous rock, thebroad plains excavated with deep pools that reflected their dismal, untenanted borders in the black depths of unruffled water, spoke ofmeteorological conditions long prolonged and intense. It was a weird, strange place, silent and dead. But amongst these vast ejections, thesetruncated fossil craters were embedded masses of the rare self-luminousstone that made the City of Light. Chapman told me how in pockets orhuge amygdaloidal cavities, this white phosphorescent substance wasquarried, brought up bodily perhaps in the slow upheaval of the regionfrom the deep-seated sources of this mineral flood. 

"The canal passed along for miles in the depression between two folds ofthe surface. Finally, gazing ahead, there slowly came into view a huge_rictus_, a gaping rent in the side of the black and gray and red wallsto our right, and a minute movement of living forms, scarcelydiscernible, revealed the first quarry near the little town of Sinsi. 

"As we drew nearer I descried a slant incline from the open excavationdown which the blocks of stone were slid. They were brought to thesurface by hoisting cranes, and just as our little porcelaincockle-shell glided to the dock, an enormous fragment rudely shaped intoa cubical form, was moving down the metal road bed to the edge of thecanal. 

"Here we landed, and a crowd of people hailed us, and amongst them weremany of the prehistoric people, the short, sturdy brown or coppercolored northerners who work in the quarries and mines. It wasnightfall. Their day's work was over, and they crowded around us withinterest. They were good-natured, but quiet, and dressed in a kind ofoveralls that was made in one garment from head to feet. 

"Chapman pushed amongst them, followed by me. We made our way to apleasant house, built of the quarried volcanic rock, alternating withthe white stone of the quarry, and covered with an almost flat roof ofthe blue metal. In this house we were received by the Superintendent ofQuarries, a supernatural, who still retained a mechanical aptitude, brought with him from the earth. The greetings were pleasant, and as theSuperintendent spoke his former earth language, which had been French, we got along intelligibly. 

"The rooms of this house were large, square apartments, simply furnishedwith the white chairs, tables and couches I had seen in the City ofLight, but on its walls were drawings and photographs of the quarry, thecountry, and groups of the workmen. Amongst the pictures were somewonderful large scenes of an ice country, and the lustrous high wall ofa gigantic glacier. I pointed these out to Chapman. He told me that tothe north of the mountains lay the great northern sea, in winter a seaof ice, and that from continental elevations within it glacial massespushed outward, invading the southern country. A road led over themountain from Sinsi to regions beyond, where there were fertileintervals and plains inhabited by populations of the small, early peoplewe had met. 

"Here were their settlements, from which the workmen of the quarries hadbeen brought. Beyond this again lay the margins of the polar sea. TheSuperintendent--his name was Alca--had visited this region, and probablymade the pictures I wondered at. The Superintendent said we should visitthe great quarry in the morning before we started again for Scandor. Andhe showed us, as the darkness descended about us, a marvellousphenomenon. Standing on the roof of his house, we looked up the mountainside to the immense opening forced in its flank, and it had become agreat surface of palpitating, rising and falling light. The waves ofglorious soft radiance bathed the village about us, the waters of thecanal, and the arid crusts of rock beyond, the circle of encompassingdarkness straining like a great black wall, on its spent edges. 

"Song and music closed the day, and after eating the wine-soaked cakesof Pintu, we made our way to the white and simple bedchamber and waitedfor the morning. 

"It came, fresh and splendid. The air of this latitude of Mars is sopure, vivid and dustless! My strength and power and vitality seemedboundless. And as in the broad mirror of my bedchamber I viewed myreflection, I leaped with wonder to see the youth I had been, formedanew in lineaments, fairer than Earth's. My son, I have become youngerthan yourself, age has vanished, and all the restraint of differingyears between has vanished with it. 

"Alca, Chapman and myself, as is the Martian habit, walked to the quarrymouth, up a winding and hard stone road. This dreary and desolate regionseemed to have a charm. Its expanse of rigid waves of stone, pimpledwith sharp excrescences, and as deeply pitted with cavernous grottoes, where no life seemed able to survive, save a stunted herbage, sparselyassembled in vagrant groups, or gathered in thirsty lines around the lipof the still pools, was full of scenic interest, but more deeplyeloquent of great geological convulsions. 

"Chapman and Alca were in front of me, speaking the Martian tongue, while I stood looking backward every few steps, delighted to trace thebroad river of the canal winding through the desolation for milesbeyond. Then I noticed how rapid and effortless is motion in Mars. Volition is so easy and penetrating, the body becomes a mere playthingfor the mind. Every function, every part is swayed into vitality by themind. There is the apparent motion of the limbs, but really the wholeframe sweeps on as by an intangible process of translation, and the bodyis transferred to the point the mind desires it to reach almost withoutfatigue. This gives strength exactly proportioned to Will, and the shornpowers of disease and Time proceed from the creative faculty of thought. The disabling of the body in Mars by weakness or disease, or accident orage, sprang front a mental discord, an emotional dissonance. Here wasthe explanation of those disorders that still cling to the Martian life. In this lay also the secret of crime. 

"I looked upward to Chapman, who was then peering with hand raised tohis eyes at some object before him which the Superintendent had pointedout, and I felt sorrowful that he should be in disagreement with thislife. It boded ill. I had begun to love Chapman, and the first sense ofsuffering I had felt seemed now awakened at the thought of harm comingto him. 

"But there was no time for meditation. Chapman and Alca were lookingbackward and shouting. They beckoned with their arms, and as I gazed Isaw between them, and ahead of them a great black object, about which anumber of the little workmen were running excitedly like a swarm ofants. I leaped to their position. Chapman exclaimed: 'You remember themeteor we saw. Well, there it is. '

"Extended like a gigantic and deformed missile lay an iron meteoritebefore us, the same thing as the Siderites that appear in your Museumson Earth. It was yet warm, a crevice spread down into its interior, andit had apparently rolled from the spot of its first impact, since ahammered side, abraded and worn on the hard rock, lay uppermost. It borethe significant pits, thumb-marks and depressions of the terrestrialobjects, while streaming striations spread from its front breast wherethe iron in melting had run like tears over its surface. It measuredsome four feet in length, and must have weighed many tons. 

"Then a curious thing happened, or seemed to happen. Alca, theSuperintendent, advanced to it, and bending against it withoutstretched arm, muttered a few words, frowned as if in concentratedthought, and--was it credible--the iron object moved. I looked aghast atChapman, who turned away with what I dismally interpreted was anexpression of disgust. I pressed up close to him, and he murmured, 'Wasthat a miracle? If it was I should like to get back to common sense andjack-screws. '

"We continued upward, and now the terrific gulf piercing the ground forover two terrestrial miles yawned at our feet. The steep precipice, lostin a twilight dusk below, was disconcerting. The blocks of stone werehoisted from the gigantic pit by hoists worked by hand. Here is one ofthe anomalies of this existence in Mars. Electrical science and itsapplication is understood, great stores of mechanical experience andwisdom can be drawn on, and yet in most of the mechanical work, handwork, the toilsome method of the Pharaohs of Egypt prevails. There areno railroads or trolleys or steam vehicles. The boats are driven byexplosive engines, and there are electric carriages of velocity andpower. But the latter are infrequent. The canals are numerous, especially about Scandor, and the great trunk canals are broad avenuesof traffic. 

"The intense swift motion of the Martians meets their needs in mostcases. Where hard labor on a mammoth scale is necessary, the little raceof _prehistorics_ serves all their purposes. The canals are their greatengineering feats, and the wonderful telescopes, their triumphs inapplied science, their knowledge of the transmutation of theelements, --their greatest intellectual victory, --and Scandor, the Cityof Glass, their architectural gem and miracle. 

"We stood in a line gazing upon the receding roof of the great cavern, the heavy walls left like buttresses to hold up the overlying mountainridge, and the tiny figures dimly swarming on the distant floor. 

"The quarry extends far in under the ridge. Much barren rock is takenout, for the Phosphori rock occurs variously in masses, layers, lenticles, and almond shaped inclusions in the igneous matrix. 

"We were to descend, but before we did so the Superintendent led us tothe summit of the ridge. From here, with a superb hand telescope, wegazed up a distant land beyond the volcanic area we had surmounted, occupied by farms and villages. It was the North country where theprehistorics dwelt. It seemed peaceful and attractive. Beyond this againwe just discerned the shimmering surface of the Great Glacier, thesuperb train of ice, that comes southward in the winter, and encroacheseven upon some of the exposed margins of the land of the prehistorics. Its retreat is rapid in the warm season, and its broad tract is brokenby emergent backs of rocks and land, that are seamed with wild flowers. The Martians travel to these oases in the Ocean of Ice, and it is fromthese flowers that an entrancing perfume is extracted, of which theMartians are extremely fond. 

"We lingered on this pinnacle of rock and surveyed a prospect on eitherside of contrasted and great interest. The land of the Zinipi north ofus resembled the fertile hill and valley country of the Genesee River inwestern New York, the great region south of us a combination of theSnake River country in Idaho, and the fissured ranges of the SilvertonQuadrangle in Colorado. 

"Between these rose this high partition of castellated rock. 

"We descended again to the mouth of the quarry, and, led by theSuperintendent, were swung far out from its dizzy sides into the lake ofair between them upon a platform, used for an aerial elevator. Chapmanclung nervously to me, and complained of a light nausea and dread. Ifelt only a tonic exhilaration, and as we slowly sank through the shaftof air, crossed by sunlight for some distance, and then passed into thecooler shadows of its deeper parts, where the yet level sun failed topenetrate, I cried aloud with delight, and the abyss around us shoutedits salutation back. 

"Still we descended, and soon saw back in the deep prolongations of thetunnel the shining walls of this phosphorescent cave. The light glowedso effulgently that it seemed a soft radiant haze, through which camethe sound of voices, and in it black figures moved incessantly. 

"The method of quarrying is not unlike that of the marble quarries onthe earth. Drilling long holes in and under the stone, which frompressure has assumed a rudely cubical cleavage, separates the rock intoheavy pieces. These holes are wedged, and the rocks forced off intouseful blocks. All is done by hand, and the picture of activity, withworkers constantly engaged at their various duties made a singularscene. We walked far into the ever deepening womb of the mountain, whileon either hand lateral tunnels, or rather avenues had been pushed, penetrating rich segregations wherever they had been traced, and wherealso glowed the welcome glow of this lithic lamp. 

"The Superintendent explained that the stone was quite unequal inquality, and he told us how the illuminating power of the stone wasactually tested in what on the Earth we would call candle powers, butis known on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinumwire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see thevarying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixtureof impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, were deprived of allluminousness. 

"Returning, it seemed as if in the sharp convulsions of the crust aflood of light had been somehow absorbed by the rock, and then thislight-saturated rock had been overwhelmed and buried out of sight, onlyto be painfully restored to its first home, in the open skies, by thelabor of men. 

"But time was pressing. Chapman must reach Scandor, his envoy's errandwas important, and bidding the kind Alca good-bye, which the Martiansexecute by a kiss and an embrace, we came out again into the deep well, and gazed upward past the glistening precipices, irregular with littleledges, and over-reaching cavities, to the distant sky. 

"And now a terrible calamity befell us. The Superintendent pointed out anarrow path that led circuitously around the great crags of rock to thetop. It was a narrow winding ledge, rising by a mild incline, andcircling the pit before it finally reached its brim. In parts it wasquite unprotected, but the extraordinary nerves of the men made theachievement of passing out or in the quarry by this means a very simpletest of endurance. Even as the Superintendent alluded to its use, a fileof dark figures was just above us, with soldierlike precision marchingdown to the level we occupied. Chapman banteringly asked me to try it, and I accepted the challenge, urging him to follow. 

"We started up. At first the ascent was simple, and the view backwardjust a little exciting. We continued, and I noticed that the pathcontracted, and nervously looking on ahead, was startled to find itbroken with short gaps, which must be crossed by jumping. I had felt thevague premonitions about Chapman increasing, and somehow, by thatintuition which becomes prophetic, in this semi-etherealizedconstitution of our bodies and minds, in Mars, I knew an impending blowhung over us. 

"I looked back and saw Chapman gravely following me. The cheer andlaughter had disappeared from his face, the jesting gayety had fled, andhe seemed enfeebled. I hastened to him, and he raised his face with areassuring smile. 

"'Dodd, ' he said, 'I am dizzy. I feel strangely here, ' and he felt hisforehead. 'I wonder that it is so. But come! Don't be frightened. Itwill pass over. ' He pushed me from him. For an instant we stood andgazed around us. Far up we saw the outer sunlight beating on the barrenexposures of the mountain, around us was black excavated rock, and belowthe shining walls, faintly blue and pink. 

"'Chapman, ' I said, 'let us go back. The hoists will take us out. ''Folly, ' was the answer. 'I shall be all right. Why, a Martian has nophysical weakness or dread. Come, Dodd, you have not yet acquired theMartian defiance of accident, disease, or death. You are sneaking backunder the cover of fear for me. '

"His voice seemed peevish. I looked at him with wonder. He leaped pastme, with a forced agility, and sprang on upward. I followed withlightness born of thought, with which the true Martians move. 

"On, on, we sped. The narrowing path carried us up until one of thosegaps I had noticed came in view. Chapman stopped, and then hearing myapproaching steps, ran forward and jumped. His calculation and strengthwere yet secure and adequate. He safely passed the first break in thepathway, and, as I crossed it with a wide leap, we both still sped onupon an even narrower shelf, which also was more steeply inclinedabout the jutting prominences of the rocky cliff. 

"The next gap was reached, and now the edge of the succeeding length ofpathway was not only farther away, but higher up. Chapman, I could seeimperfectly, because of a slim projection in my way, had reached thelower side, and, hesitatingly, drew backward. It was his preparation forthe leap. He launched forward. I rushed precipitately upward, feelingthe air about me vibrating, it seemed, with an impending disaster. Chapman had landed on the further side of the break, but the cruel, treacherous rock crumbled beneath his impact, and I saw his staggeringform turning backward. Another instant and his descending body was belowme, plunging to the floor of the abyss. I turned, and then, my son, Ifelt the marvel of the mind's creative power over matter. I wishedmyself at the bottom of the quarry where Chapman had fallen, andalthough the movement of the translation down the pathway seemedapparent, yet I was scarcely parted from him an instant before I wasstanding and leaning over him in a group of astonished workmen, at thevery spot where he lay. He was conscious, but gravely injured. I kneltbeside him, and as I raised his head upon my knee, he looked up, and hislips moved; at first he was inarticulate, but soon his words becameaudible and intelligent. 

"'Dodd, ' he said, 'this ends me for Mars. Take the papers to the Councilat Scandor. They are in the cabin in my desk. They are sealed. I knowthere is a celestial runaway that is going to strike this planet. Ioverheard that much at the Patenta. And its direct path, the point ofimpingement, will be at Scandor. The fires ascending from Scandor aresignals that they, too, have divined the disaster. I think so at least!Hurry on! You may see the strangest phenomenon eyes have ever seen. But, Dodd, enough of that. I am turned down for this world. I was not inagreement, as the philosophers call it, and the true mental Martianimmunity from accident was not in me. I am injured mortally. '

"He groaned and tried to rise, but his crushed body was incapable. TheSuperintendent, Alca, had hurried to the spot where the crowding menstood around us ejaculating their amazement. Alca tore open the garmentabout Chapman, and placing his forehead on the body, poured out as itwere, the full tide of his mental sympathy and power. 

"I could see the struggle between the mortality of Chapman, born ofdoubt, and his unfittedness and apathy, and the spiritual power of thebrave Superintendent. The flame of life in Chapman would be stimulatedor excited, and then flicker and die down. These alterations lasted buta short time. Soon Chapman passed into stupor, and then deathsupervened, and the strange and seldom known circumstance of death amongthe supernaturals in Mars was realized. 

"Alca kept the body of Chapman, which would be sent back to the City ofLight, and cremated in the Temple of Glorification--which I have notseen. He intended to accompany it. He sent me on to Scandor. I had nowlearned enough of the Martian language to speak, imperfectly. Thatmental facility, which is the amazing and most wonderful thing in Mars, was perhaps more slowly roused in me. But daily I became known, and morealert and inflamed with thought and the eager intuition of the Martians. 

"We started from the great Quarry of Sinsi, and I was alone with theMartians on the porcelain boat, now made by this tragic fate theambassador from the City of Light to the Council in Scandor. 

"The sterile, sinister and yet marvellous region of lava beds, dikes andconic craters suddenly was passed, and the canal moved into the hugeforest lands of the Ribi wood. 

"This is a beautiful land. Mountain ranges rising from four to sixthousand feet cross it, holding broad valleys and plains, or elevatedplateaus between them; lakes and rivers pass through it, and villagesand towns with a mixed population of the supernaturals and theprehistorics are frequent. The canals cross the great region in manydirections. The trunk line I followed was carried up and down by systemsof locks of astounding magnitude and perfection. Great lakes were madeconvenient feeders, and rivers were also tapped to keep the water levelsconstant in the canals. The weather was that of a semi-tropicalparadise, and the late flowers of the Ribi filled the air withfragrance. 

"Quickly we approached Scandor. It was a clear, calm day when we emergedfrom the Ribi country, and the pilot pointed out to me the distanthills, almost purple in a twilight haze, which encircled the Valley ofthe City of Scandor. The country we had entered was a fertile farmcountry, where great plantations of the Rint, and vineyards of the Omagrapes were established, and where great flocks of the Imilta dove, almost the only meat eaten by the Martians, are raised. The enormousflocks of this snow-white bird were strangely beautiful. They madeclouds in the air, and their purring notes when they settled in whiteblankets over the fields, were heard pulsating over long distances. 

"Finally we came to the last tier of locks at the summit of which mycuriosity was to be satisfied by a view of the great City of Scandor, the City of Glass. 

"It was night when our china boat floated upon the waters of the lastlock that completed the ascent, and immediately below the observatoryStation or Settlement of Scandor. I was standing on the deck of theboat, watching impatiently the slowly rising tide upon which we wereborne upward. I could at first see as we ascended the towers of theobservatory station. Above me, looking at us with interest, on the wallsof the lock, was a company of Martians. The night was cloudy, and thelights of the hastening satellites were but intermittently evident. Gradually my head passed upward beyond the obstructing interference ofwall and gate and fence, and the glorious and unimaginable splendor ofthe City of Scandor, like some monstrous continental opal, lay before mein the immediate valley. 

"The glistening panes of water below me marked the places of thedescending line of locks. Around me were the buildings of the ScandorObservatory, and to the right and left swept the forested slopes of acircular range which, as I later saw, ranged about in oneamphitheatrical circuit the, great vale of Scandor. But only aninstant's glance could be spared for this detail. The divine Cityglowing below me seemed to magnetize attention, and control, through itswonderfulness each wavering attitude of interest. My son, the eye of mannever beheld so astonishing a picture. Imagine a city reaching twentymiles in all directions built of glass variously designed, interruptedby tall towers, pyramids, minarets, steeples, light, fantastic andbeautiful structures, all aflame, or rather softly radiating a variouslycolored glory of light. 

"Imagine this great area of building, penetrated by broad avenues, radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a center where rose upward tothe sky a colossal amphitheatre. Imagine these roads, delineated to theeye by tall chimneys or tubes of glass through which played an electriccurrent, converting each one into a lambent pillar. Imagine betweenthese paths of greenish opalescence the squares of buildings of domed, arched and castellated roofs, pierced and starred, and spread in linesand patterns of white electric lamps. The noble proportions of thelarger buildings, the graceful outlines of turreted or campanulateerections, and the smaller houses were all defined. I could see canalsor rivers of water winding through the City spanned by arches of flame, and even the symmetrical disposition of the dark-leaved trees wasvisible. 

"But the night was still further turned to day, for above the City, highin the velvet black empyrean were suspended thousands of glass balloons, each emitting the Geissler-like illumination that marked the lines ofstreets. So full and opulent was the flood of light, that the summit Ihad reached, the encircling hills, and the farther side of thesaucer-shaped valley where Scandor lay, were bathed in an equallydiffused radiation. 

"But, as if the heavenly marvel might still further startle and amazeand charm me, from the City rose the swelling chords of choruses;billows of sound, softened by distance, beat in melodious surges on thehigh encompassing lands. 

"I stood mute and transfixed. It seemed a beatific vision. If the veryair had been filled with ascending choruses of angels, if the darkzenith had opened and revealed the throne of the Almighty, it would haveseemed but a congruous and expected climax. 

"Long I gazed, and slowly, very slowly became conscious of the greatnumbers of people about me, and that they were being augmented by newarrivals. The porcelain barge I had come in from the City of Light, wasmoored now to the side of the lock. I had disembarked, carrying almostmechanically in my hand, the chest in which the communications from thePatenta to the Council were locked. 

"It was perhaps only a short interval before the pilot woke me from mytrance, saying in Martian: 'This is the Observation Hill of Scandor. These are Scandor's Observatories. I hear there is seen by the observerssome approaching danger in the heavens. These citizens of Scandor arecrowding from the City to hear the latest reports. There is a messengerfrom the Council here waiting on the observers. I will bring him to you, and you and the messenger can at once be conveyed to the Council. '

"I looked at him speechless, yet unable to again realize I lived andbreathed in another world. It seemed as if a sudden motion, a cry, awhisper even, would break the chrysalis of sleep about me, and plunge meinto void and nothingness. 

"The pilot left me, and I saw him thread his way amongst the lines ofpeople, moving toward the dark walls of the observatory that covered thehill. At long intervals rockets rose from the opposite rim of the greatcircular ridge around the City, scarring the deep, inky vault about uswith lines of fire. They ascended to an enormous distance. Almostinstantly these were apparently answered by similar rockets in othercolors from the hill I stood on. 

"There was a sudden movement about me. The pilot had returned. With himcame the messenger. I flung my absorption from me. I was a Martian. Thelight of recognition came back again to my eyes--my tongue was loosened, my senses accommodated themselves to the stupendous circumstances aboutme. I spoke first. 

"'Mindo, ' (the name of the pilot), 'I am ready to accompany my guide tothe City. Will you go with us?'

"'No! Heboribimo, ' (your excellency), 'I must stay at the locks. I shalldescend to the City in the boat to-morrow. This man will bring you tothe canal. I advise haste. There is great excitement and dread inScandor. Mars is in the path of a comet. '

"I turned to my guide, a beautiful youth, not dressed as the citizens ofthe City of Light, but clothed in a tight fitting doublet of a creamyblue, with short trunks of yellow, and on his feet were sandals. Hesaluted me, and together we descended the broad boulevard between thewidely separated lustres that became more crowded as they massed like aprogressive deepening of color into the eddying splendors of the Cityitself. 

"Again I realized how swift is motion in Mars. We wished to reach theCity, and we glided to it by the rapid propulsion of desire. The broadway was filled with lines and groups of peoples clustering to thehilltop--and over the far-reaching slopes I could see the awaitingthrongs. My guide pointed to the constellation of Perseus, and I coulddiscern a nebulous mass of considerable diameter from which proceeded awisp-like exhalation, just a phantasmal fan of phosphorescence, behindit. 

"The glory of the City fell around us now; we were in its broad streetsbeneath the towering pillars of light that framed them in a fence ofsplendor. On we pressed, but I glanced from side to side, noting thegreat glass houses and buildings, here colonnades of translucentopalescent beauty, made up of hollow tubes of glass holding an interiorillumination, and clambered over by vines whose expanding leaves formeda tracery of silhouettes upon their sides. 

"Still on, past porticos and under arches, through open forum-likesquares, from which were elevated the great glass globes I havedescribed, which hung lamp-like in the sky, --past palaces and arcades, blocks of low stores in iridescent tints, and long, straight fronts ofwhite opaque buildings, through occasional tunnels into which weplunged as into a sea of radiance, and on, out, past a few squares ofblack umbrageous trees that seemed like dead coals laid on the heatquivering hearth of a furnace, past minarets of curling, entwinedfilagrees of glass threads, past dull or darker areas where the hugeglass factories were built, their forges glowing like Cyclops' eyes inthe night, and from which was produced the colossal sum of manufacture, which this great City embodied. 

"It was a strange bewilderment of marvels, and from it all, as if itwere its interior motive and cause, sprang light. It was electric inorigin, conveyed in some peculiar manner from a great source of power, in the high falls of Zenapa, near the City. But this I learned later. 

"I divined that we were approaching the center of the city. Soon, indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I haddescried from the hill of Observation at the locks. Here it is, that thegreat plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of thePan-Tan are held. It was a seraphic, astounding picture. It rose in themidst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light, purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. Howwonderful! I stopped. For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upona miracle of constructive and decorative art. One hundred columns of redglass rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green glassarches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire. From thepillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets, carrying gorgeous chandeliers of a red bronze; the largest chandelierswere at the very upper edge of the building, and the cascade of lightthus shed upon the splendid fabric was indescribably magnificent. 

"But there was small time for wonder or examination. We swept on throughthe shadowy gardens about it, and my guide quickly brought me to theHall of the Council, a low, inconspicuous building of yellow brick, oneof the few discordant architectural notes in the whole city. 

"The doors of the single chamber, which embraced all the interior space, swung open, and I stood on the threshold of a shallow, rectangulardepression, surrounded on all sides with benches, and holding in itscentral area a long table, at which, beneath tall lamps, sat, perhaps, adozen men and one woman. Opposite to my point of view, in a niche uponthe further wall, was the colossal figure of the Deity I had seen in thePatenta at the City of Light. 

"The faces of the twelve men turned to us as we entered. The heraldannounced my errand with the customary salutation of 'Hebori bimo. ' Iwas invited to descend to the central table. I advanced, and layingChapman's chest, with its sealed communications upon the table, spoke:

"'I am a stranger. I have come to your world from the Earth. I bringnews, celestial news, from the astronomers of the City of Light. I had acompanion to whom all this was entrusted. ' He was killed in the quarriesof Tiniti. I came on, bidden so to do by Alca, the Superintendent. Thepapers of the Wise Men of the Patenta are here. '

"I laid the chest upon the table. My speech was yet unformed, andperhaps upon the delicate and intellectual faces before me, there dwelt, with the transient influence of a passing thought, a smile of sympathyor amusement. Then a young being at the head of the table exclaimed inMartian:

"'Welcome, stranger. All who come to us are soon made one withourselves. The Martian spirit is that of salutation and friendship. Wehave heard of the discoveries in the new commotions in planetary space. Our own astronomers have announced them. This great City of Scandor, theproduct of many centuries' toil and invention, is apparently doomed. Itlies in the path, certainly defined and determined by observers, of asmall cometary mass, which will plunge upon it a rain of rock and iron. Even now this approaching body grows more and more visible in the sky. The astronomers are working at the problem, hoping some deflection, someinterpositional mercy will carry off this disturbing incidence. But ifwe are to be destroyed, if there is no escape from the singular fortuneof annihilation by an inrushing stream of meteoric bodies, then warning, through proclamation, shall be made, and our citizens will move out ofthe city to Asco, and the islands of Pinit. '

"He ceased; upon him the expectant faces of the others, assembled aboutthe table, were fixed, and a visible tremor of dismay and grief seemedto convulse them. A few covered their faces with their hands, othersstood up and gazed at the benignant colossus in bronze at the end of theroom, while others, motionless, still maintained their attitude ofattention. 

"The presiding officer, with a slight inclination of the body, raisedhis hand, and addressing me, said: 'You shall be the guest of our City, and if it must be that this great capital of Mars must succumb to thismysterious invasion, if this place, so long a marvel of beauty, shallbe succeeded by a heap of burning stones, then you shall be ourcompanion in pilgrimage. Remain with us until the end of this strangecircumstance is known. '

"As he finished, a noise of indescribable lamentation from a multitudeof voices broke upon our ears--the sound of running feet and sharp criesof amazement, crashed in upon the half ominous silence about us. 

"I turned instinctively to my guide. He stood statue-like beside me, with a stealing pallor crossing his face, and then, the doors of theapartment swung open, and loud voices were heard crying, 'The Perilcomes. Stand forward. To the Hills!'

"Panic, that nameless associated mental terror of the unknown and theimpending, which on Earth spreads fever-like through multitudes, hadarisen amongst the Martians, and hurrying crowds were hastening in awild retreat from the City to the hills. 

"All thought of the Council, of my errand, or of the new relation I hadbeen graciously accorded, disappeared from my mind. Frightened by thesudden premonition of destruction, bewildered by the torrent of newsensations, and even yet only half confident that my existence in thenew world was altogether real, I was impelled to spring forward. Reaching the doors, hands shot out around me, and I was swept in thetide of running forms. 

"It was a living stream of manifold complexity. Only for one moment didI lose consciousness. The next I was struggling to escape from thespreading tentacles of this involved current. I leaped to the projectionof a low pedestal, upon which an unfinished construction or group ofstatues was in progress. Holding my exposed position for an instant, Iwrenched myself clear of the pulsating throngs, and succeeded in gainingthe low summit above me. Here I was free to look around me. My guide wasgone, the Council House was lost to view; I was alone. Below passed thesurging crowd, made up of youths and girls, with few older men or women, many beautiful, all expressing the Martian distinction, but nowstrangely bewildered and uncontrolled. It was a reversed emotionalpicture from that buoyant, frenzied throng that a few weeks ago carriedme into the Hall of the Patenta. 

"Faces were turned toward the sky, and hands, as if in ejaculation, werewaved up and down, or thrust in significant indices toward that fatalblurred blot of splendor in the heavens. I followed their direction. Theapproaching nebula had grown sensibly since an hour ago. It glittered, the size of a shield, and a light coruscation seemed emanating from itsedges. The faces of the multitude were justified. The mass above us wasa train of celestial missiles, hurling toward Mars. Its contact seemedmore and more imminent. I felt a nameless terror. The thought ofisolation in this new world, the unknown awfulness of this planetarydisturbance, the sudden extinction of the hopes that were feeding myheart with a new life, and the forecasting of the impossible agonies ofuniversal death in this great, strange place I had so wonderfullyentered, overcame me. I fell sobbing to the glassy floor on which I wasstanding. It was again a new proof of my assumption of the ecstaticnature of these children of light and music, impulse and inspiration. 

"The convulsion passed. I felt stronger, and was quickened with a keenlyprudent determination to escape from the city, find my way back to theHill of Observation, and if possible, send you, my son, my lastexperience before all had become silence. 

"I could see the regular ascent of the rockets from the distant hill. Ifound the streets about me almost emptied, the white, lustrous river oflife had passed. I descended to the pavement. The way past the splendidAmphitheatre was easily found, and then I hastened, guided by a dumbinstinct of direction, toward the still ascending rockets. I came tothe broad Boulevard which led to the Hill of Observation, and went on, now plainly controlled by the sweeping avenue of lamps about, and infront of me. 

"I shall not pause to recount the success of my application to theastronomers to use the transmitters of the wireless telegraphy, whichare as fully perfected here as at the City of Scandor. 

"As my message ends, the dawn ascends from the wide margins of the Ribicountry. I am stunned with drowsiness. The Sun's rays have extinguishedthe scintillant peril in the skies. But the order has gone forth toleave the City, to camp upon the hills, the City of Scandor is doomed, and the area of destruction it embraces is the diametral measure ofthe----"

I heard no more. Overcome with fatigue, exposure and increasingpulmonary weakness, of which I had had painful premonitions, I faintedat the table, and fell to the floor of the damp and inclement room. 

My assistants aver that the transmission ceased almost the next momentupon my collapse, and the unfinished sentence of my father's message canbe readily understood as implying that the foreign body, or Swarm, which was destined to strike Mars, had been determined as having aboutthe amplitude of the City of Scandor. 

Days lengthened into weeks, weeks to months, but though unflinchinglywatched by night and day, no further message was received. I had becomeweaker, pale and lifeless. The terrible malady made its inroads upon aframe unable to meet its savage or insidious attacks. This weakness wasaggravated by the excitement produced by the singular experience I hadpassed through. My nerves had undergone a strain quite unusual, and theinterior sense of elation, reacting its fits of extreme mentaldespondency dislocated my system, and accelerated the gliding virus ofdisease inundating the capillaries of circulation and breaking down thetissues with fever and consumption. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Miss Dodan came more and more frequently to see me. The thought of myphysical depression, the revulsion of hopelessness over my changinglineaments made the love I bore her more painful and enervating. I triedhard to conceal my fears over my condition. But Miss Dodan had beenobservant. Her developing affections became daily more tender anddelicate, and her solicitude evinced itself in many charming, thoughtfulways that added only a more poignant sadness to my sufferings. 

I was, indeed, tortured by the conflicting aims life seemed to furnishme. On the one hand was the necessity of continuing, if I could, mycommunications with my father; on the other, the duty I owed myself toabandon all for the woman I truly loved, and to renovate and establishmy health so that I might woo and win, and marry her. 

It was, in a sense, an ethical question, but it was quite as hard todetermine by ordinary arguments whether I could have any permission toviolate my promise to my father, as it was to estimate the exact measureof my obligations to myself and Miss Dodan. An incident occurred thatdissipated this dilemma, sent Miss Dodan to England, and left me atChrist Church to receive the last message from my father before thesickness had fully developed that now has laid its searching andremorseless veto upon any further life or happiness for me in thisworld. 

Miss Dodan and myself were seated together upon a bench drawn up in thesunshine at the foot of the Observatory, watching with delight thedistinct changing sea, the plumes of smoke from diminished steamers, andthe white glory of full-rigged ships. It was the autumn of the southerncountry, and the dreamy spell of the declining days fell softly upon thematerial tissues of nature, as well as on the acquiescent spirit of man. 

"Father, " said Miss Dodan, uncertainly, while she formed her hand intoan improvised tube, and looked through it on the peaceful scene at ourfeet, "has been telling me of my birthplace in Devonshire. It must bevery beautiful, more beautiful than it is here. But there is no sea, andit seems to me now that I should die without it; it is the very soul andvoice, too, of all this picture!" She spread out her arms, and halfwillfully threw back the one nearest me, until it swept over my head, and I caught and kissed the opened palm. 

"Yes, " I replied, "the sea relieves everything about or near it, fromthe humiliation of commonness. The stamp of distinction rests on itsprintless waves. It was the first surface of the earth, and its primalregency has never been lost or forfeited;" a suspicion crossed my mind:"How was it your father spoke of Devonshire. I never knew before thatyou came from that pearl of the countries of England. Would you like tosee it?"

My voice half sank, and the hitherto unsuspected fact that Mr. Dodan hadobserved my physical danger, and now was planning to interrupt hisdaughter's intimacy and hallucination for a poor, failing man, struggling with an impossible problem, and a mortal malady, seemedsuddenly understood by me. I turned to her a face of questioningconcern. Her eyes were still fixed upon the distant, pulsating sea. "No, " she answered, half nonchalantly. "I suppose not, and yet--why not!I have only known this country; to cross the great ocean, to see thecapital of the world, to learn the great wonders of its palaces andtemples, to see its multitudes, to see the Queen. Ah! to see the Queen!"

Her hands folded tightly together across her brow, she looked the veryembodiment of reverent expectation, and the blushing roses on hercheeks, the lovelight in her eyes seemed to deepen for an instant, andthen pale slightly, as she turned to me only to see me bury my head inmy hands, holding back the cry of stifled hope that often before hadleaped to my lips, but never had before so nearly passed them. 

"Oh, Bradford, " she cried, "would you mind so much! I would soon be backagain. And then, you know, this awful telegraphic work would be over, and we could be happy together without a thought of that cold, far-awayMars!"

We talked on together till the dusky night had begun to gather itsshadows about us, and Mars, that marvellous spot of light from whoseuntouched continents the waves of magnetic oscillation might even thenbe starting on their pathless transit across the abyss of space, destined for my ear, began to shine above us. 

It was clear to me now that Mr. Dodan had been carefully nursing in hisdaughter a desire to see England and the Queen, and her own littlebirthplace, and that he had formed a resolution to separate us, for hisdaughter's best interests, as he thought. 

I suffered from a very proud, sensitive nature, perhaps unwholesomelyintensified by the lonely life I had led, and a peculiar sense of mydifference from other people. 

This revelation, so unwelcome, so fraught with painful anticipations, roused my pride to a sharp climax of revolt, disdain and defiance. MissDodan should go, --I should urge it. I would applaud and hasten it, therewould be no weakness, no supplication, no obstacles on my part. Letdeath write his inerrant claim to me, let it be recognized; Mr. Dodanneed not be disturbed as to my absolute self-control. 

The very acerbity of my coming misery, through Miss Dodan's absence, fully realized by me, seemed now only to add a desperation of assumedindifference and gayety to all my actions. I argued against delay, anddwelt with excellent effect upon the charms of the visit. I assumed thatMiss Dodan needed the change, that the educational value of such anexperience would be incalculable. 

Mr. Dodan was frankly surprised and pleased. This unexpected support andenthusiastic commendation of his plan was something he gratefullyaccepted, and he assumed a new manner toward me. He ascribed to me apower of self-renunciation which won his ardent approval and admiration. 

The day was at last fixed. Miss Dodan, young, appreciative, andcurious, was elated at the prospect of the voyage, and, momentarily, atleast, forgot her first reluctance to desert me. The preparations wereall completed. I need not dwell upon all the detail of that last week. It was a cruel ordeal for me, but no one would have suspected my realanguish. I seemed the most thoughtful of all, the most naturally buoyantand hopeful for the success of the trip. I forgot nothing. The telegraphstation was not, however, neglected. I watched at night, and during thehours of my absence my assistant was persistently present in the tower. 

At last the steamer sailed away from the wharf at Port Littelton. Thelast moments I passed alone with Miss Dodan were sacred, sweet memories;all that I have now. 

Mr. And Mrs. Dodan and Miss Dodan were waving their handkerchiefs fromthe deck as I turned sorrowfully back to Christ Church. I realized thatI had seen Miss Dodan for the last time, and that when she returned toNew Zealand, she would only find me gone. There was but one duty now. Toresume, if possible, the communications with my father, and prepare thestory of my experience and discoveries, and leave it to the world. 

I went back to the Observatory. I was again alone. A reaction ofdespondency overwhelmed me, and it was coincident with a hemorrhage, which left me weak and nervous. I resumed my watching at the station. Iseemed to anticipate a new message. I endured peculiar and excruciatingexcitement, a tense suspense of desire and prevision that deprived me ofappetite and sleep, and accelerated the ravages of the disease, thatnow, victorious over my weakened, nervous force, began the last stagesof its devastating advance. 

It was a clear, cold night of exquisite severity and beauty--May 20, 1894, that the third message came from my father. It was announced, ashad been all the others, by the sudden response of the Morse receiver. Afew nights before, grasping at a vague hope that I might again reach himwith the magnetic waves at my command, I had launched into space thesingle sentence: "Await me! Death is very near. " The message that nowstartled my ears began with an exact answer to that trans-abysmaldespatch:

"My son, the thought of your death fills me with happiness. Surely youwill come to this wonderful and unspeakable world, you will see meagain, and I you, but under such new circumstances! My heart yearns foryou immeasurably. Come! Come quickly! To press you to my heart, to speakwith you, to teach you the new things, and Oh! more than all, to bringyou to your mother. For, Tony, she is found; my search is ended. I havediscovered her whom the cruel mystery of Death on earth so sharplyremoved from us, in youth and radiance. I have not yet revealed myself. The joy of anticipation surpasses thought or words. I have hastened backfrom seeing her, whom to leave in this paradise imparts the one pang Ihave known in this new life, hastened again to the Hill of Observationthat now looks on the cruel ruin, the emptiness of desolation, whereonce was the City of Scandor. Let me tell you all:

"When I sent you my last message I was at the Tower of Observation. Asthe last wave was emitted from the transmitter, the hand ofSuperintendent Alca, whom I met at the mines, was laid upon my shoulder. I looked up in surprise. He answered my questioning glance: 'I did notreturn with Chapman. There was no need of it. A barge going to the Cityof Light took the body. I explained everything in a letter to theCouncil. I was distressed over the news I had received of the approachof the cometary mass, which I have detected myself, and I hurried afteryou in my own kil-chow (the name of the little porcelain steamers), anxious to see this terrible thing. Let us go out and watch the wonder. Whatever happens we shall remain together. I am from Scandor myself, and though I might have been safer at the mines, I could not stay therein the crisis. '

"We descended to the ground and walked out over the hillside. Theencircling range of high country about Scandor is, perhaps, one thousandfeet high. Its crest is a low swell, that beyond the city falls away inbroken, irregular slopes to the country of the Ribi on one side, and tofar outstretched plains on almost every other side. This dome wascovered with the people of Scandor, fleeing from the doomed city. Thelong lines of moving figures were issuing from the city through itsnumerous boulevards, and crowding the spaces on the hilltops. Theastronomers knew exactly now the nature of the approaching mass, itsorbit, spacial extent and weight. Their proclamation had been preparedand pasted all over the city, announcing its certain destruction, butthat the area of devastation would only embrace the city, that thecometary visitor was a narrow train or procession of meteors of stoneand iron, that the force of impact would be considerable, enough tocrush to the ground the glassy splendor of the beautiful city, and thatbeyond its limits there would be almost no falls. 

"Beautiful, indeed, was Scandor in the morning light. It lay before usshining with a hundred hues. How can I tell you of its exquisiteperfection! Its arrangement expressed a color scheme simple andeffective. The amphitheatre rose in the center, an opalescent yellow;the boulevards spaced with trees, stretched out in radiating lines fromit, defined by the blue lines of ornamental metal pillars which held thelamps; from point to point, piercing the air from the shady peaks orsquares shot up also the needles of metal holding the curious electricglobes, while at regular intervals blue domes like gigantic azurebubbles interrupted the streets of square and colonnaded houses, thatbegan around the amphitheatre, with pale saffron tones, and grew inintensity until the edges of the huge populous ellipse were laid like adeep orange rim upon the green country side. The light falling upon thisreflected, refracted and dispersed, seemed to convert it into a liquidand faintly throbbing lake of color, cut up into segments by the darklanes or streets of trees. 

"And this was to be crushed and crumbled to the ground. The houses andall the constructions are built of glass bricks laid in courses, as withyou on the earth, a soluble glass forming the cement that holds them incontact and together. The huge glass factories making this formed ablack circle in one part of the City. 

"It was now day, and the meteoric nebula was invisible. All day thepeople came crowding to the hills. At last, as we gazed in bewilderedadmiration at the strange multitudes about us, the sound of distantmusic, the organ-like swell of a titanic chorus approaching was heard. Far away down the boulevard, on whose apex we stood, we saw a marchingretinue of men and women surrounding a platform borne on the shouldersof men. The platform held the upright figures of the Council amongstwhom, distinguished by a blue chalcal tunic bound about him by yellowcords, was the noble being I had seen in the Council chamber on thenight of my arrival in Scandor. 

"How marvellous it all seemed. The sense of unreality, of dreamlandagain overpowered me, a wild horror like some mad possession seized me. I shook convulsively, and covered my face in my hands, stricken throughand through with a nameless repining misery of doubt, of apprehension, of dismay. It was the last struggle of readjustment between my memoriesof earth, my identity as a man on the earth, and this new life I hadentered. Alca caught me affectionately and placed the acrid bean I hadtasted in the City of Light in my mouth. The black suffocation passed, and as I slowly returned to realization and serenity I opened my eyesupon the city, now dead and silent, but blazing with all its lights, awaiting desolation, dressed in its sumptuous glory like some princelycaptive on whom the doom of immolation, before an unappeasable deity, had suddenly fallen. It was night fall. 

"Suddenly a flash, a short piercing note, a loud report, and the skyabove us seemed crowded with glowing missiles. The impact from the firstarrivals of the cometary body upon the outer envelopes of the Martianatmosphere had begun. A loud shout of attention, surprise and halfextemporized terror rose from the multitudes about us. It was abreathless moment. The oncoming shoals shot forward in rapid jets offire now clouded together in igneous masses, now separated in disjointedstreaks and radiant clusters of snapping, shining bolts. 

"As yet the material rushing in upon us failed, in most instances, toreach the ground in solid forms. It was burned up in the air. Thespectacle was surpassingly strange. The air before us was weaved withcrossing shafts, threads, and traces of phosphorescent light. Behindthis veil still shone with responsive beauty the great city, whilerising occasionally in bursts of color, we could see the alarm rocketsfrom the opposite hills penetrate the entering flood of light withfrivolous and extinguished protests. 

"About half an hour after the glory reached us, and as on all sides thecountry shone in spectral illumination, a great mass, decrepitating withminute explosions along its oncoming side, plunged down upon the nobleamphitheatre of glass. A dreadful sound of crashing stone followed, andthen, rapidly fired from the aerial batteries, came still more of thedark, half ignited bodies, bathed in hurrying streams of evanescentblades, and splinters of light. 

"And now the destructive bombardment had really begun. The celestialdownpour increased, the valley below us sent upward the detonations ofexploding meteorites and the harsh reverberating crash and overthrow ofglass fabrics. The lights of the city were brokenly extinguished and thepitiless hail of ruin continued with increasing fierceness. 

"It was an awful, glorious scene. The vault of the sky emptying itselfin an avalanche of flame, while from within the wide stream ofprojectiles, collisions caused by some accident of deflection originatedinterior spots of sudden blazing light. The irregular and separatedshocks of sound from the falling city now ran together in a continuousroar of dislocated and broken walls, towers, parapets and citadels. Coruscations sprang out from the yet heated masses, accumulating on theground, as they became incessantly struck by new accessions. The groundtrembled with ceaseless fulminations and impingement, the atmosphereseemed saturated with sulphurous odors, and the panoramic flow offluctuating splendor shed a day-like brightness upon the upturned facesof the startled and stupefied multitude. 

"All night long the invasion continued. The area of destruction, exactlyas the astronomers had defined it, was confined to the long ellipticalbasin in which Scandor lay. Beyond it hardly a branch upon the trees wasbroken, though occasional erratic bombs shot over us and fell miles awayalong the borders of the canals. 

"As the morning dawned, the shower discontinued, a few laggards fell inscattering confusion over the prostrate city, and the sun climbing theeastern sky sent its peaceful reassuring light upon a cairn-like heap ofdesolation. The chilled surface of the fallen meteorites were broken upby areas of glowing cinder-like surfaces. The glittering and opalinecity of glass, the City of Scandor, capital of the Martian world, wasburied beneath the scorching and stony fragments of a minor comet, orsome diminished and wandering meteor train which suddenly issuing fromthe unknown depths of space had descended with mathematical precisionupon the treasure city of the planet. 

"The Martian legions remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent. Theawful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed theirspirit, and they looked into each other's faces with bewilderment. 

"I had stayed with Alca throughout the night, and I now turning to himsaid:

"'Let us go! What can we do here? Let us walk away for awhile. I amdizzy with terror. '

"'Yes, ' he answered, and tears seemed filling his eyes, 'we will go. Wewill walk out into the hill and river country beyond the canal. Many arewandering over the country now. The farmers will harbor us and thebeauty of the lanes will bring us cheerfulness. '

"And so we went away, hastening with the Martian velocity of motionuntil as the sun hung in the zenith, we had reached a hillside slopingupon a meadow space through which passed the clear but sluggish watersof a wide stream. A tulip-like grass was distributed in the heavyluxuriant growth of the meadow, which bore upon pendant threads a bluebell-like flower. A gentle wind, rising and falling, swept over them, lifting and blowing out the cups as it passed off to the surface of thewater and printed it with plashes of ripples. A piece of wood pushed outfrom the hillside, the trees that formed it struggling out into themeadow in a broken succession of individuals like a line of men. Here, leaning against the last tree trunk that stood quite alone in advance ofits companions, was a young woman, her arms folded above the cap--likethe Grecian cassos--that imperfectly held her hair, and dressed in ayellow tunic and the half seen leggings of meshed chalcal thread--alovely picture of meditation. 

"I caught Alca's arm in a sudden wave of desire and excitement. It wasthe impulse of love, the first burning of its sacred fire I had known inMars, and it was the intense certainty of recognition that made it soimpetuous. My Son, your Mother was before me!

"The same glorious beauty I had known on earth covered her, and like amystic light shone from her face and person. I was myself again, young, and she was the same. The impelling sense of a superhuman Destinybringing us together again in this new world, forced from me anejaculation of thankfulness. The cry was not loud, but audible to herears, and she turned toward us. Yes! it was Martha, as I knew her inthose raptured days of love on the banks of the Hudson before diseaseand weakness and age had stolen the bloom from her cheeks, the lightfrom her eyes, and the fair presentiment of charm and perfection fromher body. She did not see me perhaps clearly. Certainly she did notrecognize me. An instant's scrutiny and her face turned again to theopen exposure of hill and field, stream and cloud-flecked sky. 

"Alca had observed my gestures of delight, and, perhaps reading mythoughts by that intuition of mind so wonderful in the Martians, pushedme toward her gently and moved away from us toward the brink of theriver. 

"I stood for a moment hesitating, overwhelmed with the marvel of thisnew thing. I stole on, and finally pushing aside the high grown grass, was at her side--at the side of the very form and feature of the womanwho had taught me on earth the worth of living and the meaning and theglory of rectitude. 

"She was breathing fast, her bosom rising and falling with quickrespirations, and her cheeks flushed with color, made a delicious foilto the pearly tone of her face, concealed on her neck and forehead bythe escaping tresses of her dark hair. 

"I drew back, trembling with anticipation, my heart beating, and myclasped hands folded on my breast in an agony of restraint. She wastalking, talking to herself in the low musical voice of the Martians. The wind had ceased, a dark shadow from a crossing cloud moved toward usfrom the river over the blue sprinkled field, a haze stole upward fromthe farther view, and, bending at the margin of the water the figure ofAlca bathed in light, seemed to watch us like some calm incarnateresponse to my own hopes and prayers. 

"'How beautiful, how wonderful it is!' her arms dropped from her head, the body bent forward to the earth, she knelt; 'but must it always be asit is! Shall not the companion of my days come to this dear place? Thelight of sun and moon and stars seems as it always seemed on Earth, butthere does not come to me the divine touch of affection, that intimatefeeling of oneness and self-surrender that was mine with Randolph on theEarth. A strength unknown to me before, a power of enjoyment, a motionthat is ecstacy, thought, feeling, language, all strong, radiant, supreme, but yet loneliness! Memory of the things of Earth hardlyremains, except where love prints its firm expression. Randolph, myhusband, and Bradford, my boy, to me are deathless. Why can it not bethat they should be here also? Can the purposes of divine love befulfilled by this separation? Shall all the powers of this new life, this beautiful and sinless Nature be wasted for the want of love whichholds both Nature and the soul in place, in harmony, in adoration of theOne enduring Thought?

"'How the long years have rolled by since I have left the Earth, andhow, amid all the pleasurable things of this serene and hopeful life, the hidden loneliness has denied it the last completing touch of joy!Only as I still dare to believe, that the flight of years must end hisaging days on Earth, and that the eternal destiny of married souls is aneternal union, and that his reincarnation here shall bring us into a newand better, richer, deeper harmony of mind and tastes and thoughts; onlyas the belief grows stronger with passing time, can I, so surroundedwith peace and happiness, in this countryside of quiet work and gentlecares, bear longer this awful isolation, the nights of prayerful hope, the days of still enduring hope. 

"'How beautiful it is to live, to watch the changing seasons in thisstrange new world untouched by sickness or death or sin. And yet, ' sheconvulsively clasped her face, 'what beauty, what peace, whatsinlessness can replace the only life--the Life of Love?

"'And then my boy! Can it be possible that I may see him! Why, now hewill seem only a brother in this new youth in which I have been born, and yet--and yet--the mother feeling is unchanged; the old yearning, just as when I left him a boy upon the Earth seems as great as ever. 

"'Oh! when shall this waiting all end in our reunion--father, mother, son--and all strong and glad in youth and hope?'

"She rose and stretched out her arms toward some phantasy of thought orfancy in the air above her, and then a song of recall from a distancefloated along the meadow and the river's banks, a sweet, joyous, beckoning melody, that compelled the ear to listen, and the feet tofollow. 

"Martha half turned--I was dazed with wonder--I did not wish to speak. Icould not then have revealed myself. It was all too marvellous, too hardto comprehend. The old doubts of my reality, of the realness ofeverything I had seen, surged up again, and swept over me in a tide ofdisillusion. 

"Was I dreaming; in the death from Earth had I passed into a wildphantasmagoria of mental pictures, some endless dream where the lulledsoul encountered again, as visions, all it may have hoped for, all itsunconscious cerebration had limned on the interior canvases of the mind, to be reviewed, as in a sleep, where every detail met the test ofcuriosity--except that last test--waking? Should I awake?

"I sprang forward and beat myself, in a sort of fury of doubt againstthe trees about me. The resistance was secure and certain. Pain--itseemed a kind of bliss, as the guarantee of my flesh and bloodexistence--came to me and in my paroxysms the torn skin of my body bled. I looked at the red stains with exultation. I felt the aches of physicalconcussion, with a real rapture. 

"This life was real, was dual--body and mind--as on Earth, and the womanhastening before me along the marge of the rippling stream--I listenedin a kind of feverish anticipation of its silence, for the low cadenceof water passing over pebbles--was Martha! It must be true! What agencyof superhuman cruelty could thus deceive me? No! my eyes were faithful, and the air, thrilling with the distant song, brought nearer to my earsthe answering call of my wife!

"She was far distant. I ran from tree to tree in the wooded back groundand traced her to a little hamlet where a group of Martians awaited her. They turned up a narrow lane singing, and I lost them. 

"I returned to Alca, pensively standing on the hill we had firstdescended, and said nothing of the strange revelation. I contrived tolearn from him the name of the little village, and the nature of itsinhabitants. He called it Nitansi, and said it had been one of the oldspots where migrating souls from other worlds once entered Mars. 

"'A few, ' he added, 'come there now, though rarely, and the peoplecultivate flowers in great farms, and formerly sent them to Scandor. Ithink I saw them moving now along the fields at the riverside. We mustgo back. I shall go down the canal to Sinsi. I know the Council ofScandor will resolve to rebuild the city. '"

The message closed. I rose and staggered backward into the arms ofJobson. A severe hemorrhage ensued, and slowly thereafter the darkeningdoors of life began to close upon me. Disease had won its way againstall the force of life. 

It has been my task during these last weeks of life to write thisaccount of these wonderful experiences, and to leave them to the worldas an assurance--to how many will it give a new delight in living, tohow many will it remove the bitterness of living, to how many may itbring resignation and hope--that the blight of Death is only an incidentin a continuous renewal of Life. 

 (End of Mr. Dodd's MS. )

Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan. 

Mr. Dodd died January 20, 1895. He never recovered from the severe shockcaused by hemorrhage, after receiving the second message from his fatherand recorded above. He appreciated the imminence of death acutely, andstruggled to complete, as he has, the narrative of his life. My daughterwas not again seen by Mr. Dodd, though he received several letters fromher, which were found beneath his pillow after his demise. 

I was with Mr. Dodd constantly during the latter days of his illness, and then promised him that I should secure the publication of hisremarkable story. 

I am not willing to hazard any conjecture as to the more extraordinaryfeatures of this narrative. I can very positively, however, affirm mycomplete confidence in Mr. Dodd's honesty. I knew both his father andhimself very well, and through a long intimacy found them bothconsistently conforming to a very high type of character, courage, andintellectual integrity. 

The MS. Of Mr. Dodd was handed to me by himself, and I recall with apathetic interest his smile of appreciative gratitude as I received it, and gave him my earnest assurance that it should be printed, and thatthe world would be made acquainted with his experiments and theirresults. 

Mr. Dodd was the residuary legatee of his father, and his own will madeduring his last sickness, appointed me as his executor. My daughter wasmade his sole heir, with two exceptions; small amounts in favor of hisassistants--Jeb Jobson and Andrew Clarke were mentioned in his will--andthese sums have been paid by myself to each. 

A series of extraordinary misfortunes, for which I am myself measurablyto blame, resulted in the complete disappearance of the fortuneinherited by my daughter. Her own death and that of my wife, followingupon this disaster, though in no way connected with it, obliterated--andhere again I admit a very grievous culpability--the remembrance of theMS. Of Mr. Dodd and my own promises as to its publication. 

I found the MS. Of Mr. Dodd carefully wrapped up at the bottom of atrunk of papers, and confess that I opened the package it formed with abitter sense of self-reproach. Mr. Dodd had expected to publish thispaper in New York, and had requested that it should be forwarded to thatcity. I have at last complied with his wishes, and the MS. Leaves myhands, absolutely unchanged, consigned through the kind intervention ofa friend, to a publishing house in that western metropolis. I am unableto add anything more to this statement, which, in itself, I fear conveysconsiderable censure to the undersigned. 

 August Bixby Dodan. 

 * * * * *

Note by the Editor. 

The MS. Alluded to by Mr. Dodan in the preceding paragraphs was safelybrought to New York in 1900, and after a very careful examination, repeatedly rejected by the prominent publishers to whom it wassubmitted. 

Through a peculiar accident connected with some negotiations pertainingto a scientific work, contemplated by the writer, the MS. Came into hishands, and he has been encouraged to publish it, influenced by thefavorable comments of friends upon its intrinsic interest. He also hasadded to the work as an appendix, which cannot fail to attract theattention of many, the views of the great astronomer Schiaparelli uponthe present physical condition of Mars, being the reproduction of anarticle by that distinguished observer translated from _Nature et Arte_for February, 1893, by Prof. William H. Pickering and published in theAnnual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institutionfor 1894, published here by permission of "Astronomy and Astro-Physics, "in which journal it first appeared in Vol. XIII. , numbers 8 and 9, forOctober and November, 1894. In this report also appeared Schiaparelli'sMap of Mars in 1888, which the Editor has not reproduced in thisconnection. 

The introduction to-day of the wireless telegraphy, assuming a dailyincreasing importance, furnishes some reasonable hope that themarvellous statements given in Mr. Dodd's narrative may be more widelyverified in the future, and point the way to a realization of the daringand thrilling conception of interplanetary communication. 

THE PLANET MARS. 

BY GIOVANNI SCHIAPARELLI. 

THE PLANET MARS. 

BY GIOVANNI SCHIAPARELLI. 

Many of the first astronomers who studied Mars with the telescope hadnoted on the outline of its disk two brilliant white spots of roundedform and of variable size. In process of time it was observed that whilethe ordinary spots upon Mars were displaced rapidly in consequence ofits daily rotation, changing in a few hours both their position andtheir perspective, the two white spots remained sensibly motionless attheir posts. It was concluded rightly from this that they must occupythe poles of rotation of the planet, or at least must be found very nearto them. Consequently they were given the name of polar caps or spots. And not without reason is it conjectured that these represent upon Marsthat immense mass of snow and ice which still to-day prevents navigatorsfrom reaching the poles of the earth. We are led to this conclusion notonly by the analogy of aspect and of place, but also by anotherimportant observation. .. . 

As things stand, it is manifest that if the above-mentioned white polarspots of Mars represent snow and ice they should continue to decrease insize with the approach of summer in those places and increase during thewinter. Now this very fact is observed in the most evident manner. Inthe second half of the year 1892 the southern polar cap was in fullview; during that interval, and especially in the months of July andAugust, its rapid diminution from week to week was very evident even tothose observing with common telescopes. This snow (for we may well callit so), which in the beginning reached as far as latitude 70 degrees andformed a cap of over 2, 000 kilometers (1, 200 miles) in diameter, progressively diminished, so that two or three months later little moreof it remained than an area of perhaps 300 kilometers (180 miles) at themost, and still less was seen in the last days of 1892. In these monthsthe southern hemisphere of Mars had its summer, the summer solsticeoccurring upon October 13. Correspondingly the mass of snow surroundingthe northern pole should have increased; but this fact was notobservable, since that pole was situated in the hemisphere of Marswhich was opposite to that facing the earth. The melting of the northernsnow was seen in its turn in the years 1882, 1884 and 1886. 

These observations of the alternate increase and decrease of the polarsnows are easily made even with telescopes of moderate power, but theybecome much more interesting and instructive when we can followassiduously the changes in their more minute particulars, using largerinstruments. The snowy regions are then seen to be successively notchedat their edges; black holes and huge fissures are formed in theirinteriors; great isolated pieces many miles in extent stand out from theprincipal mass and, dissolving, disappear a little later. In short, thesame divisions and movements of these icy fields present themselves tous at a glance that occur during the summer of our own arctic regions, according to the descriptions of explorers. 

The southern snow, however, presents this peculiarity: The center of itsirregularly rounded figure does not coincide exactly with the pole, butis situated at another point, which is nearly always the same, and isdistant from the pole about 300 kilometers (180 miles) in the directionof the Mare Erythraeum. From this we conclude that when the area of thesnow is reduced to its smallest extent the south pole of Mars isuncovered, and therefore, perhaps, the problem of reaching it upon thisplanet is easier than upon the earth. The southern snow is in the midstof a huge dark spot, which with its branches occupies nearly one-thirdof the whole surface of Mars, and is supposed to represent its principalocean. Hence the analogy with our arctic and antarctic snows may be saidto be complete, and especially so with the antarctic one. 

The mass of the northern snow cap of Mars is, on the other hand, centered almost exactly upon its pole. It is located in a region ofyellow color, which we are accustomed to consider as representing thecontinent of the planet. From this arises a singular phenomenon whichhas no analogy upon the earth. At the melting of the snows accumulatedat that pole during the long night of ten months and more the liquidmass produced in that operation is diffused around the circumference ofthe snowy region, converting a large zone of surrounding land into atemporary sea and filling all the lower regions. This produces agigantic inundation, which has led some observers to suppose theexistence of another ocean in those parts, but which does not reallyexist in that place, at least as a permanent sea. We see then (the lastopportunity was in 1884) the white spot of the snow surrounded by adark zone, which follows its perimeter in its progressive diminution, upon a circumference ever more and more narrow. The outer part of thiszone branches out into dark lines, which occupy all the surroundingregion, and seem to be distributary canals by which the liquid mass mayreturn to its natural position. This produces in these regions veryextensive lakes, such as that designated upon the map by the name ofLacus Hyperboreus; the neighboring interior sea called Mare Acidaliumbecomes more black and more conspicuous. And it is to be remembered as avery probable thing that the flowing of this melted snow is the causewhich determines principally the hydrographic state of the planet andthe variations that are periodically observed in its aspect. Somethingsimilar would be seen upon the earth if one of our poles came to belocated suddenly in the center of Asia or of Africa. As things stand atpresent, we may find a miniature image of these conditions in theflooding that is observed in our streams at the melting of the Alpinesnows. 

Travellers in the arctic regions have frequent occasion to observe howthe state of the polar ice at the beginning of the summer, and even atthe beginning of July, is always very unfavorable to their progress. The best season for exploration is in the month of August, and Septemberis the month in which the trouble from ice is the least. Thus inSeptember our Alps are usually more practicable than at any otherseason. And the reason for it is clear--the melting of the snow requirestime; a high temperature is not sufficient; it is necessary that itshould continue, and its effect will be so much the greater, as it isthe more prolonged. Thus, if we could slow down the course of our seasonso that each month should last sixty days instead of thirty, in thesummer, in such a lengthened condition, the melting of the ice wouldprogress much further, and perhaps it would not be an exaggeration tosay that the polar cap at the end of the warm season would be entirelydestroyed. But one cannot doubt, in such a case, that the fixed portionof such a cap would be reduced to a much smaller size, than we see itto-day. Now, this is exactly what happens to Mars. The long year, nearlydouble our own, permits the ice to accumulate during the polar night often or twelve months, so as to descend in the form of a continuous layeras far as parallel 70 degrees, or even farther. But in the day whichfollows, of twelve or ten months, the sun has time to melt all, ornearly all, of the snow of recent formation, reducing it to such asmall area that it seems to us no more than a very white point. Andperhaps this snow is entirely destroyed; but of this there is at presentno satisfactory observation. 

Other white spots of a transitory character and of a less regulararrangement are formed in the southern hemisphere upon the islands nearthe pole, and also in the opposite hemisphere whitish regions appear attimes surrounding the north pole and reaching to 50 degrees and 55degrees of latitude. They are, perhaps, transitory snows, similar tothose which are observed in our latitudes. But also in the torrid zoneof Mars are seen some very small white spots more or less persistent;among others one was seen by me in three consecutive oppositions(1877-1882) at the point indicated upon our chart by longitude 268degrees and latitude 16 degrees north. Perhaps we may be permitted toimagine in this place the existence of a mountain capable of supportingextensive ice fields. The existence of such a mountain has also beensuggested by some recent observers upon other grounds. 

As has been stated, the polar snows of Mars prove in an incontrovertiblemanner that this planet, like the earth, is surrounded by an atmospherecapable of transporting vapor, from one place to another. These snowsare, in fact, precipitations of vapor, condensed by the cold, andcarried with it successively. How carried with it if not by atmosphericmovement? The existence of an atmosphere charged with vapor has beenconfirmed also by spectroscopic observations, principally those ofVogel, according to which this atmosphere must be of a compositiondiffering little from our own, and above all, very rich in aqueousvapor. This is a fact of the highest importance because from it we canrightly affirm with much probability that to water and to no otherliquid is due the seas of Mars and its polar snows. When this conclusionis assured beyond all doubt another one may be derived from it of notless importance--that the temperature of the Arean climatenotwithstanding the greater distance of that planet from the sun, is ofthe same order as the temperature of the terrestrial one. Because, if itwere true, as has been supposed by some investigators, that thetemperature of Mars was on the average very low (from 50 degrees to 60degrees below zero), it would not be possible for water vapor to be animportant element in the atmosphere of that planet nor could Water be animportant factor in its physical changes, but would give place tocarbonic acid, or to some other liquid whose freezing point was muchlower. 

The elements of the meteorology of Mars seem, then, to have a closeanalogy to those of the earth. But there are not lacking, as might beexpected, causes of dissimilarity. From circumstances of the smallestmoment nature brings forth an infinite variety in its operations. Of thegreatest influence must be different arrangement of the seas and thecontinents upon Mars and upon the earth, regarding which a glance at themap will say more than would be possible in many words. We have alreadyemphasized the fact of the extraordinary periodical flood, which atevery revolution of Mars inundates the northern polar region at themelting of the snow. Let us now add that this inundation is spread outto a great distance by means of a network of canals, perhapsconstituting the principal mechanism (if not the only one) by whichwater (and with it organic life) may be diffused over the arid surfaceof the planet. Because on Mars it rains very rarely, or perhaps even itdoes not rain at all. And this is the proof. 

Let us carry ourselves in imagination into celestial space, to a pointso distant from the earth that we may embrace it all at a single glance. He would be greatly in error who had expected to see reproduced thereupon a great scale the image of our continents with their gulfs andislands and with the seas that surround them which are seen upon ourartificial globes. Then without doubt the known forms or parts of themwould be seen to appear under a vaporous veil, but a great part (perhapsone-half) of the surface would be rendered invisible by the immensefields of cloud, continually varying in density, in form, and in extent. Such a hindrance, most frequent and continuous in the polar regions, would still impede nearly half the time the view of the temperate zones, distributing itself in capricious and ever varying configurations. Theseas of the torrid zone would be seen to be arranged in long parallellayers, corresponding to the zone of the equatorial and tropical calms. For an observer placed upon the moon the study of our geography wouldnot be so simple an undertaking as one might at first imagine. 

There is nothing of this sort in Mars. In every climate and under everyzone its atmosphere is nearly perpetually clear and sufficientlytransparent to permit one to recognize at any moment whatever thecontours of the seas and continents, and, more than that, even the minorconfigurations. Not indeed that vapors of a certain degree of opacityare lacking, but they offer very little impediment to the study of thetopography of the planet. Here and there we see appear from time to timea few whitish spots, changing their position and their form, rarelyextending over a very wide area. They frequent by preference a fewregions, such as the islands of the Mare Australe, and on the continentsthe regions designated on the map with the names of Elysium and Tempe. Their brilliancy generally diminishes and disappears at the meridianhour of the place, and is re-enforced in the morning and evening withvery marked variations. It is possible that they may be layers of cloudsbecause the upper portions of terrestrial clouds where they areilluminated by the sun appear white. But various observations lead us tothink that we are dealing rather with a thin veil of fog instead of atrue nimbus cloud, carrying storms and rain. Indeed, it may be merely atemporary condensation of vapor under the form of dew or hoar frost. 

Accordingly, as far as we may be permitted to argue from the observedfacts, the climate of Mars must resemble that of a clear day upon a highmountain. By day a very strong solar radiation, hardly mitigated at allby mist or vapor; by night a copious radiation from the soil towardcelestial space, and because of that a very marked refrigeration. Hencea climate of extremes, and great changes of temperature from day tonight, and from one season to another. And as on the earth at altitudesof 5, 000 and 6, 000 meters (17, 000 to 20, 000 feet) the vapor of theatmosphere is condensed only into the solid form, producing thosewhitish masses of suspended crystals which we call cirrus clouds, so inthe atmosphere of Mars it would be rarely possible (or would even beimpossible) to find collections of cloud capable of producing rain ofany consequence. The variation of the temperature from one season toanother would be notably increased by their long duration, and thus wecan understand the great freezing and melting of the snow which isrenewed in turn at the poles at each complete revolution of the planetaround the sun. 

As our chart demonstrates, in its general topography Mars does notpresent any analogy with the earth. A third of its surface is occupiedby the great Mare Australe, which is strewn with many islands, and thecontinents are cut up by gulfs, and ramifications of various forms. Tothe general water system belongs an entire series of small internalseas, of which the Hadriacum and the Tyrrhenum communicate with it bywide mouths, whilst the Cimmerium, the Sirenum, and the Solis Lacus areconnected with it only by means of narrow canals. We shall notice inthe first four a parallel arrangement, which certainly is notaccidental, as also not without reason is the corresponding position ofthe peninsulas of Ausonia, Hesperia, and Atlantis. The color of the seasof Mars is generally brown, mixed with gray, but not always of equalintensity in all places, nor is it the same in the same place at alltimes. From an absolute black it may descend to a light-gray or to anash color. Such a diversity of colors may have its origin in variouscauses, and is not without analogy also upon the earth, where it isnoted that the seas of the warm zone are usually much darker than thosenearer the pole. The water of the Baltic, for example, has a light, muddy color that is not observed in the Mediterranean. And thus in theseas of Mars we see the color become darker when the sun approachestheir zenith, and summer begins to rule in that region. 

All of the remainder of the planet, as far as the north pole is occupiedby the mass of the continents, in which, save in a few areas ofrelatively small extent, an orange color predominates, which sometimesreaches a dark red tint, and in others descends to yellow and white. Thevariety in this coloring is in part of meteorological origin, in part itmay depend on the diverse nature of the soil, but upon its real causeit is not as yet possible to frame any very well grounded hypothesis. Nevertheless, the cause of this predominance of the red and yellow tintsupon the surface of ancient Pyrois is well known. [A] Some have thoughtto attribute this coloring to the atmosphere of Mars, through which thesurface of the planet might be seen colored, as any terrestrial objectbecomes red when seen through red glass. But many facts are opposed tothis idea, among others that the polar snows appear always of the purestwhite, although the rays of light derived from them traverse twice theatmosphere of Mars under great obliquity. We must then conclude that theArean continents appear red and yellow because they are so in fact. 

Besides these dark and light regions, which we have described as seasand continents, and of whose nature there is at present scarcely leftany room for doubt, some others exist, truly of small extent, of anamphibious nature, which sometimes appear yellowish like the continents, and are sometimes clothed in brown (even black in certain cases), andassume the appearance of seas, whilst in other cases their color isintermediate in tint, and leaves us in doubt to which class of regionsthey may belong. Thus all the islands scattered through the MareAustrale and the Mare Erythræum belong to this category; so, too, thelong peninsula called Deucalionis Regio and Pyrrhae Regio, and in thevicinity of the Mare Acidalium the regions designated by the names ofBaltia and Nerigos. The most natural idea, and the one to which weshould be led by analogy, is to suppose these regions to represent hugeswamps, in which the variation in depth of the water produces thediversity of colors. Yellow would predominate in those parts where thedepth of the liquid layer was reduced to little or nothing, and brown, more or less dark, in those places where the water was sufficiently deepto absorb more light and to render the bottom more or less invisible. That the water of the sea, or any other deep and transparent water, seenfrom above, appears more dark the greater the depth of the liquidstratum, and that the land in comparison with it appears bright underthe solar illumination, is known and confirmed by certain physicalreasons. The traveler in the Alps often has occasion to convince himselfof it, seeing from the summits the deep lakes with which the region isstrewn extending under his feet as black as ink, whilst in contrast withthem even the blackest rocks illumined by the sunlight appearedbrilliant. [B]

Not without reason, then, have we hitherto attributed to the dark spotsof Mars the part of seas, and that of continents to the reddish areaswhich occupy nearly two-thirds of all the planet, and we shall findlater other reasons which confirm this method of reasoning. Thecontinents form in the northern hemisphere a nearly continuous mass, theonly important exception being the great lake called the Mare Acidalium, of which the extent may vary according to the time, and which isconnected in some way with the inundations which we have said wereproduced by the melting of the snow surrounding the north pole. To thesystem of the Mare Acidalium undoubtedly belong the temporary lakecalled Lacus Hyperboreus and the Lacus Niliacus. This last is ordinarilyseparated from the Mare Acidalium by means of an isthmus or regular dam, of which the continuity was only seen to be broken once for a short timein 1888. Other smaller dark spots are found here and there in thecontinental area which we may designate as lakes, but they are certainlynot permanent lakes like ours, but are variable in appearance and sizeaccording to the seasons, to the point of wholly disappearing undercertain circumstances. Ismenius Lacus, Lunae Lacus, Trivium Charontis, and Propontis are the most conspicuous and durable ones. There are alsosmaller ones, such as Lacus Moeris and Fons Juventae, which at theirmaximum size do not exceed 100 to 150 kilometers (60 to 90 miles) indiameter, and are among the most difficult objects upon the planet. 

All the vast extent of the continents is furrowed upon every side by anetwork of numerous lines or fine stripes of a more or less pronounceddark color, whose aspect is very variable. These traverse the planet forlong distances in regular lines that do not at all resemble the windingcourses of our streams. Some of the shorter ones do not reach 500kilometers (300 miles), others, on the other hand, extend for manythousands, occupying a quarter or sometimes even a third of acircumference of the planet. Some of these are very easy to see, especially that one which is near the extreme left-hand limit of our mapand is designated by the name of Nilosyrtis. Others in turn areextremely difficult, and resemble the finest thread of spider's webdrawn across the disk. They are subject also to great variations intheir breadth, which may reach 200 or even 300 kilometers (120 to 180miles) for the Nilosyrtis, whilst some are scarcely 30 kilometers (18miles) broad. 

These lines or stripes are the famous canals of Mars, of which so muchhas been said. As far as we have been able to observe them hitherto, they are certainly fixed configurations upon the planet. The Nilosyrtishas been seen in that place for nearly one hundred years, and some ofthe others for at least thirty years. Their length and arrangement areconstant, or vary only between very narrow limits. Each of them alwaysbegins and ends between the same regions. But their appearance and theirdegree of visibility vary greatly, for all of them, from one oppositionto another, and even from one week to another, and these variations donot take place simultaneously and according to the same laws for all, but in most cases happen apparently capriciously, or at least accordingto laws not sufficiently simple for us to be able to unravel. Often oneor more become indistinct, or even wholly invisible, whilst others intheir vicinity increase to the point of becoming conspicuous even intelescopes of moderate power. The first of our maps shows all those thathave been seen in a long series of observations. This does not at allcorrespond to the appearance of Mars at any given period, becausegenerally only a few are visible at once. [C]

Every canal (for now we shall so call them) opens at its ends eitherinto a sea, or into a lake, or into another canal, or else into theintersection of several other canals. None of them have yet been seencut off in the middle of the continent, remaining without beginning orwithout end. This fact is of the highest importance. The canals mayintersect among themselves at all possible angles, but by preferencethey converge toward the small spots to which we have given the name oflakes. For example, seven are seen to converge in Lacus Phoenicis, eight in Trivium Charontis, six in Lunae Lacus, and six in IsmeniusLacus. 

The normal appearance of a canal is that of a nearly uniform stripe, black, or at least of a dark color, similar to that of the seas, inwhich the regularity of its general course does not exclude smallvariations in its breadth and small sinuosities in its two sides. Oftenit happens that such a dark line opening out upon the sea is enlargedinto the form of a trumpet, forming a huge bay, similar to the estuariesof certain terrestrial streams. The Margaritifer Sinus, the AoniusSinus, the Aurorae Sinus, and the two horns of the Sabæus Sinus are thusformed, at the mouths of one or more canals, opening into the MareErythraeum or into the Mare Australe. The largest example of such a gulfis the Syrtis Major, formed by the vast mouth of the Nilosyrtis, socalled. This gulf is not less than 1, 800 kilometers (1, 100 miles) inbreadth, and attains nearly the same depth in a longitudinal direction. Its surface is little less than that of the Bay of Bengal. In this casewe see clearly the dark surface of the sea continued without apparentinterruption into that canal. Inasmuch as the surfaces called seas aretruly a liquid expanse, we cannot doubt that the canals are a simpleprolongation of them, crossing the yellow areas or continents. 

Of the remainder, that the lines called canals are truly great furrowsor depressions in the surface of the planet, destined for the passage ofthe liquid mass and constituting for it a true hydrographic system, isdemonstrated by the phenomena which are observed during the melting ofthe northern snows. We have already remarked that at the time of meltingthey appear surrounded by a dark zone, forming a species of temporarysea. At that time the canals of the surrounding region become blackerand wider, increasing to the point of converting at a certain time allof the yellow region comprised between the edge of the snow and theparallel of 60 degrees north latitude into numerous islands of smallextent. Such a state of things does not cease until the snow, reduced toits minimum area, ceases to melt. Then the breadth of the canalsdiminishes, the temporary sea disappears, and the yellow region againreturns to its former area. The different phases of these vast phenomenaare renewed at each return of the seasons, and we were able to observethem in all their particulars very easily during the oppositions of1882, 1884, and 1886, when the planet presented its northern pole toterrestrial spectators. The most natural and the most simpleinterpretation is that to which we have referred, of a great inundationproduced by the melting of the snows; it is entirely logical and issustained by evident analogy with terrestrial phenomena. We conclude, therefore, that the canals are such in fact and not only in name. Thenetwork formed by these was probably determined in its origin in thegeological state of the planet, and has come to be slowly elaborated inthe course of centuries. It is not necessary to suppose them the work ofintelligent beings, and, notwithstanding the almost geometricalappearance of all of their system, we are now inclined to believe themto be produced by the evolution of the planet, just as on the earth wehave the English Channel and the channel of Mozambique. 

It would be a problem not less curious than complicated and difficult tostudy the system of this immense stream of water, upon which perhapsdepends principally the organic life upon the planet, if organic life isfound there. The variations of their appearance demonstrated that thissystem is not constant. When they become displaced or their outlinesbecome doubtful and ill defined, it is fair to suppose that the water isgetting low or is even entirely dried up. Then, in place of the canalsthere remains either nothing or at most stripes of yellowish colordiffering little from the surrounding background. Sometimes they take ona nebulous appearance, for which at present it is not possible to assigna reason. At other times true enlargements are produced, expanding to100, 200 or more kilometers (60 to 120 miles) in breadth, and thissometimes happens for canals very far from the north pole, according tolaws which are unknown. This occurred in Hydaspes in 1864, in Simois in1879, in Ackeron in 1884, and in Triton in 1888. The diligent and minutestudy of the transformations of each canal may lead later to a knowledgeof the causes of these effects. 

But the most surprising phenomenon pertaining to the canals of Mars istheir germination, which seems to occur principally in the months whichprecede and in those which follow the great northern inundation--atabout the times of the equinoxes. In consequence of a rapid process, which certainly lasts at most a few days, or even perhaps, only a fewhours, and of which it has not yet been possible to determine theparticulars with certainty, a given canal changes its appearance and isfound transformed through all its length into two lines or uniformstripes more or less parallel to one another, and which run straight andequal with the exact geometrical precision of the two rails of arailroad. But this exact course is the only point of resemblance withthe rails, because in dimensions there is no comparison possible, as itis easy to imagine. These two lines follow very nearly the direction ofthe original canal and end in the place where it ended. One of these isoften superposed as exactly as possible upon the former line, the otherbeing drawn anew; but in this case the original line loses all the smallirregularities and curvature that it may have originally possessed. Butit also happens that both the lines may occupy opposite sides of the'former canal and be located upon entirely new ground. The distancebetween the two lines differs in different germinations and varies from600 kilometers (360 miles) and more down to the smallest limit at whichtwo lines may appear separated in large visual telescopes--less than atintervals of 50 kilometers (30 miles). The breadth of the stripesthemselves may range from the limit of visibility, which we may supposeto be 30 kilometers (18 miles), up to more than 100 kilometers (60miles). The color of the two lines varies from black to a light red, which can hardly be distinguished from the general yellow background ofthe continental surface. The space between is for the most part yellow, but in many cases appears whitish. The gemination is not necessarilyconfined only to the canals, but tends to be produced also in thelakes. Often one of these is seen transformed into two short, broad, dark lines parallel to one another and traversed by a yellow line. Inthese cases the gemination is naturally short and does not exceed thelimits of the original lake. 

The gemination is not shown by all at the same time, but when the seasonis at hand it begins to be produced here and there, in an isolated, irregular manner, or at least without any easily recognizable order. Inmany canals (such as the Nilosyrtis, for example), the gemination islacking entirely, or is scarcely visible. After having lasted for somemonths, the markings fade out gradually and disappear until anotherseason equally favorable for their formation. Thus it happens that incertain other seasons (especially near the southern solstice of theplanet) few are seen, or even none at all. In different oppositions thegemination of the same canal may present different appearances as towidth, intensity, and arrangement of the two stripes; also in some casesthe direction of the lines may vary, although by the smallest quantity, but still deviating by a small amount from the canal with which they aredirectly associated. From this important fact it is immediatelyunderstood that the gemination cannot be a fixed formation upon thesurface of Mars and of a geographical character like the canals. Thesecond of our maps will give an approximate idea of the appearance whichthese singular formations present. It contains all the geminationsobserved since 1882 up to the present time. In examining it it isnecessary to bear in mind that not all of these appearances weresimultaneous, and consequently that the map does not represent thecondition of Mars at any given period; it is only a sort oftopographical register of the observations made of this phenomenon atdifferent times. [D]

The observation of the gemination is one of the greatest difficulty, andcan only be made by an eye well practiced in such work, added to atelescope of accurate construction and of great power. This explains whyit is that it was not seen before 1882. In the ten years that havetranspired since that time, it has been seen and described at eight orten observatories. Nevertheless, some still deny that these phenomenaare real, and tax with illusion (or even imposture) those who declarethat they have observed it. 

Their singular aspect, and their being drawn with absolute geometricalprecision, as if they were the work of rule or compass, has led some tosee in them the work of intelligent beings, inhabitants of the planet. Iam very careful not to combat this supposition, which includes nothingimpossible. (Io mi guarderò bene dal combattere questa supposizione, laquale nulla include d'impossibile. ) But it will be noticed that in anycase the gemination cannot be a work of permanent character, it beingcertain that in a given instance it may change its appearance anddimensions from one season to another. If we should assume such a work, a certain variability would not be excluded from it; for example, extensive agricultural labor and irrigation upon a large scale. Let usadd, further, that the intervention of intelligent beings might explainthe geometrical appearance of the gemination, but it is not at allnecessary for such a purpose. The geometry of nature is manifested inmany other facts from which are excluded the idea of any artificiallabor whatever. The perfect spheroids of the heavenly bodies and thering of Saturn were not constructed in a turning lathe, and not withcompasses has Iris described within the clouds her beautiful and regulararch. And what shall we say of the infinite variety of those exquisiteand regular polyhedrons in which the world of crystals is so rich? Inthe organic world, also, is not that geometry most wonderful whichpresides over the distribution of the foliage upon certain plants, whichorders the nearly symmetrical, star-like figures of the flowers of thefield, as well as of the sea, and which produces in the shell such anexquisite conical spiral that excels the most beautiful masterpieces ofGothic architecture? In all these objects the geometrical form is thesimple and necessary consequence of the principles and laws which governthe physical and physiological world. That these principles and theselaws are but an indication of a higher intelligent Power we may admit, but this has nothing to do with the present argument. 

Having regard, then, for the principle that in the explanation ofnatural phenomena it is universally agreed to begin with the simplestsuppositions, the first hypotheses of the nature and cause of thegeminations have for the most part put in operation only the laws ofinorganic nature. Thus, the gemination is supposed to be due either tothe effects of light in the atmosphere of Mars, or to optical illusionsproduced by vapors in various manners, or to glacial phenomena of aperpetual winter, to which it is known all the planets will becondemned, or to double cracks in its surface, or to single cracks ofwhich the images are doubled by the effect of smoke issuing in longlines and blown laterally by the wind. The examination of theseingenious suppositions leads us to conclude that none of them seem tocorrespond entirely with the observed facts, either in whole or in part. Some of these hypotheses would not have been proposed had their authorsbeen able to examine the geminations with their own eyes. Since some ofthese may ask me directly, "Can you suggest anything better?" I mustreply candidly, "No. "

It would be far more easy if we were willing to introduce the forcespertaining to organic nature. Here the field of plausible supposition isimmense, being capable of making an infinite number of combinationscapable of satisfying the appearances even with the smallest andsimplest means. Changes of vegetation over a vast area, and theproduction of animals, also very small, but in enormous multitudes, maywell be rendered visible at such a distance. An observer placed in themoon would be able to see such an appearance at the times in whichagricultural operations are carried out upon one vast plain--theseed-time and the gathering of the harvest. In such a manner also wouldthe flowers of the plants of the great steppes of Europe and Asia berendered visible at the distance of Mars--by a variety of coloring. Asimilar system of operations produced in that planet may thus certainlybe rendered visible to us. But how difficult for the Lunarians and theAreans to be able to imagine the true causes of such changes ofappearance without having first at least some superficial knowledge ofterrestrial nature! So also for us, who know so little of the physicalstate of Mars, and nothing of its organic world, the great liberty ofpossible supposition renders arbitrary all explanations of this sort andconstitutes the gravest obstacle to the acquisition of well-foundednotions. All that we may hope is that with time the uncertainty of theproblem will gradually diminish, demonstrating if not what thegeminations are, at least what they cannot be. We may also confide alittle in what Galileo called "the courtesy of nature, " thanks to whicha ray of light from an unexpected source will sometimes illuminate aninvestigation at first believed inaccessible to our speculations, and ofwhich we have a beautiful example in celestial chemistry. Let ustherefore hope and study. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Pyrois I take to be some terrestrial region, although Ihave not been able to find any translation of the name. --Translator. ]

[Footnote B: This observation of the dark color which deep waterexhibits when seen from above is found already noted by the first authorof antique memory, for in the Iliad (verses 770-771 of Book V) it isdescribed how "the sentinel from the high sentry box extends his glanceover the wine-colored sea, [Greek: _oinopa phonton_]. " In the version ofMonti the adjective indicating the color is lost. ]

[Footnote C: In a footnote the author refers to a drawing of Mars madeby himself, September 15, 1892, and says, . .. "At the top of the diskthe Mare Erythraeum and the Mare Australe appear divided by a greatcurved peninsula, shaped like a sickle, producing an unusual appearancein the area called Deucalionis Regio, which was prolonged that year soas to reach the islands of Noachis and Argyre. This region forms withthem a continuous whole, but with faint traces of separation occurringhere and there in a length of nearly 6, 000 kilometers (4, 000 miles). Itscolor, much less brilliant than that of the continents, was a mixture oftheir yellow with the brownish gray of the neighboring seas. " Theinteresting feature of this note is the remark that it was an unusualappearance, the region referred to being that in which the centralbranch of the fork of the Y appeared. Since no such branch wasconspicuously visible this year, it would therefore seem from the abovethat it was the opposition of 1892 that was peculiar, and not thepresent one. --Translator. ]

[Footnote D: This map may be found also in La Planète Mars, byFlammarion, page 44. --Translator. ]