Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/337

 found themselves even there, the nights being, to our feeling at least, intensely sharp, although, during the day time, the sun had even an unpleasantly hot blaze.

The good common-sense expression of the Marsian face, as previously familiar to us, had inspired sufficient confidence as to our reception; and, therefore, we descended right into their midst, to their unutterable astonishment. Having soon explained, to the great crowd that quickly surrounded us, by signs and sketches, whence we had come, our party got a warm greeting, and were conducted to the best accommodation afforded by the neighbourhood.

The Marsian atmosphere we found so nearly to resemble our own, that we could breathe it quite comfortably and safely; but it was rather thin to our lungs, resembling our own in fact, as it used to be, at the height of a good many thousand feet from the old level of the ground. Mars has a history, physical and organic, differing in some important respects from ours. Being both smaller, bulk and mass, as well as colder-zoned, his dynamic balancing was attained earlier; but, for the like reasons, his subsequent progress was slower, so that both Venus and ourselves have since quite passed him in the race. And it is for us of his advanced sister Earth now to watch him with even parental eye, as he toils, slowly perhaps, but steadily withal, upwards to that higher life which we have happily already entered.

Knowing that Mars was thus our special charge, we have, of course, felt from the very first of our trust