Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/359

 aspect in some of the physical features, there being much of hill and dale on the small scale, with rivers and small lake expanses, all, however, being of fresh water, without the variety of our salt seas. Owing to the comparatively great heat directly under vertical Jupiter, the water there is constantly and rapidly evaporated, passing in clouds away to the cold edges of the hemisphere, and ever returning, by Jupiter's attraction, in cool and gurgling streams, which are the great resource and daily enjoyment of the population. The Jovians are fond of bathing in these pleasant and invigorating waters. Their doctors strongly prescribe this custom, and parents superadd their authority, for the race is thus kept in health and strength, to the great advantage of its business and earning powers.

Speaking of the power of Jupiter's attraction over the waters reminds me of another phase of it, which made Io's apex uncomfortable to us on other grounds than that of mere heat. We felt up there a lightness of foothold, as though there were no terra firma beneath us; and even when we retreated towards the cooler edge of the hemisphere, Jupiter kept pulling at us, with the effect of causing us to stand at a very perceptible angle to the perpendicular. From the same cause those Ioans, who had adventured to the opposite apex of their globe, brought word of the mysterious downward strain upon their frame, which made business labour almost impossible. The journey to the opposite apex was to them, in fact, simply an exhausting climb up a huge mountain, the drag and difficulty of which increased with every mile of ascent, as the weary and distressed travellers came into more