Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/366

 thus itself banged into an irregular and extremely elliptical orbit round the sun, which the dead and smashedup components are supposed to be maintaining ever since. But now, by precautionarily keeping a certain speed, in a certain slanting direction, on entering the thick of the archipelago, these many bodies or little worlds all running, of course, in one and the same direction, the old dangers are minimized almost to nothing.

Vesta and others of the planetoids possess good phosphate diggings; and as the former has, in common with several others of the larger worlds of this curious system, a human population readily utilizable for business purposes, there are fair opportunities for a stroke of profit in this direction. These Vestians have, to our fancy, an odd appearance, with their very slight, top-heavy looking figures, in accordance with the small gravity of their planet, and with, besides, their wide mouths and noses, to enable them to imbibe a sufficiency of their very thin air. With mouths of their own in much the style of the extreme caricaturing of our old past negro race, these Vestians laugh outright at the bare idea of our little poke-hole of a mouth being regarded as beauty.

My young friend Brown seemed fortunate in the agent he secured here, a decent-looking young Vestian, who, after engagement, accompanied us on a visit to two other little worlds, coursing along near to each other, and both, in fact, within easy telescopic sight of Vesta. As all these worlds, the smaller as well as