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UR descent was planned for the Great Ice Island in the Delarue Ocean. It was a bright spot from our world, and so we had chosen it as one suited for a first descent—the more as it seemed isolated, and probably our arrangements would not be disturbed.

On then we flew through space till we reached the attraction of the ruddy planet, and could see his mighty expanse of crimson plains spotted by green oceans and lakes and veiled in clouds with either pole robed in eternal snows. It was autumn in the Southern hemisphere of Mars then, and the white glittering snows stretched over the south. But Huyghens continent and even Laplace land, ruddy with their mighty forests, glowed blood-stained, as it were, beneath us.

On, on we rushed, ever faster and faster, by the power of gravitation of the world to which we were approaching. How vast it seemed;