Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/81

Rh to find very little change in the geographical aspects, but there were great inhabited areas and large cities even at that time. A very vast population lived in Western America and all round the Mexican Gulf. Eastern Asia, India, Ceylon, Southern Asia and the valley of the Nile were covered with population a thousand years later. The pyramids of Egypt were built by the descendants of the men who built those in Arizona.

My friend Martha told me that a peaceful nation had developed a high civilisation in Western America prior to the 'Black Century,' and that these people were driven across the Pacific by the constant incursions of wild tribes from the north and east of the American continent. She said, too, that vast hoards of gold, silver, and precious stones are waiting to be unearthed from beneath the old pyramids of Arizona and other places in the south and west.

'If I wanted to write a history of our old home, indeed of our present home so far as we are concerned, I would come here for my materials. For all the records here are contemporaneous; men who knew related their own knowledge of facts actually transpiring at the time of relation.'

'I am sorry,' said I, 'that I know nothing of my other life. All I know is what I can remember of a brief half hour that Grayson kindly caused me to spend in Melbourne. Ignorant I am, and can add nothing to these records, either historical or geographical.'

'Do not let that matter trouble you,' said Martha. 'Your time will come, and if you can record nothing here you can write on the Earth side, and you are doing so. I, too, from my home in Edinbro', will make some communications, though my Scotch neighbours may think me mad. But it just strikes me that, situated as you are, there is a likelihood of your being ignorant of the differences between the inhabitants of these two planets.'

'That is true,' I answered. 'I have only got a little vague information, and that only during my journey from the antipodes. I hoped to get that kind of knowledge here, but so far other matters have occupied my attention.'

'Look at me,' said Martha. 'Do you think that I am as big as the woman whom you saw on earth?'

'Yes, you appear about the same size, or perhaps a little taller than the average.'

'That is not the case,' Martha replied. 'If you had met me in the streets of Melbourne in my present form you would have seen a sharp, thin little dwarf, about three feet ten inches in height and very slight, about half the weight of an ordinary Earth woman. If you had met me in Edinbro' you would have seen a strong woman of middle age, about five feet seven inches in height. There I am the mother of four fine sons and two daughters, and I cannot make either my husband or any member of my family thoroughly understand my position. I live a very active life in my Earth home, and am