forests of giants, whose average height
was evidently at least 1,000 feet.

"That's all right," exclaimed the enthusiast I have just quoted. "I knew
it would be so. The trees are big, for the same reason that the men are,
because the planet is small, and they can grow big without becoming too
heavy to stand."

Flashing in the sun on all sides were the roofs of metallic buildings,
which were evidently the only kind of edifices that Mars possessed. At
any rate, if stone or wood were employed in their construction both were
completely covered with metallic plates.

This added immensely to the warlike aspect of the planet. For warlike
it was. Everywhere we recognized fortified stations, glittering with an
array of the polished knobs of the lightning machines, such as we had
seen in the land of Hellas.

From the land of Edom, directly over the equator of the planet, we turned
our faces westward, and, skirting the Mare Erytraeum, arrived above the
place where the broad canal known as the Indus empties into the sea.

Before us, and stretching away toward the northwest, now lay the continent
of Chryse, a vast red land, oval in outline, and surrounded and crossed
by innumerable canals. Chryse was not less than 1,600 miles across,
and it, too, evidently swarmed with giant inhabitants.

But the shadow of night lay upon the greater portion of the land of
Chryse. In our rapid motion westward we had out-stripped the sun and
had now arrived at a point where day and night met upon the surface of
the planet beneath us.

Behind all was brilliant with sunshine, but before us the face of Mars
gradually disappeared in the deepening gloom. Through the darkness,
far away, we could behold magnificent beams of electric light darting
across the curtain of night, and evidently serving to illuminate towns
and cities that lay beneath.

We pushed on into the night for two or three hundred miles over that part
of the continent of Chryse whose inhabitants were doubtless enjoying
the deep sleep that accompanies the dark hours immediately preceding
the dawn. Still everywhere splendid clusters of light lay like fallen
constellations upon the ground, indicating the sites of great towns,
which, like those of the earth, never sleep.

But this scene, although weird and beautiful, could give us little of
the kind of information we were in search of.

Accordingly it was resolved to turn back eastward until we had arrived
in the twilight space sepa