uld not
reveal the Callisto moving about in Jupiter's sunshine, as even a point
of light, at that distance, and, notwithstanding Cortlandt's learning
and Bearwarden's joviality, he felt at times extremely lonely.

They swept along steadily for fifty hours, having bright sunny days and
beautifully moonlit nights. They passed over finely rounded hills and
valleys and well-watered plains. As they approached the ocean and its
level the temperature rose, and there was more moisture in the air.
The plants and flowers also increased in size, again resembling
somewhat the large species they had seen near the equator.

"This would be the place to live," said Bearwarden, looking at iron
mountains, silver, copper, and lead formations, primeval forests, rich
prairies, and regions evidently underlaid with coal and petroleum, not
to mention huge beds of aluminum clay, and other natural resources,
that made his materialistic mouth water. "It would be joy and delight
to develop industries here, with no snow avalanches to clog your
railroads, or icy blizzards to paralyze work, nor weather that blights
you with sun-strokes and fevers. On our return to the earth we must
organize a company to run regular interplanetary lines. We could start
on this globe all that is best on our own. Think what boundless
possibilities may be before the human race on this planet, which on
account of its vast size will be in its prime when our insignificant
earth is cold and dead and no longer capable of supporting life! Think
also of the indescribable blessing to the congested communities of
Europe and America, to find an unlimited outlet here! Mars is already
past its prime, and Venus scarcely habitable, but in Jupiter we have a
new promised land, compared with which our earth is a pygmy, or but
little more than microscopic."

"I see," said Ayrault, "that the possibilities here have no limit; but
I do not see how you can compare it to the promised land, since, till
we undertook this journey, no one had even thought of Jupiter as a
habitable place."

"I trace the Divine promise," replied Bearwarden, "in what you
described to us on earth as man's innate longing and desire to rise,
and in the fact that the Almighty has given the race unbounded
expansiveness in very limited space. This would look to me as the
return of man to the garden of Eden through intellectual development,
for here every man can sit under his own vine and fig-tree."

"It se