er it if they had eaten them, or
if in any other way the plants could have entered their bodies; but I
see no way in which that can have happened."

Resolving to investigate carefully any other fungi they might see, they
resumed their march. The cold, distant-looking sun, apparently about
the size of an orange, was near the horizon. Saturn's rotation on its
axis occupying only ten hours and fourteen minutes, being but a few
minutes longer than Jupiter's, they knew it would soon be night.
Finding a place on a range of hills sheltered by rocks and a clump of
trees of the evergreen species, they arranged themselves as comfortably
as possible, ate some of the sandwiches they had brought, lighted their
pipes, and watched the dying day. Here were no fire-flies to light the
darkening minutes, nor singing flowers to lull them to sleep with their
song but six of the eight moons, each at a different phase, and with
varied brightness, bathed the landscape in their pale, cold rays; while
far above them, like a huge rainbow, stretched the great rings in
effulgent sheets, reaching thousands of miles into space, and flooded
everything with their silvery light.

"How poor a place compared with this," they thought to themselves, "is
our world!" and Ayrault wished that his soul was already free; while
the dead leaves rustling in the gentle breeze, and the nightwinds,
sighing among the trees, seemed to echo his thought. Far above their
heads, and in the vastness of space, the well-known stars and
constellations, notwithstanding the enormous distance they had now
come, looked absolutely unchanged, and seemed to them emblematic of
tranquillity and eternal repose. The days were changed by their
shortness, and by the apparent loss of power in the sun; and the
nights, as if in compensation, were magnificently illuminated by the
numerous moons and splendid rings, though neither rings nor satellites
shone with as strong a light as the terrestrial moon. But in nothing
outside of the solar system was there any change; and could AEneas's
Palinurus, or one of Philip of Macedon's shepherds, be brought to life
here, he would see exactly the same stars in the same positions; and,
did he not know of his own death or of the lapse of time, he might
suppose, so far as the heavens were affected, that he had but fallen
asleep, or had just closed his eyes.

"I have always regretted," said Cortlandt, "that I was not born a
thousand years later."

"W