hey oscillated on their axes. The wheels were supplemented
by aeroplanes, resembling huge outspreading wings, inclined at an
angle, so that their forward rush upon the air supported the ship.
They revolved with great rapidity, being driven by the accumulated
force of a thousand magnic batteries, composed of dry metallic cells,
especially designed for aerial navigation. Very little force was
required to keep the vessel buoyed up in the air, owing to the
diminished gravity.

It was discovered that the rarer metals terrelium and aquelium
developed in contact, without salts or acids, enormous currents of
magnicity without polarization or the development of gases. These
metallic cells would run without attention or maintenance exerting
magnic action, and could be stopped or started at any time without
corrosion of metals or loss of energy, like the electric batteries on
the outer sphere, but infinitely more powerful.

[Illustration: The Gleroseral.]

Aerial navigation was one of the great institutions of Atvatabar, and
the goddess' yacht was only one of many thousand aerial ships that
carried passengers, mails and light freight to and from every part of
the country.

On such a machine as this we purposed travelling a distance of one
thousand miles.

Five hundred miles west of Calnogor lay a range of lofty mountains,
whose peaks pierced the upper strata of cold air. This region was the
breeding-place of fearful storms that occasionally vexed the otherwise
placid climate of the country.

Westward of the mountains, an elevated prairie or tableland extended
for five hundred miles further, broken here and there into crevasses
and canyons, the beds of mighty rivers. Beyond the prairie an irregular
agglomeration of mountains and valleys stretched five hundred miles
further until the ocean was reached which formed the western boundary
of Atvatabar.

Egyplosis, or the sacred palace, stood on an island in a lake lying in
a romantic valley of the central plateau, one thousand miles west of
Calnogor. This was the destination of the _Aeropher_, the goddess
making a special visitation to the palace of hopeless love.

No journey could have begun with better auspices than ours. We soared
up the grand divide, underneath the brilliant sun, which threw the
moving shadow of the ship on the earth beneath.

[Illustration: The Eaglon.]

Captain Lavornal, the inventor of the _Aeropher_, was resolved to
outdo all former records in aeri