all times chilly, and
men employed out of doors from the fall of the evening to the
dispersal of the morning mists rely on an unusually warm under-dress
of soft leather, as flexible as kid, but thicker, which is said to
keep in the warmth of the body far better than any woven material.
Women who, from whatever reason, venture out at night, wear the
warmest cloaks they can procure. Those of limited means wear a loosely
woven hair or woollen over-robe in lieu of their usual outdoor
garment, resembling tufted cotton. Those who can afford them
substitute for the envelope of down, described a while back, warm skin
or fur overgarments, obtained from the sub-arctic lands and seas, and
furnished sometimes by a creature not very unlike our Polar bear, but
passing half his time in the water and living on fish; sometimes by a
mammal more resembling something intermediate between the mammoth and
the walrus, with the habits of the hippopotamus and a fur not unlike
the sealskin so much affected in Europe.

Outside the city, at a distance protecting it from any unpleasant
vapours, which besides were carried up metallic tubes of enormous
height, were several factories of great extent, some chemical, some
textile, others reducing from their ores, purifying, forging, and
producing in bulk and forms convenient for their various uses, the
numerous metals employed in Mars. The most important of
these--_zorinta_--is obtained from a tenacious soil much resembling
our own clay. [12] It is far lighter than tin, has the colour and
lustre of silver, and never tarnishes, the only rust produced by
oxidation of its surface being a white loose powder, which can be
brushed or shaken off without difficulty. Of this nearly all Martial
utensils and furniture are constructed; and its susceptibility to the
electric current renders it especially useful for mechanical purposes,
electricity supplying the chief if not the sole motive-power employed
in Martial industry. The largest factories, however, employ but a few
hands, the machinery being so perfect as to perform, with very little
interposition from human hands, the whole work, from the first
purification to the final arrangement. I saw a mass of ore as dug out
from the ground put into one end of a long series of machines, which
came out, without the slightest manual assistance, at the close of a
course of operations so directed as to bring it back to our feet, in
the form of a thin sheet of lustrous me