r such an
excursion as you propose."

"Then," I said, "will Eveena still wish to share it?"

Even her mother's face seemed to ask what in the world that could
matter; but a movement of the daughter's veiled head reminded me that
I was blundering; and pressing her little hand as she lay beside me, I
took her compliance for granted.

The morning mist had given place to hot bright sunshine when we
started. At first our road lay between enclosures like that which
surrounded Esmo's dwelling.

Presently the lines were broken here and there by such fields as I had
seen in descending from Asnyca; some filled with crops of human food,
some with artificial pastures, in which Unicorns or other creatures
were feeding. I saw also more than one field wherein the _carvee_ were
weeding or gathering fruit, piling their burdens in either case as
soon as their beaks were full into bags or baskets. Pointing out to
Eveena the striking difference of colour between the cultivated fields
and gardens and the woods or natural meadows on the mountain sides, I
learned from her that this distinction is everywhere perceptible in
Mars. Natural objects, plants or animals, rocks and soil, are for the
most part of dimmer, fainter, or darker tints than on Earth; probably
owing to the much less intense light of the Sun; partly, perhaps, to
that absorption of the blue rays by the atmosphere, which diminishes,
I suppose, even that light which actually reaches the planet. But
uncultivated ground, except on the mountains above the ordinary range
of crops or pastures, scarcely exists in the belt of Equatorial
continents; the turf itself, like the herbage or fruit shrubs in the
fields, is artificial, consisting of plants developed through long
ages into forms utterly unlike the native original by the skill and
ingenuity of man. Even the great fruit trees have undergone material
change, not only in the size, flavour, and appearance of the fruits
themselves, which have been the immediate object of care, but,
probably through some natural correlation between, the different
organs, in the form and colour of the foliage, the arrangement of the
branches, and the growth of the trunk, all of which are much more
regular, and, so to speak, more perfect, than is the case either here
or on Earth with those left to the control of Nature and locality, or
the effects of the natural competition, which is in its way perhaps as
keen among plants and animals as among men. Ma