llar supporting the polar axis of an
instrument widely differing from our telescopes, especially in the
fact that it had no opaque tube connecting the essential lenses which
we call the eye-piece and the object-glass, names not applicable to
their Martial substitutes. On my visit to the Observatory, however, I
had not leisure to examine minutely the means by which the images of
stars and planets were produced. I reserved this examination for a
second opportunity, which, as it happened, never occurred.

On this occasion Eveena and Eunane were with me, and the astronomic
pictures which were to be presented to us, and which they could enjoy
and understand almost as fully as myself, sufficiently occupied our
time. Warned to stand at such a distance from the central machinery
that in a whole revolution no part of it could by any possibility
touch us, we were placed near an opening looking into a dark chamber,
with our backs to the objects of observation. In this chamber, not
upon a screen but suspended in the air, presently appeared an image
several thousand times larger than that of the crescent Moon as seen
through a tube small enough to correct the exaggeration of visual
instinct. It appeared, however, not flat, as does the Moon to the
naked eye, but evidently as part of a sphere. At some distance was
shown another crescent, belonging to a sphere whose diameter was a
little more than one-fourth that of the former. The light reflected
from their surfaces was of silver radiance, rather than the golden hue
of the Moon or of Venus as seen through a small telescope. The smaller
crescent I could recognise at once as belonging to our own satellite;
the larger was, of course, the world I had quitted. So exactly is the
clockwork or its substitute adapted to counteract both the rotation
and revolution of Mars, that the two images underwent no other change
of place than that caused by their own proper motion in space; a
movement which, notwithstanding the immense magnifying power employed,
was of course scarcely perceptible. But the rotation of the larger
sphere was visible as we watched it. It so happened that the part
which was at once lighted by the rays of the Sun and exposed to our
observation was but little clouded. The atmosphere, of course,
prevented its presenting the clear, sharply-defined outlines of lunar
landscapes; but sea and land, ice and snow, were so clearly defined
and easily distinguishable that my companions exc