y came from the moon, and some from the far-away stars. But of
these things my forefathers knew nothing for a certainty."

"The destroyers showed no mercy to the inhabitants of the beautiful
valley. Not content with making it a desert, they swept over other parts
of the earth."

"The tradition says that they carried off from the valley, which was
our native land, a large number of our people, taking them first into
a strange country, where there were oceans of sand, but where a great
river, flowing through the midst of the sands, created a narrow land of
fertility. Here, after having slain and driven out the native inhabitants,
they remained for many years, keeping our people, whom they had carried
into captivity, as slaves."

"And in this Land of Sand, it is said, they did many wonderful works."

"They had been astonished at the sight of the great mountains which
surrounded our valley, for on Mars there are no mountains, and after
they came into the Land of Sand they built there with huge blocks of
stone mountains in imitation of what they had seen, and used them for
purposes that our people did not understand."

"Then, too, it is said they left there at the foot of these mountains
that they had made a gigantic image of the great chief who led them in
their conquest of our world."

At this point in the story the Heidelberg Professor again broke in,
fairly trembling with excitement:

The Wonders of the Martians!

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he cried, "is it that you do not understand? This
Land of Sand and of a wonderful fertilizing river--what can it
be? Gentlemen, it is Egypt! These mountains of rock that the Martians
have erected, what are they? Gentlemen, they are the great mystery of the
land of the Nile, the Pyramids. The gigantic statue of their leader that
they at the foot of their artificial mountains have set up--gentlemen,
what is that? It is the Sphinx!"

The Professor's agitation was so great that he could go no further. And
indeed there was not one of us who did not fully share his excitement. To
think that we should have come to the planet Mars to solve one of the
standing mysteries of the earth, which had puzzled mankind and defied
all their efforts at solution for so many centuries! Here, then, was
the explanation of how those gigantic blocks that constitute the great
Pyramid of Cheops had been swung to their lofty elevation. It was not the
work of puny man, as many an engineer had declared that