an
kept his promise.

CHAPTER XIII

It was half a day's march from those glittering snow-fields into the
low country, and when that was reached I found myself amongst quite
another people.

The land was no longer fat and flowery, giving every kind of produce
for the asking, but stony for the most part, and, where we first came
on vegetation, overgrown by firs, with a pine which looked to me like a
species which went to make the coal measures in my dear but distant
planet. More than this I cannot say, for there are no places in the
world like mess-room and quarter-deck for forgetting school learning.
Instead of the glorious wealth of parti-coloured vegetation my eyes had
been accustomed to lately, here they rested on infertile stretches of
marshland intersected by moss-covered gravel shoots, looking as though
they had been pushed into the plains in front of extinct glaciers
coming down from the region behind us. On the low hills away from the
sea those sombre evergreen forests with an undergrowth of moss and red
lichens were more variegated with light foliage, and indeed the pines
proved to be but a fringe to the Arctic ice, giving way rapidly to more
typical Martian vegetation each mile we marched to the southward.

As for the inhabitants, they seemed, like my guide, rough, uncouth
fellows, but honest enough when you came to know them. An
introduction, however, was highly desirable. I chanced upon the first
native as he was gathering reindeer-moss. My companion was some little
way behind at the moment, and when the gentle aborigine saw the
stranger he stared hard for a moment, then, turning on his heels, with
extraordinary swiftness flung at me half a pound of hard flint stone.
Had his aim been a little more careful this humble narrative had never
appeared on the Broadway bookstalls. As it was, the pebble, missing my
head by an inch or two, splintered into a hundred fragments on a rock
behind, and while I was debating whether a revengeful rush at the
slinger or a strategic advance to the rear were more advisable, my
guide called out to his countryman--

"Ho! you base prowler in the morasses; you eater of unclean vegetation,
do you not see this is a ghost I am conducting, a dweller in the ice
cliffs, a spirit ten thousand years old? Put by your sling lest he
wither you with a glance." And, very reasonably, surprised, the
aborigine did as he was bid and cautiously advanced to inspect me.

The news soon