he sites of great
towns, which, like those of the earth never sleep.

But this scene, although weird and beautiful, could give us little of
the kind of information of which we were in search.

Accordingly it was resolved to turn back eastward until we had arrived
in the twilight space separating day and night, and then hover over the
planet at that point, allowing it to turn beneath us so that, as we
looked down, we should see in succession the entire circuit of the globe
of Mars while it rolled under our eyes.

The rotation of Mars on its axis is performed in a period very little
longer than the earth's rotation, so that the length of the day and
night in the world of Mars is only some forty minutes longer than their
length upon the earth.

In thus remaining suspended over the planet, on the line of daybreak, so
to speak, we believed that we should be peculiarly safe from detection
by the eyes of the inhabitants. Even astronomers are not likely to be
wide awake just at the peep of dawn. Almost all of the inhabitants, we
confidently believed, would still be sound asleep upon that part of the
planet passing directly beneath us, and those who were awake would not
be likely to watch for unexpected appearances in the sky.

Besides, our height was so great that notwithstanding the numbers of the
squadron, we could not easily be seen from the surface of the planet,
and if seen at all we might be mistaken for high-flying birds.

Here we remained then through the entire course of twenty-four hours and
saw in succession as they passed from night into day beneath our feet
the land of Chryse, the great continent of Tharsis, the curious region
of intersecting canals which puzzled astronomers on the earth had named
the "Gordian Knot." The continental lands of Memnonia, Amozonia and
Aeolia, the mysterious center where hundreds of vast canals came
together from every direction, called the Triviun Charontis; the vast
circle of Elysium, a thousand miles across, and completely surrounded by
a broad green canal; the continent of Libya, which, as I remembered, had
been half covered by a tremendous inundation whose effects were visible
from the earth in 1889, and finally the long, dark sea of the Syrtis
Major, lying directly south of the land of Hellas.

The excitement and interest which we all experienced were so great that
not one of us took a wink of sleep during the entire twenty-four hours
of our marvelous watch.

There are on