he dome of a vast cathedral.

"Well, what do you make of it?"

The voice recalled me to myself, and I began to scrutinise the dim and
shadowy border of the terminator for the feeblest ray of light, but all
in vain.

"I can't see any 'luminous projection'; but what a magnificent object in
the telescope!"

"It is indeed," rejoined the professor, "and though we have not many
opportunities of seeing it, we know it better than the other planets,
and almost as well as the moon. Its features have been carefully mapped
like those of the moon, and christened after celebrated astronomers."

"Yourself included, I hope."

"No, sir; I have not that honour. It is true that a man I know, an
enthusiastic amateur in astronomy, dubbed a lot of holes and corners in
the moon after his private friends and acquaintances, myself amongst
them: 'Snook's Crater,' 'Smith's Bottom,' 'Tiddler's Cove,' and so on;
but I regret to say the authorities declined to sanction his
nomenclature."

"I presume that bright spot on the Southern limb is one of the polar
ice-caps," said I, still keeping my eye on the planet.

"Yes," replied the professor, "and they are seen to wax and wane in
winter and summer. The reddish-yellow tracts are doubtless continents of
an ochrey soil; and not, as some think, of a ruddy vegetation. The
greenish-grey patches are probably seas and lakes. The land and water
are better mixed on Mars than on the earth--a fact which tends to
equalise the climate. There is a belt of continents round the equator:
'Copernicus,' 'Galileo,' 'Dawes,' and others, having long winding lakes
and inlets. These are separated by narrow seas from other islands on the
north or south, such as: 'Haze Land, 'Storm Land,' and so forth, which
occupy what we should call the temperate zones, beneath the poles; but I
suspect they are frigid enough. If you look closely you will see some
narrow streaks crossing the continents like fractures. These are the
famous 'Canals' of Schiaparelli, who discovered (and I wish I had his
eyes) that many of them were 'doubled,' that is, had another canal
alongside. Some of these are nearly 2,000 miles long, by fifty miles
broad, and 300 miles apart."

"That beats the Suez Canal."

"I am afraid they are not artificial. The doubling is chiefly observed
at the vernal equinox, our month of May, and is perhaps due to spring
floods, or vegetation in valleys of the like trend, as we find in
Siberia. The massing of clouds or m