f Borneo and Madagascar to
that of Sicily and Corsica, while some contained but a few square
miles. The surface of the archipelago was about equally divided
between land and water.

"It would take good navigation or an elaborate system of light-houses,"
said Bearwarden, "for a captain to find the shortest course through
these groups."

The islands were covered with shade trees much resembling those on
earth, and the leaves on many were turning yellow and red, for this
hemisphere's autumn had already begun.

"The Jovian trees," said Cortlandt, "can never cease to bear, though
the change of seasons is evidently able to turn their colour, perhaps
by merely ripening them. When a ripe leaf falls off, its place is
doubtless soon taken by a bud, for germination and fructification go on
side by side."

Before leaving, they decided to name this Twentieth Century
Archipelago, since so much of the knowledge appertaining to it had been
acquired in their own day. At latitude sixty the northern arms of the
two continents came within fifteen hundred miles of each other. The
eastern extension was split like the tail of a fish, the great bay
formed thereby being filled with islands, which also extended about
half of the distance across. The western extremity shelved very
gradually, the sand-bars running out for miles just below the surface
of the water.

After this the travellers flew northward at great speed in the upper
regions of the air, for they were anxious to hasten their journey.
They found nothing but unbroken sea, and not till they reached latitude
eighty-seven was there a sign of ice. They then saw some small bergs
and field ice, but in no great quantities. As their outside
thermometer, when just above the placid water--for there were no waves
here--registered twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit, they accounted for this
scarcity of ice by the absence of land on which fresh water could
freeze, and by the fact that it was not cold enough to congeal the very
salt sea-water.

Finally they reached another archipelago a few hundred miles in extent,
the larger islands of which were covered with a sheet of ice, at the
edges of which small icebergs were being formed by breaking off and
slowly floating. Finding a small island on which the coating was thin,
they grounded the Callisto, and stepped out for the first time in
several days. The air was so still that a small piece of paper
released at a height of six feet sank slo