e dry plates. It is a curious thing to learn that for
100 years these records and pictures have been taken, and that there
are on Mars hosts of unidentified spirits, who entered its wondrous
precincts before that time.

"The duration of life in Mars is very various. There seems here an
undiscovered law, and a group of observers in Mars are to-day trying to
penetrate this mystery. It is asserted that there is evidence that
Egyptians of the ante-Christian epoch are to-day living in Mars, but
their identification is now almost impossible. On the other hand, it is
a fact ascertained and recorded that in one hundred years many Martians
die, while others scarcely survive the ordinary limit of our human life
on earth. This gives a great interest to Martian society. Here for ages
have possibly flown disembodied spirits from our earth; in their
reincarnation they have assumed the features and faculties of youth;
they have also, under changed conditions of life, and moderated
functions and activity in living, been physically, perhaps mentally,
modified. Their own memory of their past on Earth, however vivid, and
then in exceptional beings, has slowly disappeared or left only vague
cloud-like waverings and congeries of reminiscences.

"So that great human souls that have entered Mars in the early centuries
of our earth's historic periods may be living here almost unrecognized.
They have drifted into occupations suitable to their genius in some of
the many great cities, and no vestige of their past remains. The system
of the Registeries is scarcely a century old, and while now from the
marvellous industry and persistence of the investigators, the great ones
of the neighboring worlds, and even the most obscure are in some
cognizable way identified, yet from the long ages before that there is
almost no authentic registration.

"This is more to be regretted as the law of life on the planet might
then be better formulated. Essentially it seems necessary for existence
here to be in unison with the conditions; contentment means longevity.
Of course, the remarkable men and women I saw at the Patenta were all
well known. They had made themselves known, and not only were their
earthly names and lives put down on the pages of the Registers, but all
their knowledge had been as inquisitively and scrupulously impressed.
Nor is this all. From many worlds and earths there is flowing constantly
to this planet new, strange, wonderful beings. Here