an equable
climate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During this year my father
heard that Prof. Hertz of Berlin had generated waves of magnetism and
that it was hoped that these might ultimately prove efficacious as a
means of direct communication between distant points without the
introduction of wire conductors.

This thought of communicating with distant points without fixed
conductors greatly impressed my father and led him along a line of
speculation upon which finally rested my own success in securing the
messages detailed in this book from the planet Mars.

I recall that one evening in the winter of 1881 while he was yet engaged
in making preparations for his departure from the United States to New
Zealand, which he finally chose for the erection of his laboratories,
and especially his observatory, I heard him read with the greatest
satisfaction of the attempt made in the siege of Paris to bring the
besieged French into telegraphic communication with the Provinces by
means of the River Seine.

It was proposed to send powerful currents into the River Seine from
batteries near the German lines and to receive in Paris upon delicate
galvanometers, such an amount of their current as had not leaked away in
the earth. Profs. Desains, Jamin, and Berthelot were interested in these
experiments, although the suggestion had been made by M. Bourbouze, and
after some interruptions when the attempt was to be carried out, the
armistice of Jan. 14, 1871, brought their preparations to a close.

How often my father spoke of these attempts, and half smilingly on one
occasion as we watched the starry skies "thick inlaid with patterns of
bright gold" said to me: "It seems to me within the reach of possibility
to attain some sort of connection with these shining hosts. If we must
assume that the disturbances on the Sun's surface effect magnetic storms
on ours, it is quite evident that a fluid of translatory power or
consistency exists between the earth and the sun, then also between all
the planetary inhabitants of space, and I cannot see why we may not hope
some day to realize a means of communication with these distant bodies.
How inspiring is the thought that in some such way upon the basis of an
absolutely perfect scientific deduction we might be brought into
conversational alliance with these singular and orderly creations, and
actually look upon their scenes and lives and history, and bring to
ourselves in verbal pictures