n, his moons
and rings. I will carry you to the verge of the immense atmosphere of
this planet. In that space you will see sufficient to wonder at, and far
more than with your present organisation it would be possible for me to
make you understand." I was again in motion, and again almost as
suddenly at rest. I saw below me a surface infinitely diversified,
something like that of an immense glacier covered with large columnar
masses, which appeared as if formed of glass, and from which were
suspended rounded forms of various sizes, which, if they had not been
transparent, I might have supposed to be fruit. From what appeared to me
to be analogous to masses of bright blue ice, streams of the richest tint
of rose-colour or purple burst forth and flowed into basins, forming
lakes or seas of the same colour. Looking through the atmosphere towards
the heavens, I saw brilliant opaque clouds of an azure colour that
reflected the light of the sun, which had to my eyes an entirely new
aspect, and appeared smaller, as if seen through a dense blue mist. I
saw moving on the surface below me immense masses, the forms of which I
find it impossible to describe; they had systems for locomotion similar
to those of the morse or sea-horse, but I saw with great surprise that
they moved from place to place by six extremely thin membranes, which
they used as wings. Their colours were varied and beautiful, but
principally azure and rose-colour. I saw numerous convolutions of tubes,
more analogous to the trunk of the elephant than to anything else I can
imagine, occupying what I supposed to be the upper parts of the body, and
my feeling of astonishment almost became one of disgust, from the
peculiar character of the organs of these singular beings; and it was
with a species of terror that I saw one of them mounting upwards,
apparently flying towards those opaque clouds which I have before
mentioned. "I know what your feelings are," said the Genius; "you want
analogies and all the elements of knowledge to comprehend the scene
before you. You are in the same state in which a fly would be whose
microscopic eye was changed for one similar to that of man; and you are
wholly unable to associate what you now see with your former knowledge.
But those beings who are before you, and who appear to you almost as
imperfect in their functions as the zoophytes of the Polar Sea, to which
they are not unlike in their apparent organisation to your eyes