s of the Martial night as should not be
employed in setting my vessel in order and preparing to evacuate it. I
should have to ascertain exactly the pressure of the Martial
atmosphere, so as not to step too suddenly from a dense into what was
probably a very light one. If possible, I intended to land upon the
summit of a mountain, so high as to be untenanted and of difficult
access. At the same time it would not do to choose the highest point
of a very lofty range, since both the cold and the thinness of the air
might in such a place be fatal. I wished, of course, to leave the
Astronaut secure, and, if not out of reach, yet not within easy reach;
otherwise it would have been a simple matter to watch my opportunity
and descend in the dark from my first landing-place by the same means
by which I had made the rest of my voyage.

At 18h. I was within 8000 miles of the surface, and could observe Mars
distinctly as a world, and no longer as a star. The colour, so
remarkable a feature in his celestial appearance, was almost equally
perceptible at this moderate elevation. The seas are not so much blue
as grey. Masses of land reflected a light between yellow and orange,
indicating, as I thought, that orange must be as much the predominant
colour of vegetation as green upon Earth. As I came still lower, and
only parts of the disc were visible at once, and these through the
side and end windows, this conviction was more and more strongly
impressed upon my mind. What, however, was beyond denial was, that if
the polar ice and snow were not so purely and distinctly white as they
appear at a distance upon Earth, they were yet to a great extent
devoid of the yellow tinge that preponderated everywhere else. The
most that could be said was, that whereas on Earth the snow is of that
white which we consider absolute, and call, as such, snow-white, but
which really has in it a very slight preponderance of blue, upon Mars
the polar caps are rather cream-white, or of that white, so common in
our flowers, which has in it an equally slight tinge of yellow. On the
shore, or about twenty miles from the shore of the principal sea to
the southward of the equator, and but a few degrees from the equator
itself, I perceived at last a point which appeared peculiarly suitable
for my descent. A very long range of mountains, apparently having an
average height of about 14,000 feet, with some peaks of probably twice
or three times that altitude, stretched f