_. [The only essential difference from our photographs being
that the Martial art reproduces colour as well as outline, I omit this
description.]

While I was practising myself in the Martial language my host turned
our experimental conversations chiefly, if not exclusively, upon
Terrestrial subjects; endeavouring to learn all that I could convey to
him of the physical peculiarities of the Earth, of geology, geography,
vegetation, animal life in all its forms, human existence, laws,
manners, social and domestic order. Afterwards, when, at the end of
some fifty days, he found that we could converse, if not with ease yet
without fear of serious misapprehension, he took an early opportunity
of explaining to me the causes and circumstances of my unfriendly
reception among his people.

"Your size and form," he said, "startled and surprised them. I gather
from what you have told me that on Earth there are many nations very
imperfectly known to one another, with different dress, language, and
manners. This planet is now inhabited by a single race, all speaking
the same tongue, using much the same customs, and differing from one
another in form and size much less widely than (I understand) do men
upon your Earth. There you might have been taken for a visitor from
some strange and unexplored country. Here it was clear that you were
not one of our race, and yet it was inconceivable what else you could
be. We have no giants; the tallest skeleton preserved in our museums
is scarcely a hand's breadth taller than myself, and does not, of
course, approach to your stature. Then, as you have pointed out, your
limbs are longer and your chest smaller in proportion to the rest of
the body; probably because, as you seem to say, your atmosphere is
denser than ours, and we require ampler lungs to inhale the quantity
of air necessary at each breath for the oxidation of the blood. Then
you were not dumb, and yet affected not to understand our language and
to speak a different one. No such creature could have existed in this
planet without having been seen, described, and canvassed. You did
not, therefore, belong to us. The story you told by signs was quickly
apprehended, and as quickly rejected as an audacious impossibility. It
was an insult to the intelligence of your hearers, and a sufficient
ground for suspecting a being of such size and physical strength of
some evil or dangerous design. The mob who first attacked you were
probably only p