From Cassell's Family Magazine, 1887. Dates were not printed in
the bound volume collecting the magazine, but evidence in some of the other
articles suggests issues from February to July.
Contributors were not named,
but it seems likely that the author was Wladyslaw Somerville Lach-Szyrma
(1841-1915), author of Aleriel; or a Voyage to Other Worlds. The artist
was Paul Hardy (1862-19??). The heading changed slightly with each part.

part 1

Letters From The Planets.

By Our Roving Commissioner.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.
A DISCOVERY.

NE fine morning, not being pressed with
business, I resolved on a walk on Penmor to see some archeological remains which
had been recently discovered there, and which, though I had already once
visited, yet I had never properly inspected. It was a fine, cheery May morn. The
dew was on the heather; the golden gorse looked bright in the glowing sunshine.

As I left the last cottage and granite hedge, and pushed out into wild
nature, I do not know how it was but thoughts did come before my mind of that
stranger from another world who once on that very moorland had shown himself to
me, and told me strange things that seemed still as a dream. Where was he? Had
he remembered me? The letter I had received, that he had last been seen in
Switzerland (on his second visit in 1883), on the Jungfrau, was in my pocket. I
read it over. It was manifestly no mere delusion of mine, but there had been a
visit not only of one, but of three visitors from a sister world to our planet.*
I wonder if three people could be deceived into a common fancy that they had
talked beings not of the earth earthy, and yet not spirits, but of material
bodies, and in some degree human
* See "Aleriel; or a
Voyage to Other Worlds," pp, 203-213.

As I walked on in the bright sunlight, other thoughts came on me, and I began
to turn my mind to the subject of my search, the newly-discovered cromlech. I
need not detain my readers with the account of the cromlech, a description of
which is to be given in a paper in a London archaeological society. All I will
say is that it was very interesting, and deserved my walk.

As the day was very pleasant, I resolved to go on further to the Nine
Maidens, a circle which old antiquaries used to call Druidical, but which it is
now the fashion to consider as the border of an antique sepulechral barrow. I
mounted the ridge on which it stood, and looked for a moment on the glorious
view of sea and moorland. Then stepping up to the circle, I was struck by the
fact that the eastern stone — a huge, flat granite block — had been broken in
two, and in part pulverised by some tremendous force, like the explosion of
dynamite, or the blow from a heavy cannon-ball.

What a mischievous age this is!" I cried aloud— Even these granite blocks are
not safe. Some wretched miner has blown up the slab with dynamite." But on
examination it hardly looked like an explosion, but the blow from some powerful
projectile that had shashed the slab.

I was going away disheartened at the mischievous propensities of our age,
which are destroying some of our most valuable ancient Cornish monuments, when I
noticed a few yards off a small slanting tunnel (in the ground, and apparemly
cutting into the solid granite rock) of a few inches diameter. I approached it,
and pushed into it with my stick as far as I could, but in vain; I could feel no
bottom; then I tried to look into it, but it was all gloom. Could it be
connected with the smashed slab? I took the measures. It was exactly such as a
projectile striking the slab would pierce into the earth. What could it be?
Could it by any means be connected with the mysterious friend I had met on the
moor? I was burning with curiosity, but alone could do nothing, so unwillingly I
had to return home to think over this curious discovery.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.
A STRANGE
LETTER-BOX.

AFTER dinner I resolved to go down to the village and seek the aid
of Thomas Tremeer, an intelligent miner, to work out the problem with me. I
found Tremeer at home.

"Do you know;" I asked. "that the east stone of the Nine Maidens is smashed
up?"

"Don't you say so, Sir! It must have been a hard job to them as did it; but
you can't tell what chaps will do with dynamite nowadays."

"But the odd thing is that it looks as if it was hit off—not blown off."

"You don't say so, sir! What can it be?"

"Well, Tom," I said, "suppose you and I go up and see for ourselves; you take
a pick and a couple of dynamite cartridges, and we'll see into it."

Tom promised to go with me on the search.

I had a sleepless night, wondering over my discovery.

The morning came at length, and after breakfast I found Tom in the kitchen
ready for the trip, with his pick, borer, and, I presumed, cartridges. We
started for the walk, chatting over the little gossip of the village; but as we
approached Penmor. I grew more and more anxious and interested, and found a
difficulty in talking of anything. We seemed to get on so slowly over the
surface granite. In time, however, we were there. Tom examined the place. To his
practised eye it was clear that no dynamite explosion had done the damage, but
that it was the work of some projectile which had embedded itself in the rock.
Without discussing the possibility of such a theory (as I suppose on some
philosophers' principles we ought to have done), we set to work to open up the
mysterious little adit or tunnel. It was tough work, for beyond a thin layer of
turf there was solid granite. The dynamite cartridges had to be used, and I with
Tom got under a projecting rock some yards distant for the explosions. At length
the tunnel was opened out for about three yards, and then Tom, with his borer,
released from the rock a curious conical bolt of steel, on which, to my utter
astonishment, I saw deeply indented, in clear Roman letters, my name and
address.

Tom read them "It is for you, sir, certainly," he said, "but who can have put
it here?"

I told him whom I suspected, and the wonderful story of Aleriel and his visit
to our parts. He looked amazed and somewhat frightened, but I told him it was no
witchcraft, for my singular friend was not at all wicked, but seemingly very
good and pious, though certainly in a strange way. However, I took the bolt, and
looked over it for an opening. The thicker part had a sort of red seal of lead
upon it. This, I thought, was the opening. With the aid of the pick we pulled it
off, and then inside we found a crystal cone, of about three inches diameter,
embedded in the steel projectile. This cone I pulled out, and in the crystal I
noticed two folded letters separately buried in it. I did not like to break the
crystal at once, so I resolved to take it home and examine it.

I came home and examined the crystal carefully. it was evidently a solid
block of something like glass, into which the letters had been placed when in a
molten state, and they, therefore, could not possibly be reached without
breaking the crystal into pieces. After some scruples I broke it with a bar of
iron, and the letters fell at my feet, and I found each of them addressed to me,
and the word Aleriel written across each address.

I opened the first. It contained a curious tale, which I here give : an
account of an ancient lunar city.

The
Post-Office

LETTER THE FIRST.
A RUINED CITY IN THE
MOON.

Central cone of Mount Aristarchus

As we approached your satellite, the moon, we selected the ring-mountain
Arzachel, in the Great Crater Chain, for our landing-place. It was a grand and
awful scene of desolation; my companions were struck by its still grandeur. It
was night, and the stars shone like brilliant points in the black sky; while the
earth moved as a majestic globe, shining with it's pale earthlight on the
terrific precipices and cliffs of Arzachel. We waited here an earth-day, and
then suddenly the glorious sun lighted up one of the loftiest peaks of
Ptolemoeus in sight in the distance; then peak on peak was illumined. The
intense cold of that worse than Arctic night was succeeded by burning heat. The
mighty sun soon blazed upon the awful gorges and clefts of the mountain, and it
was day.

We looked around us and walked from our ether-car down the rugged slopes of
Arzachel. Suddenly a block of stone perfectly squared caught my attention.

"Can that be a work of nature?" I said. "It looks wrought by industry."

Ezariel examined it and said, "It may be true, then, as our sages suppose,
that this dead world has once been the abode of intelligent immortal spirits
enshrined in corporeal bodies. Is it only a used-up, a ruined, a destroyed
world? Are these vast and terrible mountain ranges only memorials of the vast
convulsions that once destroyed life here?"

We agreed to search, if not for living beings (for none such even of a low
type seemed to survive upon the lunar surface), at least for remains of
intelligences that once may have dwelt there. We searched Arzachel for about
three earth-days, but found nothing. It was terrible to walk on a world that one
had thought had never known life, but still more awful to traverse one where
life had been, but had become extinct.

A
Moonscape

Finding nothing more on Arzachel, we agreed to proceed to Ptolemoeus. But in
vain; there were no signs of life having existed there. So we went thence over
the Sinus Æstuum to the great circle of Copernicus.

At length, here, near the central cone of Copernicus, I noticed a massive
rock, which seemed smoothed by something more than the volcano or the
earthquake. I drew near it. It was the opening of a cavern. I entered it, and,
causing light to shine around me, followed by my companions, I pierced its
depths. Along the wall we traced on either side quaint and curious figures,
evidently chiseled and not the work of nature, and strange hieroglyphs cut into
the rock. I cannot describe to you these lunar caverns and their sculptures.
They had apparently been saved from the great catastrophe. They were very quaint
and unearthly, but perhaps depicting scenes on the lunar surface when seas and
perhaps continents existed there, and living beings dwelt upon the moon. They
showed intelligence, but were inferior to your better and more civilised works
on earth. If I could liken them to anything I have seen on earth, it would be
the buried cities of Yucatan or the vestiges of the Peruvians.

Those American remains also were records of lost nations, but these of a lost
race — a race that had died out or been extinguished on this now dead world.

When we had copied these strange designs by photography, we emerged from the
cavern into the bright sunlight. Then around the cavern I thought I could trace
terraces and Cyclopean rocks piled onto the walls of an ancient city of this
lunar race which had passed away for ever.

"Thus," I cried, "perchance in ages to come may travelers in space, visitors
from another planet, wander over the earth, and wonder at the ruins of London or
of Paris and the remnant of man's civilisation, and conjecture what kind of
being man could have been when he lived upon the earth, and what sort of world
the earth could have been in the ages when it was fit for supporting life."

There they stood, those massive walls of the Copernican city, rent and torn
by physical forces of destruction, yet showing that even once in that wild
region intelligent life had been.

After we had examined these remains, we proceeded to the grand mountain
Aristarchus, glowing in the sunlight with its huge white cliffs. We have
searched this region also. It a gorge of Aristarchus, perched on a ledge in the
rock, I traced the relics of another city, in a better condition than the first:
long broken walls of white stone, terraces well built, but broken in may places,
the debris of ruined towers, streets upon streets vaguely marked in ruins,
squares, Cyclopean edifices could dimly be traced. Amid the fractured stones
were curious pieces of wrought stone quaintly cut, which might have been
ornaments of the Lunarians.

"Here, even here," I cried, "once has been life. It is a dead world now - a
desolate realm of death, but it is only a world in which life has been
extinguished. Who were the Lunarians? what was their form? were they like men,
or of what class and order in creation?" No answer could I find to these
questions. The shadows of the lunar night suddenly closed in. The white peaks
turned black, the earth shone forth in the starry sky, and intense frost bound
all things. The lunar night had begun. Farewell!

ALERIEL

part 2

Letters From The Planets

LETTER THE SECOND.
IN THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS OF
MARS.

Mount Aristarchus
On The
Moon.

EAR FRIEND,— I have thought of
mentioning to you one of the sights I saw on Mars, which may interest you, and
be of use as suggesting what man might effect if only he learnt wisdom. Your
Arctic regions are useless; left to the Polar bear, or the whale and walrus.
Man's dominion does not extend to them, even to those realms nearest to the most
cultured lands of Europe. As for your Antarctic regions, your actually know less
of them than of the Antarctic realms of Mars, for these you can see in your most
powerful telescopes — you can at least discern the outlines of land and sea. But
of the Antarctic realms of the earth no man can tell whether they are land or
sea, whether the Antarctic continent is a fable or a fact, though probably the
former.

When I arrived at the Mitchell Mountains, in the Antarctic zone of Mars, I
was struck with the vast scene of icy desolation there — very like the mountain
regions of Greenland, only that the sea around was green and not blue. After
traversing some hundreds of miles of their snowy peaks and cliffs, and
magnificent wild Arctic scenery (not unlike the Arctic scenery on earth), I was
suddenly struck with the sight of a trail of rich red vegetation of several
miles in the midst of the eternal snows. I approached with curiosity this oasis
in the frozen desert. As I approached I felt the air suddenly grow less icy, or
rather the icy blasts were relieved by warmer air currents, and these currents
seemed to rise from what appeared to be a huge crater of a volcano (very like
the volcanoes of earth or the extinct ring of mountains of the moon, and on a
smaller scale, like our ring mountains). "Surely," I thought, "here is volcanic
action." Still I noticed no eruption, nor geysers, nor lava current.

The night came on. The Martian moon Phoibos was dimly visible near the
horizon. All else was dark and calm, save the stars above. From an opening in
the mountain, in the very centre of the warmer oasis, a light issued; not the
ruddy light of molten lava, nor sulfurous flickering flame, but the calm white
electric light. It appeared issuing from the ground. I approached, and then saw
it came from a vast chasm, which, however, was not opened perpendicularly down
into the depths, but seemingly sloped downwards into an angle. As I drew near, I
noticed some hundreds of Martians busy about the opening.

It was difficult to enter the chasm without being perceived, but as I noticed
the electric light only illumined well the lower part of the slope — i.e., that
near the ground — and that the overhanging rocks were at a great height in
comparative darkness, I resolved to make the attempt.

I flew in the shadow right into the tunnel, Then I felt the air was warmer,
and as I went on, going onward and onward, it grew warmer and warmer still. I
flew forward thus several miles, the tunnel manifestly sinking deeper and deeper
by its decline in the slope. The light was less, and the electric lamps grew
further and further apart. By them, however, I noticed cars of the Martians
hurried forward into the tunnel, and descended by it deeper and deeper into the
planet's interior. It was, in fact like a huge adit of a colossal mine.

I
Came To A Gigantic Cavern

So I thought for a time that it might be, until having gone some ten miles
into the huge tunnel, and I should think some three or four miles down into the
depth of the planet, below the level of the Arctic Sea, I came to a gigantic
cavern about a mile high, and the limits of which I could not see on any side.
Before me was a huge lake of evidently half-boiling water, through which there
flowed a stream of burning lave, or rather that liquid rock which in Mars
represents the lava of the earth. Through this lake there was a huge causeway,
on which the Martian cars were carried onwards with their living freight. I flew
onwards over the lake, and there on its dark steaming waters were the electric
ships of the Martians, while in certain places lighthouses were placed, which
gave with the blaze of their electric lights a calm to a scene which otherwise
might have been terrible. I followed the line of the causeway, and came at last
to a shore, where there was a well-illuminated city.

Here were hosts of factories, of vast machines, of smelting operations, of
huge furnaces, deriving heat from the great lava streams issuing out to the
depths of the planet. The air, instead of being cold, was on the surface above,
was heated. Busy works were going on, and myriads of the Martians could be seen
following in the city divers industries. It was a wonderful scene of activity.

When I looked at it, I thought, "Is not this more advanced planet
representing to me what in future ages may be seen in the Arctic regions of the
earth? Those realms are not cold, bound down, and frozen with intense eternal
cold. They are useless to mankind. Yet if the surface be so frozen, it does not
follow that the depths are so likewise. Nay, Hecula itself teaches how beneath
frozen Iceland is a region of eternal fires of burning heat, such as might smelt
all the metals of Birmingham.

"On earth man leave these Arctic regions waste and barren, because he
confines himself to the cold frozen surface; but the Martians are wiser — their
Arctic regions, indeed, are even colder than those on earth, but they can obtain
heat beneath the surface. A few miles below Siberia or Labrador are regions
hotter than man can bear. I have met miners on earth who, in latitudes north of
50 degrees on earth, have told me that in the coldest winters, when the surface
of the earth is frozen and covered with the white snows, they have been so hot
that they have had to labor with their clothes off, almost naked, on account of
the heat. Why not utilize these subterranean fires? Underneath Manchester or
Glasgow, or far colder regions are subterranean fires, more potent than all the
coal of the Lancashire of Straffordshire coal measures could produce. Intense
heat is to be found a mile or two beneath earth's surface. Why should that heat
be all useless? How absurd of man to lament the chimerical trouble that the coal
measures can be exhausted by human industry, when the earth's heat alone offers
a greater heat than the burning up of all the coal measures of their world can
produce; just as the tides of earth's oceans, now utterly wasted, even in
England itself, could produce a thousand times greater power (capable of being
converted into the master-force of electricity) than all the steam-engines of
earth could produce — a mighty, almost immeasurable force!"

In those regions not far from the Mitchell Mountains in the hilly country of
Cassini Land, I saw another quaint scene no less wonderful, which may be
regarded as the natural outcome of the immense power over nature (to mould it to
their will) which the Martians possess, and which man may in time attain when
mechanical arts are further advanced than they are now, should the instinct of
mound-building ever revive on earth. I noticed in those more favoured regions of
the Martian south temperate zone, as I approached Cassini Land over the green
wastes of the Zollner Sea, what looked like colossal statues of gigantic
Martians, several hundred feet high. These enormous statues struck me as very
singular. I approached them and saw that they were natural hills cut into shapes
of gigantic size many times larger than the huge Colossus of Rhodes, or the
figure of Liberty at New York. In one case, indeed, a gigantic crouching figure
was so vast that its head was surmounted with a crown, within the border of
which a little city had been erected. Another hill was cut into the form of one
of the Martian trees, and on each leaf there stood a house, looking like a
flower or bud. In another hill two projecting peaks had been fashioned into two
hands, and in each hand a house had been built. "Here," I thought, "is something
of the state of things that might have even now occurred on earth, had the
present civilized inhabitants shared the desire of moulding hills into the form
of natural objects which once existed among the Mound-builders of Wisconsin and
Ohio. Had those Mound-builders, instead of being exterminated by superior races,
left descendants capable of carrying out their ideas and of utilizing the
steam-engine, and dynamite, and the various forces of civilization, what a
strange land of wonders the Western States of America would have been! Almost as
wonderful as Cassini Land in Mars. But the European builds for himself, as the
ancient American tried to fashion natural objects to his own uses; the European
having conquered, the American ideal has never had a chance of being carried out
on earth."

I saw many wonderful engineering works on Mars — huge canals and causeways,
and coasts rounded of their promontories (blown away by explosives) — such as I
should think the astronomers of earth, if they have not yet seen, must surely
observe before very long.

ALERIEL

part 3

Letters From The Planets

By Our Roving Correspondent

The
Heiroglyphics.

WAITING FOR NEWS.

READ and re-read my strange letters. Should
I ever hear more from my unearthly visitor? How could he again send to me, when
he was some thirty millions of miles off in the planet Venus, or would his
powers reach so far as to transmit to this little spot of earth a bolt such as
he had certainly been able to hurl from Mount Aristarchus on the Moon?

I was much interested in the matter, and often thought of my strange visitor
and his still stranger letters from regions where the foot of man has never
trod. Often also did I go on the moor and look at the curious post-office, the
riven rock, and the debris we had caused round it by the explosion. I searched
the neighbourhood attentively. I examined the rocks and the turf bogs and the
cairns around, but In vain. No sign of change was apparent, no vestige of
violent explosion, nor the launching of bolts with gigantic force, such as I had
seen on the former memorable occasion.

Months passed and there was nothing to be seen. At length I gave up my visits
to the moorlands. It was useless to search for what did not exist, and I gave up
all hopes of hearing more from another world.

NEWS AT LAST.

I had given up all thought of hearing from my unearthly friend, although his
memory often haunted me, and, indeed, will haunt me to my dying day. Things went
on as usual in our peaceful moorland parish. The great world troubled us not,
and save for the news in the daily Plymouth paper, I heard little of it.

Suddenly a strange change came on my home circle, and new vistas of the
realms of space — tens of millions of miles off — opened on my dazzled eyes. It
came in a most unexpected manner, and in a much more commonplace way apparently
than before.

One morning the servant brought me a letter with the post-mark, "Perth,
Western Australia."

The letter was not prepaid, so I had to pay the postage, but the strange
handwriting, a graceful imitation of printing the Latin characters (as of one
who did not know how to write, but imitated printed letters, yet a hand too
refined and cultured to be mistaken for an ignorant person), was too striking to
be mistaken. It was Aleriel's, manifestly.

I took it to my study and broke the seal with trembling hands. Inside,
instead of the letter there was a beautifully painted sheet of heiroglyphs. They
were rather puzzling and tantalising to one who knew but little of the celestial
alphabet. as I did. I looked at and tried to decipher them. They were
exquisitely painted on the delicate sheet of a tissue, such as I had never seen
before.

Let us see if we can make them out.

THE HIEROGLYPHICS.

First, there is a most extraordinary compound symbol. I look at it again and
again, but there is nothing earthly like it, so I have to give it up. It is
manifestly a combination of symbols; perhaps it is a name, possibly of the
sender.

Then next is a little map of Australia; a very good map, too; and in it, near
Perth, in Western Australia, is a red mark. I look at it; perhaps there is the
place from which the messenger has written.

Then there is a little map of Cornwall, neatly done, and a small red cross
close to my neighbourhood. That must mean the place where I reside.

And between the two maps there is a deep, thick, red line, with a knob at the
end towards the Cornish map. What can that mean? Can it be — coming from
Australia to England? Is he coming, indeed?

But there is more : a page drawn in outline, with small heiroglyphs roughly
inscribed on it. What can it be? Is it only a symbol of a letter, i.e., a
tablet containing hieroglyphs?

I read and re-read, as best I could, these symbols. I held them up to the
light, suffered the daylight to be transmitted through them, examined them even
with my botanical microscope. The study was interesting, especially the last
test. The tissue was exquisitely delicate. It might be the skin of some, plant,
if we may call so the vegetation of our sister-world. But there was nothing more
to be learned about what I wanted to know of my strange friend.

At last the thought struck me of examining the envelope. I carefully tore it
open, and there in a corner found, rolled into a very small space, such as could
be put into a filbert-shell, a delicate little packet of a kind of tissue paper.
I opened it with great care, not succeeding, however, in avoiding two or three
rents in the tender, flimsy sheet. I unfolded it at last. It was written over
with what looked like an imitation of Aleriel's handwriting, but not very well
done, as if each letter had been imitated unintelligently. However, in spite of
this and of the rents, I could make out the following strange narrative, an
evident continuation of the letters which I had received from Mount Aristarchus
in our satellite.

LETTER THE THIRD.
THE QUEEN OF BEAUTY, OR PLANET
OF LOVE.

Our journey to our beloved home in Venus was a long and dreary one. As
before, we got on one of the great meteoric systems for part of the way, and
then launched into space (a space now more illumined than before by the
ceaseless blaze of the King of Day — the mighty Sun — far more brilliant in
ether than he seems even at noon on Earth's tropics).

There he shone in that region of eternal day, blazing forth in the cloudless
and pure ether into infinite space, with his burning rays of intense light.
Nearer and nearer we went, brighter and brighter shone the King of Day.

At length the brilliant orb of our beautiful world grew larger than the sun
himself. Then it spread over space as a mighty and gorgeous globe. The seas and
the continents opened up in their soft or brilliant tints of blue and silver,
the table lands with dazzling brightness from their crystal surface reflected
the intense sunlight.*
*The intense brilliancy of some
spots of the surface of Venus are among the problems of planetary astronomy; are
they caused by vast surfaces of crystals or metals?

Nearer and nearer we went. Soon the mountain-peaks, with their serrated
ridges, were in sight, the ring mountains mottled the surface almost like that
of the mountains of the moon, only the clouds and mists gave a certain
earth-look to the scene.

Down, down to the alpine regions of the Antarctic continent we flew, down
homeward.

We descended into the great ring-chain of the Simerian Mountains, in the
centre if which is a lovely lake in which, upon a mountain raised over its fair
surface, is the city of Simeria. Our approach was notice immediately. The
silver-covered towers and spires of Simeria glistened in the sunlight, and as we
drew nearer, blazed forth in every hue of banners, in welcome to us on our
coming. Then over the placid lake there boomed the sound of explosives — not
used by us, anymore than on Mars (in the present enlightened state of that grand
world), for destruction of life (as upon the Earth), but simply for rejoicings.
So the explosions boomed from the silver towers and echoed over the lake to the
great wall of mighty mountains some fifteen, some twenty miles high, which
formed the circle of Simeria.

At length we drew near one of the temple spires and on its summit yoked our
ether car. Then we descended into the great Garden of Simeria, where already the
chiefs of the city were gathering to welcome us.

We descended, and once more touched the surface of our beloved world. The
Simerians welcomed us with songs of greeting, the loud song of triumph burst
from a thousand lips. We were conducted to the great temple of the city, where
we offered our thanksgiving to God who had preserved us through our long
journey.

Then we had a hearty and kindly welcome from our friends, and the chiefs of
the city consulted what should be done I honour of our arrival.

The
Assembly.

It was arranged that we should narrate our adventures publicly to a general
assembly not only of the Simerians, but of those of the neighboring nations who
chose to attend and were interested in the subject of our sister-worlds. The
place where the assembly was to be held was a gorge of the Simerian Mountains,
where the assemblies of that nation are usually held. A day was given for us to
rest and prepare and also for those from afar to come to hear us. The electric
flash had already communicated to all our lands our arrival, and the aerial cars
bore thousands from distant spots to welcome us home and hear the news we had to
bring from distant worlds of space.

Let me explain the object of these assembly-places, which in our world each
nation has for itself. The idea of representative government is a transitional
form of rule suited to the present condition of the Earth, but is not the most
natural, and therefore not the most perfect. The ancient ideal of antique
Europe, of the Greek cities where the demos gathered in the agora, or in wilder
nations where the whole tribe gathered on important occasions, is far truer,
though unsuited to a transitional state like yours. No man can fairly represent
another. Minorities are not really represented on Earth. The ideal of perfect
liberty is that of the antique world of democratic Greece, where each citizen
represents himself, or at least his family. But as time went on, of course, on
Earth, this became impracticable. Assemblies were too large, journeys were
involved when means of locomotion were imperfect. So representation became
desirable, and assemblies of citizens delegated their powers to chosen
representatives, and oligarchies took the place of popular government, or
popular government assumed the form of an oligarchy. But this is by no means
necessary in highly-civilised communities. Where passions are controlled,
quarrels are unlikely, or will be wisely suppressed. As rational beings obtain
control over natural force, locomotion become easy and rapid. The microphone and
telephone convey sound. So really the need of representation ceases. Smaller
business may be handed to chosen committees of specialists, but on important
matters each citizen may personally give his vote. This is our mode of
government a simpler and more natural and therefore a truer one than
representation, but one only suited to small or else to highly-cultured
societies.

So we went (accompanied in triumph by the princes of the nation) to the
assembly-place of the Simerians. It was a magnificent ring-circle inserted in a
gorge of the Simerian Mountains. About four millions of our compatriots were
assembled, ranged along the slopes or on the rock-terraces (improved by art) of
the amphitheatre of the mountains. The scene was impressive, with waving banners
and symbols and the millions of brightly-attired listeners. We stood with the
chiefs of Simeria on a rocky peak in the centre, whence telephones and
microphones communicated all we had to say to the most distant limit of the vast
amphitheatre.

At last the Prince of Simeria signed for silence to the assembly. Then he
spoke thus:—

"Simerians and friends, — our comrades have returned from their long journey
over planetary space. They have seen others worlds than ours, and come to unveil
to us the wonders of the great Creator's works. Who can but wish to hear them
tell what they have seen and where they have been? Let us ask them to narrate
their story. First, what they saw of Earth, then of Mars, then Jupiter, then
Saturn."

The multitude applauded with loud applause, and then were hushed.

ALERIEL

Manuscript here ended. It was evidently but the first page.

part 4

Letters From The Planets. — IV

By Our Roving Correspondent.

We Perceived The Cars Of
The Mercurians Floating In Space.

THE MESSENGER.

WEEK elapsed after the receipt
of this strange letter. On the Saturday night after, I was sitting in my study
writing. My study, I should say, was an attic, under the gable, which I had
chosen for its quietude. As I was writing, suddenly I was startled by a tap at
the window. I got up and looked out into the starlit landscape. There was
nothing visible. "It must be fancy," I thought, so I sat down and began to write
again. As I had just settled to my work again the tap came clearer than before.
Again I arose and looked out. There was nothing visible, except that I thought I
saw something dark floating in the air near the house, over the trees of the
avenue. The thought struck me — "Had the mysterious messenger arrived ? Was my
reading of the hieroglyph correct?"

I resolved what to do in case my mysterious visitant should really be at
hand. I opened the window and waited. Suddenly there passed into the room a form
robed in a dark floating garment. I saw before me an intelligence like Aleriel—a
being of another world — unearthly yet not supernatural.

I was moved deeply. For a moment I did not know what to say. He stood and
looked at me, and then made a wave with his hand, which I conjectured was a
salutation. Then he drew from his robe a scroll marked with the hieroglyph of
Aleriel's name. It was his credential from another world. I looked at it and
said, "Welcome to our world. You are the messenger from whom I received the
letter?"

A soft, sweet, musical voice, sounding as if from far away, answered in
English, "I am."

"Welcome, then, to earth! Welcome for our friend's sake and your own!"

He drew from his robe a packet. In it I found two letters, which I give here.

LETTER THE FOURTH.
THE CAR.

I NEED not relate our speeches — you know already the summary of our
journeys. We gave a day to the description of each world we had visited. The
first day we gave to the Earth, as the world nearest to us. when my comrades
told their impressions of Earth and of mankind, as far as they could judge in
their hasty visit. Then, on the second day, we spoke of the ruddy planet Mars. I
detailed my journey through his divers seas in the electric ship, and they their
travels around his ruddy globe, and the strange cities and wondrous spectacles
of gorgeous grandeur they had seen; and, finally, we spoke of the moon, Phoibos,
where we had rested a while. On the third we spoke of Jupiter, that giant world,
and of his many wonders. The fourth, and last day, we spoke of Saturn and his
rings and satellites, and the many wondrous things we had beheld in that far-off
ringed world.

When the great congress was ended, we proceeded to the City of the Stars,
where we held a great consultation of many days with the learned, who wished to
know all that we had seen in the other worlds of our solar system. Thence we
went to other cities and addressed divers assemblies, and told them of what we
had seen of God's wondrous creation in those far-off worlds which He had made
and we had visited. Wonder and admiration was excited. The things we had brought
with us from the distant planets were examined and discussed. The conclusion we
all came to was that throughout the solar system there was an integral unity of
design, and yet an infinite variety of manifestations of the wisdom and power of
the Divine Creator of the Universe.

As now we found that we had the power of traversing the realms of space from
world to world, and that science had so advanced our control over nature that
the millions of miles of ether were no insuperable obstacle to our passing from
world to world, the thirst for knowledge naturally grew by the tasting of the
fresh wonders revealed to our race of the creatures of the Most High. A council
was held, at the City of the Stars, of the greatest astronomers and engineers
(or "nature-subduers," as we call them) of our world, and the question opened in
what direction a fresh expedition should be taken into space. The answer was
simple, for but one reply was obvious, and Akasion, the prince of the City of
the Stars, briefly put it to us thus:— "As yet we have only gone outwards. The
realms of Uranus and Neptune are so distant that it may be doubted whether our
powers, with safety, can be used to attain such distant planets, at least until
we have tried further experiments. But in the inner realm of the solar system we
have as yet done nothing. The region of greatest wonders is at hand, not so far
off as Mars and the Asteroids. There, then, let us send our next exploration —
to our sister world, Mercury, and to the mighty king of day — the glorious Sun."

To this Arnorion, the great " nature-subduer," replied:— "The truth is, that
there is a nobler prize to obtain by a journey inward than outward, but the
difficulties are greater. In going outwards from the Sun we only went to realms
of darkness and cold, and indeed in the worlds to which we sent we found that
the cold was relieved by the heat of their internal fires; but in going inwards
towards the Sun we go to a region of tremendous and terrible heat, and of light
unutterably intense. New precautions will be needed. Greater power will be
required also to contend against the mighty gravitation of the Sun, which is
more than one million times larger than our world."

Both points were considered. We agreed that the journey to the Sun was most
desirable, but was full of difficulties, such as would need new discoveries and
new inventions. Still the "nature-subduers" agreed that they would try
experiments to see if they could increase the anti-gravitating force
sufficiently to contend with the power of the Sun, and also search for means to
contend against his intense and tremendous heat.

These experiments took some time. Meanwhile we travelled to many more of the
cities of our planet, and told the story of our journeys, and showed the strange
things we had brought from Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Earth, and from your
satellite, the Moon.

At length we were told that a "nature-subduer," Exalorion, had discovered a
substance which could ward off the intensest heat. He himself, wrapped in this
substance, had walked into a furnace heated to the highest degree; and even
platinum, heated under electricity, had been wrapped around a robe of it and no
effect whatever had been perceived. It was as utterly a non-conductor of heat as
a thick sheet of iron was of light.

Okrastion also, another "nature-subduer," had found a means of immensely
augmenting the anti-gravitating force on which our aerial cars depended.

On receiving this news I went again to the City of the Stars, and met my
friend Ezariel there. We, together with the most eminent " nature-subduers" of
our world, proceeded to construct a new car of much greater size and power than
the former. We wrapped it within and without with the new non-conductor of heat;
we fixed in it the mighty anti-gravitating machine, which inverted the force of
gravitation, and repelled what otherwise would be a force of attraction.

It was shaped like a shuttle, with two sharp points, cased in the
newly-discovered non-conducting medium. On the top rested the directing magnet,
of enormous power, and the anti-gravitating force was rested in the body of the
machine. Within was a small cabin of steel, filled with every needful appliance,
in which we the five travellers made our journey. It was lighted by but two
windows of oval shape, with crystals of various density, the thicker of which
once fixed would only transmit the most intense light into the interior. We were
prepared for intensest heat or bitterest cold, for darkness or for most
brilliant light.

LETTER THE FIFTH.
MERCURY.

Mount Karon in Mercury.

AT length we launched again into space in the mighty heat-protected car which
we had constructed, but now not towards the region of darkness, but to the king
of day, and the realms of eternal light that surround the mighty Sun. Our first
stage was to be, as we had planned, to our fellow-planet, the bright world of
Mercury. Hither we sped with vast rapidity, as soon as we got clear by our
anti-gravitating force of Venus. On, on we flew. Mercury appeared first as a
bright globe near the Sun, then as he rotated in his orb towards the point to
which we were going. as a moon growing larger and larger in space, and at the
same time narrowing his luminous disc. But he was not an airless moon like
yours. He was intensely bright, and around him were the double rings of his
double atmosphere.*
* In the transit of Mercury of 1878
two rings were observed enclosing the planet — an outer one of violet, an inner
one of a very bright character around the dark orb. The spectroscope leads us to
to think that there is a watery envelope around Mercury, but the subject is
obscure.

"All the inner worlds," said Ezariel, "seem to have two envelopes on their
surface. In Earth and Mars there is an outer atmosphere of air covering the
whole surface, with an inner and partial one of water filling the ocean. Our
world has its atmosphere and its oceans. In the Moon we saw a world the surface
of which was bare to the ether. Here we have a world with a double envelope of
the outer violet atmosphere, and of the inner bright one."

Meanwhile we were advancing towards this globe, on whose waving crescent of
light the Sun shone. In the illumined part were to be seen huge mountains,
almost as vast as ours, of ten miles or more in height, ranged in rings like the
mountains of the Moon. On the dark part whole provinces, as large as several
English counties, were illumined by the electric lights of the vast cities of
the Mercurians.

As we approached the half-illumined globe we entered (about 500 miles from
his surface) his outer violet atmosphere. Soon we perceived that not merely the
surface of the planet, but the vast outer atmosphere itself, was peopled, and
that the Mercurians were not restrained to the surface of their little world,
not so much larger than your Moon, but dwell in the atmospheric shells around
him, and swarmed in the vast outer space, so that, though the solid planet
appears so small, the true planet is not confined to it, but includes the
atmospheres where we perceived the cars of the Mercurians floating in space,
like gnats in a summer evening.

"Surely," said Ezariel to me, "this little planet has slight gravitating
force and so the Mercurians can with little effort float away in space as far as
their atmosphere extends, even if they are not able to launch forth into the
regions of space around there planet."

On, on we flew, carried forward by the gravitation of the planet which, weak
though it relatively was now, when the anti-gravitating force was removed, was
potent enough. We swept past many a floating islet in space of the Mercurians
(for they seem to a great degree to live in their atmosphere far from the plane:
on into the lower atmosphere of their world. We saw a lofty mountain range, and
here on a peak we rested. and from here I write you this letter. At length have
seen and rested on the surface of each of the planets of our solar system,
inside the distant realms of far-off Uranus. My object is attained.

ALERIEL