Above me, looking at us with interest, on the walls
of the lock, was a company of Martians. The night was cloudy, and the
lights of the hastening satellites were but intermittently evident.
Gradually my head passed upward beyond the obstructing interference of
wall and gate and fence, and the glorious and unimaginable splendor of
the City of Scandor, like some monstrous continental opal, lay before me
in the immediate valley.
"The glistening panes of water below me marked the places of the
descending line of locks. Around me were the buildings of the Scandor
Observatory, and to the right and left swept the forested slopes of a
circular range which, as I later saw, ranged about in one
amphitheatrical circuit the, great vale of Scandor. But only an
instant's glance could be spared for this detail. The divine City
glowing below me seemed to magnetize attention, and control, through its
wonderfulness each wavering attitude of interest. My son, the eye of man
never beheld so astonishing a picture. Imagine a city reaching twenty
miles in all directions built of glass variously designed, interrupted
by tall towers, pyramids, minarets, steeples, light, fantastic and
beautiful structures, all aflame, or rather softly radiating a variously
colored glory of light.
"Imagine this great area of building, penetrated by broad avenues,
radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a center where rose upward to
the sky a colossal amphitheatre.
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