Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/102

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80
A Voyage to Other Worlds.

fresh water for our naturalists to study; a pocket Bible, several specimens of earth's rocks, a few coins of different states, some pieces of polished woods. No animal or even insect could have lived in the airless realms of ether through which I had passed, so all I brought was dead—dead as the meteoric stones, the sole link in matter between the earth and other systems in space. Living beings only of the highest order and the most vigorous vitality can pass from world to world and live. So nothing earthly could exist even a hundred miles away from its own orb—man is a prisoner to his world.

These curiosities excited much attention and interest. Thousands were the questions I had to answer. Everything was examined, not merely with the naked eye, but with the microscopes that most of our citizens are wont to carry with them to investigate and admire any of the beauties of nature that attract their attention. Small shreds of many of the substances were taken by our chemists for analysis, to be quite sure that the elements of matter in our sister-world would be exactly the same as we had in our planet.

At once the news spread by electricity all over our world, and strangers from many far-