Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/210

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188
A Voyage to Other Worlds.

they have more independent existence,—more difficulty in developing, so as to suit the higher types of life. Here we evidently have a very early type of world. Not only has it eight satellites, but you see it even retains the ring which Earth and Jupiter once had, but which ages ago they lost. All here is antique and archaic, as, indeed, men foresaw in their theories of astrology. Here one may study the juventus mundi—an antique, primitive, undeveloped, halfchaotic world."

He had scarcely finished, when beneath the huge shadow of the giant fungi appeared a strange and terrible creature—inchoate like all around, huge in size and ill-formed in aspect,—something of the insect type, but colossal. It moved towards us. For once we felt horror. I had, alas! felt it on earth before, in scenes of woe and crime. But here we felt there was a creature of huge strength, yet of nature not akin to ours. Whether he had intelligence I cannot say. He moved among the gigantic fungi to our ether-car, and then moved it with his huge ciliated limbs. His aspect was horrible. After staying and looking at it with seeming curiosity—though it may be no more than a mere animal might feel at a thing strange and unknown,—he let it go, and then passed