A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future by John Jacob Astor (most read book in the world .TXT) 📕

would be the place to live," said Bearwarden, looking at iron mountains, silver, copper, and lead formations, primeval forests, rich prairies, and regions evidently underlaid with coal and petroleum, not to mention huge beds of aluminum clay, and other natural resources, that made his materialistic mouth water. "It would be joy and delight to develop industries here, with no snow avalanches to clog your railroads, or icy blizzards to paralyze work, nor weather that blights you with sun-strokes and fevers. On our return to the earth we must organize a company to run regular interplanetary lines. We could start on this globe all that is best on our own. Think what boundless possibilities may be before the human race on this planet, which on account of its vast size will be in its prime when our insignificant earth is cold and dead and no longer capable of supporting life! Think also of the indescribable blessing to the congested communities of Europe and America, to find an unlimited outlet here! Mars is already past its prime, and Venus scarcely habitable, but in Jupiter we have a new promised land, compared with which our earth is a pygmy, or but little more than microscopic."

"I see," said Ayrault, "that the possibilities here have no limit; but I do not see how you can compare it to the promised land, since, till we undertook this journey, no one had even thought of Jupiter as a habitable place." "I trace the Divine promise," replied Bearwarden, "in what you described to us on earth as man's innate longing and desire to rise, and in the fact that the Almighty has given the race unbounded expansiveness in very limited space. This would look to me as the return of man to the garden of Eden through intellectual development, for here every man can sit under his own vine and fig-tree."

"It seems to me," said Cortlandt, "that no paradise or heaven described in anything but the Bible compares with this. According to Virgil's description, the joys on the banks of his river Lethe must have been most sad and dreary, the general idleness and monotony apparently being broken only by wrestling matches between the children, while the rest strolled about with laurel wreaths or rested in the shade. The pilot Palinurus, who had been drowned by falling overboard while asleep, but who before that had presumably done his duty, did not seem especially happy; while the harsh, resentful disposition evidently remained unsoftened, for Dido became like a cliff of Marpesian marble when �neas asked to be forgiven, though he had doubtless considered himself in duty bound to leave her, having been twice commanded to do so by Mercury, the messenger of Jove. She, like the rest, seems to have had no occupation, while the consciences of few appear to have been sufficiently clear to enable them to enjoy unbroken rest."

"The idleness in the spirit-land of all profane writers," added Bearwarden, "has often surprised me too. Though I have always recommended a certain amount of recreation for my staff--in fact, more than I have generally had myself--an excess of it becomes a bore. I think that all real progress comes through thorough work. Why should we assume that progress ceases at death? I believe in the verse that says, 'We learn here on earth those things the knowledge of which is perfected in heaven.'"

"According to that," said Cortlandt, "you will some day be setting the axis of heaven right, for in order to do work there must be work to be done--a necessary corollary to which is that heaven is still imperfect."

"No," said Bearwarden, bristling up at the way Cortlandt sometimes received his speeches, "it means simply that its development, though perfect so far as it goes, may not be finished, and that we may be the means, as on earth, of helping it along."

"The conditions constituting heaven," said Ayrault, "may be as fixed as the laws of Nature, though the products of those conditions might, it seems to me, still be forming and subject to modification thereby. The reductio ad absurdu would of course apply if we supposed the work of creation absolutely finished."

Chapter XIII.Contents NORTH-POLAR DISCOVERIES.

Two days later, on the western horizon, they beheld the ocean. Many of the streams whose sources they had seen when they crossed the divide from the lake basin, and whose courses they had followed, were now rivers a mile wide, with the tide ebbing and rising within them many hundreds of miles from their mouths. When they reached the shore line they found the waves breaking, as on earth, upon the sands, but with this difference: they had before noted the smallness of the undulations compared with the strength of the wind, the result of the water's weight. These waves now reminded them of the behaviour of mercury, or of melted lead when stirred on earth, by the rapidity with which the crests dropped. Though the wind was blowing an on-shore gale, there was but little combing, and when there was any it lasted but a second. The one effort of the crests and waves seemed to be to remain at rest, or, if stirred in spite of themselves, to subside.

When over the surface of the ocean, the voyagers rose to a height of thirty thousand metres, and after twenty-four hours' travelling saw, at a distance of about two hundred miles, what looked like another continent, but which they knew must be an island. On finding themselves above it, they rose still higher to obtain a view of its outlines and compare its shape with that of the islands in the photographs they had had time to develop. The length ran from southeast to northwest. Though crossed by latitude forty, and notwithstanding Jupiter's distance from the sun, the southern side had a very luxuriant vegetation that was almost semi-tropical. This they accounted for by its total immunity from cold, the density of the air at sea-level, and the warm moist breezes it received from the tepid ocean. The climate was about the same as that of the Riviera or of Florida in winter, and there was, of course, no parching summer.

"This shows me," said Bearwarden, "that a country's climate depends less on the amount of heat it receives from the sun than on the amount it retains; proof of which we have in the tops of the Himalayas perpetually covered with snow, and snow-capped mountains on the very equator, where they get the most direct rays, and where those rays have but little air to penetrate. It shows that the presence of a substantial atmosphere is as necessary a part of the calculation in practice as the sun itself. I am inclined to think that, with the constant effect of the internal heat on its oceans and atmosphere, Jupiter could get along with a good deal less solar heat than it receives, in proof of which I expect to find the poles themselves quite comfortable. The reason the internal heat is so little taken into account on earth is because, from the thickness of the crust, it cannot make itself felt; for if the earth were as chilled through as ice, the people on the surface would not feel the difference." A Jovian week's explorations disclosed the fact that though the island's general outlines were fairly regular, it had deep-water harbours, great rivers, and land-locked gulfs and bays, some of which penetrated many hundred miles into the interior. It also showed that the island's length was about six thousand miles, and its breadth about three thousand, and that it had therefore about the superficial area of Asia. They found no trace of the great monsters that had been so numerous on the mainland, though there were plenty of smaller and gentle-looking creatures, among them animals whose build was much like that of the prehistoric horse, with undeveloped toes on each side of the hoof, which in the modern terrestrial horse have disappeared, the hoof being in reality but a rounded-off middle finger. "It is wonderful," said Bearwarden, "how comparatively narrow a body of water can keep different species entirely separate. The island of Sumatra, for instance, is inhabited by marsupials belonging to the distinct Australian type, in which the female, as in the kangaroo, carries the slightly developed young in a pouch; while the Malay peninsula, joined to the mainland, has all the highly developed animals of Asia and the connected land of the Eastern hemisphere, the narrow Malacca Strait being all that has kept marsupials and mammals apart, though the separating power has been increased by the rapid current setting through. This has decreased the chance of creatures carried to sea on drift-wood or uprooted trees getting safely over to such a degree that apparently none have survived; for, had they done so, we may be certain that the mammals, with the advantage their young have over the marsupials, would soon have run them out, the marsupials being the older and the less perfect form of life of the two."

Before leaving the beautiful sea-girt region beneath them, Cortlandt proposed that it be named after their host, which Bearwarden seconded, whereupon they entered it as Ayrault Island on the charts. After this they rose to a great height, and flew swiftly over three thousand miles of ocean till they came to another island not quite as large as the first. It was four thousand five hundred miles long by something less than three thousand wide, and was therefore about the size of Africa. It had several high ranges of mountains and a number of great rivers and fine harbours, while murmuring, bubbling brooks flowed through its forest glades. There were active volcanoes along the northern coast, and the blue, crimson, and purple lines in the luxuriant foliage were the most beautiful they had ever seen.

"I propose," said Bearwarden, "that we christen this Sylvialand." This Cortlandt immediately seconded, and it was so entered on the charts.

"These two islands," said Bearwarden, "may become the centres of civilization. With flying machines and cables to carry passengers and information, and ships of great displacement for the interchange of commodities, there is no limit to their possible development. The absence of large waves will also be very favourable to sea-spiders, which will be able to run at tremendous speeds. The constancy in the eruptions of the volcanoes will offer a great field to Jovian inventors, who will unquestionably be able to utilize their heat for the production of steam or electricity, to say nothing of an inexhaustible supply of valuable chemicals. They may contain the means of producing some force entirely different from apergy, and as superior to electricity as that is to steam. Our earthly volcanoes have been put to slight account because of the long intervals between eruptions."

After leaving Sylvialand they went westward to the eastern of the two crescent continents. It was separated from the island by about six thousand miles of ocean, and had less width than the western, having about the proportions of a three-day crescent, while the western had the shape of the moon when four or five days old. They found the height of the mountains and plateaus somewhat less than on the eastern continent, but no great difference in other respects, except that, as they went towards the pole, the vegetation became more like that of Scotland or a north temperate region than any they had seen. On reaching latitude fifty they again came out over the ocean to investigate the speckled condition they had observed there. They found a vast archipelago covering as great an area as the whole Pacific Ocean. The islands varied from the size of Borneo and Madagascar to that of Sicily and Corsica, while some contained but a few square miles. The surface of the archipelago was about equally divided between land and water.

"It would take good navigation or an elaborate system of light-houses," said Bearwarden, "for a captain to find the shortest course through these groups."

The islands were covered with shade trees much resembling those on earth, and the leaves on many were turning yellow and red, for this hemisphere's autumn had already begun.

"The Jovian trees," said Cortlandt, "can never cease to bear, though the change of seasons is evidently able to turn their colour, perhaps by merely ripening them. When a ripe leaf falls off, its place is doubtless soon taken by a bud, for germination and fructification go on side by side."

Before leaving, they decided to name this Twentieth Century Archipelago, since so much of the knowledge appertaining to it had been acquired in their own day. At latitude sixty the northern arms of the two continents came within fifteen hundred miles of each other. The eastern extension was split like