I saw no traces of any habitation outside the city, and no signs of animal life, excepting birds, were anywhere visible, but of the birds there were many and lovely kinds. I was greatly struck by the appearance of the sky; this was completely covered with a canopy of white cloud, seemingly at an enormous elevation. I was very desirous to get a sight of the sun, and, if possible, to measure its apparent magnitude, which I knew must greatly exceed its appearance from the earth; but the thickness of the cloud was such that no trace of the disk was visible. I had hoped, by this means, to satisfy myself that I had really reached Hesperos, namely, by comparing the observed magnitude with that which I had computed, and noted on a leaf of my pocket-book before I left Thibet. So I waited another hour, but seeing no signs of movement among the clouds, and despairing of getting an observation, I got up and walked down the hill in the direction of the city. Presently the great steepness of the slope abated, and I soon arrived at a wide and smooth track which ran along the shore of the bay. The country was quite open; there were no walls, hedges, or any kind of fences—not even any of those notice-boards so familiar to the wanderer in civilized terrestrial regions, which address him by the name of Trespasser, and convey menaces. I turned into the road, in the direction of the city, and, after proceeding along it for about half a mile, I descried, at some distance, an approaching object, which, to my unspeakable horror, had all the look of a Yahoo. As we came nearer the suspicion became a certainty. The creature was walking very slowly, and seemed to be quite absorbed in contemplation of a small article which he held in his hand. He was a man of middle age, with an exceedingly intelligent cast of countenance, and his dress did not materially differ from the Eastern costume which had accompanied me from Thibet. So I could not at all account for the extreme intensity of his astonishment when, at last raising his eyes, he got the first sight of me as I walked towards him. He seemed completely paralyzed, gasped for breath, and for several moments was quite incapable of speech. Such utter stupefaction might have been manifested by the inhabitants of Lilliput and Brobdingnag when they first beheld Captain Gulliver, but in the present case there was no apparent cause for amazement. At length he recovered himself sufficiently to address a few words to me, none of which I could understand. I replied, but with the like want of success. I pointed to the sky, to intimate that I had come from another world, and then to the city, as a hint that I wished to go there. Both of these signs he evidently understood, and he turned back, and accompanied me in silence. I must do my companion, and indeed all the Venusians (or Hesperians) I have encountered, the justice of admitting that, though in Yahoo form, they possess none of the offensive peculiarities of the breed.