Thus the great rapidity with which this able band of observers succeeded in reducing the chaos of the fields of heaven to an orderly cosmos may be explained. I need not attempt to recount the successive steps in their marvellous progress. A very few days after they began their systematic labour, one of them suggested the real rotation of the planet on her axis as the cause of the apparent diurnal movement of the celestial sphere. This conjecture was speedily verified by pendulum experiments at the pole. Then followed the discoveries of the distinction between stars and planets and satellites; the distances and magnitudes of the planets; the position of their own world among them, and the dependence of the whole solar system on the sun. In short, by the close of the ninth millenary period, the Hesperian astronomy was a long way in advance of anything even now known on earth. In the ancient history of Hesperos this discovery of the external world forms by far the most important epoch, and, for several centuries, the study of astronomy seems to have absorbed a great part of the energies of the inhabitants. Two other places were found on the mountain chains of the north, where, by going through the same kind of works as those detailed above—some of them involving even greater difficulties in their execution—peaks which rose above the cloud were reached, and observatories built upon them. It thus became possible to compare observations taken at different parts of the surface, and astronomical discoveries proceeded with still greater rapidity. CHAPTER IX. Of the development of World-Weariness in Hesperos; and of the second attempt to cross the Equatorial Tornado—How the Forlorn Hope succeeded, and discovered a City of the Dead—How the terrible mystery of Evanescence was explained; and how the crew set out on their return. But, notwithstanding the signal success which had attended their labours, there can be no doubt that during the next thousand years a general feeling of gloom and despondence gradually settled down over the Hesperian race. That the brilliant discoveries of the astronomers had failed to throw the faintest glimmer of light on the question of questions—Who was their Maker?—was a fact which could not be disguised. An answer to this was as far off as ever—further off, indeed. They had learned the enormous extent of the universe, and, as a consequence, that the Hesperians, so far from exhausting its contents, were no more than insignificant specks in its unfathomed deeps. In the vast profusion of worlds they felt themselves lost. If their Maker had charge of that vast universe, he might well have forgotten them altogether. Why, then, should they not depart from life? The door of exit was always open. A fall down the nearest precipice was always easy, and the instantaneous dissolution of the body was an unfailing remedy for every ill.