As the return voyage occupied several days, the engineers had a good opportunity for obtaining from the passengers much interesting information concerning the past history and present condition of the southern hemisphere. In both physical structure and configuration the northern and southern portions of the planet are very similar; a great polar continent, with many islands off the coast, being the leading feature common to both. The south pole itself is situated in the middle of a very wide and fertile valley, surrounded on all sides by gently sloping hills. The climate is delightful, especially in the spring and the autumn; and this attraction, combined with the fact that the pole, hitherto, had been the sole port of ingress to the hemisphere, caused its selection as the site of the southern metropolis. The oldest inhabitant proved invaluable as a historian. His account of the origin and gradual growth of the city was as follows:—‘When I found myself extended on the ground at the pole, I had no conception of what had happened, or even that I had been moved from one place to another. I remembered distinctly the fight in which I had been engaged, my own exasperation, and the furious gestures of my antagonist. But he had vanished altogether, and the place where I now found myself was quite different from the scene of the combat. I got up and looked around me. The country was similar to my former place of abode; the same abundance of fruit-trees; the same pure streams of water; but the hills and mountains were quite differently shaped and grouped together. I could see no signs of rational life; the silence was broken only by the sweet singing of the birds, of which, as before, there were many kinds. ‘While I was still lost in astonishment at what had occurred, there suddenly appeared on the exact spot of ground where I had, a few minutes before, awakened into new life, another man extended on the grass. An instant before not a trace of him was visible. For a moment I imagined he must be my recent antagonist, and I instinctively prepared to renew the battle. But he turned out to be a man I had never seen before; his speech was unintelligible to me, as was mine to him. We separated; he walked off to seek his fortune elsewhere, while I remained in the neighbourhood of the strangely-haunted spot which is now known as the South Pole. ‘Before long more arrivals took place in the same mysterious manner. I must necessarily omit details: it will suffice to say that before many years had expired a population amounting to several thousands surrounded the pole. As most of these men, and women also, arrived in consequence of mortal lesions received in fights, it turned out that they were, as a general rule, of rowdy and quarrelsome dispositions, and thus for many centuries the lovely country was little better than a pandemonium.