The process of conversation thus became very simple. For example, No. 23,482,657 wishes to say a few words to No. 10,334, who is somewhere, but where he knows not, in the southern hemisphere. He sends his message to the central depôt. The stirring of the needle there rings a small bell, and displays a white mark on the front of the box. The clerk on duty takes it down, reads the message; then taking box No. 10,334, he repeats it to the required correspondent. Of course, any two particular friends who may have occasion for frequent conversation can have, in addition, two special needles with which they can communicate directly. All the passengers in the submarine ship were provided with these boxes, and, on their arrival at Lasondre, the question, whether the sympathetic influence extended to the northern hemisphere, was at once decided in the affirmative. Communication with the South Pole was just as easy from the north as from the south side of the equator. The South Pole being thus the most convenient centre for communication with the entire surface of the planet, had evidently strong claims for selection as the site of the universal metropolis. And before two years, dating from the return of the ship, were over, the whole planet was united in one vast empire, and the seat of government fixed at Australis, as we may style the city of the South Pole. The united government at once extended to the whole world the signalling system which had been so successfully carried out in the south; this, of course, involved an enormous addition to the depôt in Australis. And now, for the first time, the exact number of the primeval creation of the rational inhabitants was definitely ascertained. It was found that, at the era of the ship, there were in the northern hemisphere 70,589,347 persons, and in the southern 29,410,653; thus the total population, which had never been increased, nor, as they had just learned, diminished, was, as before stated, exactly one hundred millions, and these were equally divided between the male and female sexes. Several years elapsed after the return of the ship before the stupendous change which had been wrought in the condition of the Hesperians, by the knowledge they had acquired of the indestructibility of life, began to produce the effects which afterwards became conspicuous. They were essentially a travel-loving race, and the great stimulus given to this propensity by the discovery of a new hemisphere seems for a time to have absorbed a good deal of their energies. The epoch, moreover, was immediately marked by the complete cessation of voluntary evanescence—in other words, of suicide, which, under the influence of the widely-spread world-weariness, had become only too common during the last age. When it was clearly understood that evanescence only meant change of place, the ignoble custom came to an end.