The sun had scarcely set when my escort arrived; and, as with my slow powers of locomotion I could not be expected to keep up with them, I was placed in one of their flight-cars. I had no companion, for the whole band flew in front and drew the car by some magnetic power unseen; and it was so light-hung and so balanced by wings and domes and parachutes that it seemed capable of being the sport of every wind. Over the central ridge of the island we swept towards a distant slope of Lilaroma. Suddenly underneath me in the growing darkness there shone out in a deep broad valley a vast dome of light, transparent enough to reveal the flitting shadows underneath it. It seemed the laboratory of a world. Innumerable streams flashed under its upper edge; they sped from the summits of the surrounding hills, or across the gorges from other and more distant ranges. I had seen as we flew hundreds of noble aqueducts spanning the valleys with their arches and columns, some of them thousands of feet up the slopes of Lilaroma. All the waters which the great mountain gathered from the clouds of heaven made their way towards this marvellous domed valley. At its mouth there was a deep gorge, whether artificial or natural was not clear to me then; and through the chasm leaped a river mightier than any I had ever seen; it seemed to be on its way to the sea, but I could not trace its course farther than its massive gateway out of the valley. Underneath the dome I could see vast wheels of irelium move at all levels; they seemed so fragile that a pebble thrown at them would break them; yet each turned spindles of enormous power, which moved swifter than lightning. I soon saw that all the intricate machinery was sheathed in casings of their translucent metal, along which flowed a slow, glutinous stream of some liquid that dripped through perforations on all points of friction. As we alighted, night fell, and the titanic crystal workshop gleamed with a soft radiance that seemed to come from no centres, but was diffused everywhere in the manner of the sunlight or the atmosphere. It was like a vast ice cave of the Arctic circle lit by brief and splendid summer. Fairy-like yet vast, it seemed a fabric of some dream-world; but the splash and hiss of the forceful waters and the unresting motion of the machinery made it all real enough. The noises were by no means deafening; they were subdued and musical with a halo of mysterious whisper like the sounds of nature on a bright day of summer. Nor was the sight bewildering to the eyes; there was too much symmetry in it to perplex and dazzle.