"How thrilled and awe-struck I became as I gazed around me, and looking over the surging mob beheld their multitudinous lineaments, the faces of the races of our earth, its many nations, the faces of men or women who had lived in Venus, in Mercury, in the fixed stars, perhaps, as we call those globes from whose lambent surface light reached the earth after the expiration of a century of years. What a beautiful exhilaration of feeling it imparted, these flushed and shining faces, the liquid eyes of the south now charged with the fires of transporting expectation, the steady gaze of blue-eyed northerners firm and rapt and steadfast; the power of huge, colossal frames of muscle, the sinuous activity of spare and slender forms all attired in that consummate garb of blue and white, their caps of metal reflecting the light in cerulean lustres. "On, upward, we moved, impelled by an impulse quite indefinable but sufficient to condense about us by its contagion the Martian populace, quick, responsive, inquisitive, intelligent and excitable as children. We were approaching the Patenta by an ever widening avenue, our rustling approach announced by a chant of vociferous and yet melodious notes. "The avenue of Approach is known as the _Imprintum_. On either side rose lines of marble columns, their lofty capitals crowned with statues, their bases clustering with marble groups, while breaking now and then the white monotony, spiral and intertwining pillars of colored glass sprang into the air, like titanic tropical vines holding in extended fingers the balls of phosphori. "The pavement we trod was made of blocks of the phosphori, and at night this magnificent, indescribable and transcendent street becomes a path of flame, showering upon the files of silent marble statues above it the splendor of this spectral effulgence. "As we came near the buildings of the Patenta our outcry and the sonorous pulsations of the singing brought to its windows and doorways the many workers in the laboratories, lecture halls, and offices. We were regarded with wonder. But there seems present amongst these people a telepathic power, not perhaps what we call that in the Earth, but an intuitive construction of meaning upon the passing of a word or a hint. Forerunners furthermore had given some account of the strange new spirit from the Earth, who had prearranged with people on the Earth itself, to return to them, if possible, messages of his experiences after a human death. It had been the dream of the Martians, the sensation of their daily lives, the hope of returning to their former dwelling places, some token, word, salutation, indeed to somehow begin that almost apocryphal conception of binding the Universe into a conversational unit. "No marvel that they were now excited, transported; no wonder that I, the accidental being, who falling in their world, as it were, from outside, should be the agency to lead to the eventual conquest of these great designs.