“In summer time these people had no use for clothes, for it was warm enough without them. In winter they had always gone into winter quarters under water remaining in a torpid inactive condition till spring. When they found the Lunarians never did so, they were anxious to imitate them. But they could not stand the cold without clothes and houses artificially heated. So some rude clothing was made of grass, and some huts built under instructions from the Lunarians and the king and some of the better classes undertook to keep alive, as they called it, all winter. They were quick to perceive that they could thus add much time to their lives, for the winters of Mars last some 300 days out of the 687 that constitute his year. At first it was hard to work into the new way, but after one or two generations had been kept from hibernating from childhood, it came to be a second nature to their descendants, and now all the better classes have outgrown it, only the savages, who are merely beasts of burden continue to go into the torpid state and not all of these. This change of nature in these people, made it essential to have houses and clothes and also to secure food to be kept through the winter thus creating the wants that would compel the people to employ their muscles and brains, and so insure their cultivation and development. The chief food of the people consisted of the grass I have mentioned which grows only in water and at that time only in salt water. It grows in thick pulpy stems and is very rich in sugar oil and gelatine. This vegetable product was obtainable only along the sea shore in shallow water and in salt-water marshes formed by the sea. The new way of life demanded at least one half more food than the old for each person, and it also led to a rapid increase in the population. These causes made it essential to devise some way of increasing the production of food, the most obvious way being the increase of the area of shallow salt water. This the king undertook to do, but made small progress, for neither he nor his council knew anything about engineering, or the management of such works. “The Lunarians who had been observing matters and things, and studying the situation very closely and shrewdly, now came forward with a proposition for a very comprehensive scheme of public works—or rather several schemes in one.” CHAPTER XIV. The Canals.