52 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



silence to an uproar infinitely surpassing the tumult of 

 the fiercest terrestrial storms. We were still some 

 eight millions of miles from the sun, yet the tre- 

 mendous processes at work within his domain produced 

 the most stupendous reverberations even at that enor- 

 mous distance, and in an atmosphere rarer than the so- 

 called vacuum of the experimentalist. Nothing in all 

 our progress thus far, had given me so startling an 

 insight into the mighty energy of the sun, as this 

 amazing circumstance. Somehow I had always asso- 

 ciated the idea of perfect silence with the solar activity ; 

 and perhaps it had been on this account that I had 

 hitherto experienced a sense of unreality when con- 

 sidering the mighty processes at work, as telescopic 

 research had shown, in the solar orb. But now that I 

 could, as it were, hear the working of the mighty 

 machine which governs our scheme of worlds, now 

 that I could feel the pulsations of the great heart of 

 the planetary system, the sense of the sun's amazing 

 vitality was brought home to me, so far at least as so 

 stupendous a reality can be brought home to the feeble 

 conceptions of the human mind. 



Amidst a continually increasing uproar, and through 

 an atmosphere so intensely heated that no creature 

 living on the earth could for an insant have endured 

 its fiery breath, we passed onwards to the glowing inner 

 atmosphere, and still onwards to the very limits of 

 the sierra, where it seemed fit that our course 

 should be stayed in order that we might contemplate 

 the wonders that surrounded us. It would be useless 



