A VOYAGE TO THE RINGED PLANET. 7 1 



smoke or vapour. There was no night, and seemingly 

 no rest on the half of the hemisphere turned from the 

 sun. Occasionally, we could even see an intense lumi- 

 nosity spreading over wide regions of the planet's 

 surface, and then presently sinking into a dull glow as 

 of heated metal. This was in the planet's equatorial 

 regions : though at rare intervals a somewhat similar 

 phenomenon could be recognised along other zones. 

 The polar regions alone were dark, save where a very 

 faint and dull luminosity became momentarily apparent. 

 But this light was even fainter than the dull glow 

 constantly manifest over the equatorial and neighbour- 

 ing zones. 



We began to perceive that whatever else of interest 

 we might find in the globe of Saturn, we need certainly 

 not look for living creatures there. It was plain that 

 we were about to visit a region where nature's forces 

 were working too intensely to admit of other and less 

 active forms of force. We became cognizant indeed of 

 another circumstance, which confirmed this impression. 

 As we approached the globe of Saturn, we could per- 

 ceive that myriads of meteors and small comets were 

 circling close around him, or streaming in upon his 

 surface. They travelled much less swiftly than those 

 which we had seen in the sun's neighbourhood ; but 

 still their velocity was enormous, insomuch that their 

 fall upon the planet or their swift rush through his 

 atmosphere would have sufficed to destroy all living 

 creatures on his globe. But the fiery glow of so large 

 a proportion of Saturn's visible surface, seemed of itself 

 sufficient to show that it could not be inhabited. 



