A VOYAGE TO THE RINGED PLANET. 75 



through his intensly heated and most perturbed atmo- 

 sphere, sharing a common sense of regret that our 

 journey had as we thought been fruitless. We had 

 indeed seen much that was wonderful, and much that we 

 had hitherto had no conception of; but we had set out 

 on our voyage with the hope of discovering other living 

 creatures in Saturn, and we had found not only that 

 none such exist, but that this giant orb is altogether 

 unfit to be the abode of life. We agreed, however, to 

 carry out our original plan, to visit the rings and 

 satellites before returning to the earth. The rings 

 naturally received our attention in the first instance. 



So soon as we had passed beyond the atmosphere of 

 Saturn, we found that during our stay the planet's 

 swift rotation had carried the region we had been visit- 

 ing to a considerable distance from the place it had 

 before occupied. We had indeed been only some three 

 hours under the veil of clouds forming the surface 

 of the planet as he appears to terrestrial astronomers. 

 But three hours on Saturn, at his real surface, corre- 

 spond to nearly half a day on the earth, though observers 

 on the earth (mistaking the cloud-regions for his sur- 

 face) call his rotation-period ten hours. Accordingly, 

 we were at a loss at first to know precisely where we 

 were. And I would note in passing that none should 

 undertake such voyages as ours without a considerable 

 share of astronomical knowledge, lest haply having 

 lost sight of the world they had left, they should be 

 unable to rediscover it. Where we were, there was 

 indeed little risk of this, as the rings and satellites, 



