the forty or fifty single letters employed, is but a single step in the first stage of the hard task of learning to read.  In no country on Earth, except China, is this task half so severe as in Mars.  On the other hand, when it is once mastered, a far superior instrument has been gained; the Martial writing being a most terse but perfectly legible shorthand.  Every Martial can write at least as quickly as he can speak, and can read the written character more rapidly than the quickest eye can peruse the best Terrestrial print.  Copies, whether of the phonographic or stylographic writing, are multiplied with extreme facility and perfection.  The original, once inscribed in either manner upon the above-mentioned tafroo or gold-leaf, is placed upon a sheet of a species of linen, smoother than paper, called difra.  A current of electricity sent through the former reproduces the writing exactly upon the latter, which has been previously steeped in some chemical composition; the effect apparently depending on the passage of the electricity through the untouched metal, and its absolute interception by the ink, if I may so call it, of the writing, which bites deeply into the leaf.  This process can be repeated almost ad libitum; and it is equally easy to take at any time a fresh copy upon tafroo, which serves again for the reproduction of any number of difra copies.  The book, for the convenience of this mode of reproduction, consists of a single sheet, generally from four to eight inches in breadth and of any length required.  The writing intended to be thus copied is always minute, and is read for the most part through magnifying spectacles.  A roller is attached to each end of the sheet, and when not in use the latter is wound round that attached to the conclusion.  When required for reading, both rollers are fixed in a stand, and slowly moved by clockwork, which spreads before the eyes of the reader a length of about four inches at once.  The motion is slackened or quickened at the reader’s pleasure, and can be stopped altogether, by touching a spring.  Another means of reproducing, not merely writings or drawings, but natural objects, consists in a simple adaptation of the camera obscura. [The only essential difference from our photographs being that the Martial art reproduces colour as well as outline, I omit this description.]

While I was practising myself in the Martial language my host turned our experimental conversations chiefly, if not exclusively, upon Terrestrial subjects; endeavouring to learn all that I could convey to him of the physical peculiarities of the Earth, of geology, geography, vegetation, animal life in all its forms, human existence, laws, manners, social and domestic order.  Afterwards, when, at the end of some fifty days, he found that we could converse, if not with ease yet without fear of serious misapprehension, he took an early opportunity of explaining to me the causes and circumstances of my unfriendly reception among his people.