“Finally we came to the last tier of locks at the summit of which my curiosity was to be satisfied by a view of the great City of Scandor, the City of Glass.

“It was night when our china boat floated upon the waters of the last lock that completed the ascent, and immediately below the observatory Station or Settlement of Scandor.  I was standing on the deck of the boat, watching impatiently the slowly rising tide upon which we were borne upward.  I could at first see as we ascended the towers of the observatory station.  Above me, looking at us with interest, on the walls of the lock, was a company of Martians.  The night was cloudy, and the lights of the hastening satellites were but intermittently evident.  Gradually my head passed upward beyond the obstructing interference of wall and gate and fence, and the glorious and unimaginable splendor of the City of Scandor, like some monstrous continental opal, lay before me in the immediate valley.

“The glistening panes of water below me marked the places of the descending line of locks.  Around me were the buildings of the Scandor Observatory, and to the right and left swept the forested slopes of a circular range which, as I later saw, ranged about in one amphitheatrical circuit the, great vale of Scandor.  But only an instant’s glance could be spared for this detail.  The divine City glowing below me seemed to magnetize attention, and control, through its wonderfulness each wavering attitude of interest.  My son, the eye of man never beheld so astonishing a picture.  Imagine a city reaching twenty miles in all directions built of glass variously designed, interrupted by tall towers, pyramids, minarets, steeples, light, fantastic and beautiful structures, all aflame, or rather softly radiating a variously colored glory of light.

“Imagine this great area of building, penetrated by broad avenues, radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a center where rose upward to the sky a colossal amphitheatre.  Imagine these roads, delineated to the eye by tall chimneys or tubes of glass through which played an electric current, converting each one into a lambent pillar.  Imagine between these paths of greenish opalescence the squares of buildings of domed, arched and castellated roofs, pierced and starred, and spread in lines and patterns of white electric lamps.  The noble proportions of the larger buildings, the graceful outlines of turreted or campanulate erections, and the smaller houses were all defined.  I could see canals or rivers of water winding through the City spanned by arches of flame, and even the symmetrical disposition of the dark-leaved trees was visible.

“But the night was still further turned to day, for above the City, high in the velvet black empyrean were suspended thousands of glass balloons, each emitting the Geissler-like illumination that marked the lines of streets.  So full and opulent was the flood of light, that the summit I had reached, the encircling hills, and the farther side of the saucer-shaped valley where Scandor lay, were bathed in an equally diffused radiation.