The sight of Earth, as it appeared through the telescope, was too beautiful to pass by with a mere glance.  Half illuminated, owing to the greater distance of Mars from the sun and the position of the planets at that time, Earth appeared about the size the moon looks to the naked eye.  But what a wonderful sight!  Bathed in sunlight lay the eastern half of the continents of North and South America, faintly outlined by the pale blue of the western portion of the Atlantic Ocean.  So familiar was I with the appearance of these two great continents as drawn in an atlas, that I had difficulty in recognizing them as they now appeared.  Mexico and Central America seemed almost as broad as that part of the United States from San Francisco to Washington; the whole tapering down from Canada to Cape Horn almost in the shape of a cone.

Aeronauts passing over a lake or river are able to see the bottom, owing to their altitude; this was undoubtedly the explanation of the strange appearance of the continents of North and South America.  On account of the enormous distance I was away from Earth, the shallow waters appeared as land, obliterating completely the familiar coast line, and only the extreme depth of an ocean showed a pale blue.

Night covered Europe and Africa, which would otherwise have been visible to me, and the shadow of darkness was steadily creeping across the Atlantic Ocean, as the Earth revolved upon its axis.  I could not suppress a shudder at the thought that I must cover that enormous distance ere it revolved too far.

I now moved the lever that controlled the current, and at once the lens in the receiving apparatus shone with a brilliant dark blue color.  The current of super-radium had reached Earth and returned in less than a second, and I saw, beautifully pictured before me, an expanse of ocean with waves tumbling and tossing so near me that it seemed as if I were but a few feet above them.

By diminishing the current I found that the image on the lens grew smaller, the effect being exactly the same as that from a balloon rising.  The picture at first appeared slanting at an angle of about thirty degrees, owing to the curvature of the Earth, but by manipulating a small lever close at hand that operated a mirror in the radioscope, this defect was corrected.

After searching about with the current, I at last came upon a large steamer, evidently an ocean liner.  Throwing huge billows aside in clouds of white spray as she cut through the water, she made a beautiful sight, and it was with difficulty that I kept her in the field of vision.  As I appeared to be looking straight down upon her decks, it was evident that she was about in the center of the Earth’s surface exposed to Mars.