Taking his position at the forward end, where a window in the top of the car afforded a view ahead, Reon now moved a lever at his side and we rose until clear of the observatory building.  We then commenced to glide along without either vibration or sound.  Slowly we made our way through the many small aerenoids that floated about us, and a soft light, coming from a canopy containing the substance used to illuminate the observatory, clearly revealed the occupants to me, as we passed close by them.  I now noticed that the women were wonderfully beautiful—­beauty that was possible only where sickness had been unknown for hundreds of years.

Leaving this happy gathering, we passed over what appeared to be a river about a mile broad, whose banks rose perpendicularly a hundred feet or more from the water.  These were illuminated with lights, placed every hundred yards or so, giving it the appearance of a broad city street stretching as far as the eye could see.  At once it occurred to me that this was one of the wonderful canals, visible even from Earth, and as we passed over it I observed another canal, equal in proportions, running parallel.  Although both were on level ground, their waters were flowing rapidly in different directions.  What new wonder was this!

Into this second canal our aerenoid now turned, sinking slowly until within thirty feet from the surface.  Gradually our speed increased until the lights along the banks formed one long unbroken line.  One hundred miles a minute we sped along, and yet without the least vibration or sound.  At such a speed it was possible to encircle Mars in seventy minutes, almost, I thought, as rapidly as could Puck in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” who boasted of putting a girdle round the Earth in forty minutes.

On we flew down the walled-in track, passing numerous other canals equally as broad, flowing into it, until within ten minutes a faint gray light appeared.  It was daylight, and in a few moments sunlight crowned the banks on either side of us.  Even as I looked the sun itself appeared, and in the space of fifty seconds it was high in the heavens.  In fifteen minutes we had covered almost a quarter of the globe, and now it was the middle of the afternoon.

The importance of having speedways in which to confine aerenoids, travelling at the terrific velocity of one hundred miles a minute, was obvious, and what could be better adapted to the purpose than these magnificent waterways, which completely cover the surface of the planet with such geometrical exactness, that they have always been a source of great wonder to astronomers on Earth.  Thousands and thousands of years old, the method of constructing this gigantic system of canals remains enshrouded in the same mystery to the Martians, as that which surrounds the building of the pyramids in Egypt.