In the meanwhile, and afterwards, we learned a good deal about the country, and the manners and customs of its inhabitants.  Womla, or Woom-la, which means the “bowl” or hollow-land, is evidently the crater of an extinct volcano of enormous dimensions, such as are believed to exist upon the moon.  It belongs to an archipelago of similar islands, which are widely scattered over a vast ocean in this part of Venus, but is, we were told, far distant from the nearest of them.  The climate may be described as a perpetual spring and summer, with a sky nearly always serene, and of a beautiful azure blue, veiled with soft and fleecy clouds.

Thanks to the lofty walls of the crater, which penetrate the clouds and condense their moisture, the land is watered with many streams.  These flow into the central lake, which discharges into the surrounding ocean by a rift or chasm in the mountain side.  Moreover, there are frequent showers, and heavy dews by night, to refresh the surface of the ground.  Thunderstorms occur on the tops of the mountain and in the open sea; but very seldom within the enchanted girdle of the crater.  The air is remarkably pure, sweet, and exhilarating, owing doubtless to the high percentage of oxygen it contains, and the absence of foreign matter, such as microbes, dust, and obnoxious fumes.  In fact, we all felt a distinct improvement in our health and spirits, a kind of mental intoxication which was really more than a rejuvenescence.  Nor was the heat very trying, even in the middle of the day, because although the sun was twice as large as on the earth, he did not rise far above the horizon, and cooling breezes blew from the chilled summit of the cliffs.  The vegetation seems to go on budding, flowering, and fruiting perpetually, as in the Elysian Fields of Homer, where

    “Joys ever young, unmixed with pain or fear,
     Fill the wide circle of the eternal year: 
     Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime
     The fields are florid with unfading prime;
     From the bleak Pole no winds inclement blow,
     Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow;
     But from the breezy deep the blessed inhale,
     The fragrant murmurs of the western gale.”

The mysterious behaviour of the sun was a great puzzle to our astronomer.  I have said that he rose very little above the horizon, or in other words the lip of the crater, as might be expected from our high southern latitude; but we soon found that he always rose and sank at the same place.  In the morning he peeped above the cliffs, and in the evening he dipped again behind them, leaving a twilight or gloaming (I can scarcely call it dusk), which continued throughout the night.  From his fixity in azimuth, Gazen concluded that Schiaparelli, the famous Italian observer, was right in supposing that Venus takes as long to turn about her own axis as she does to go round the sun, and that as a consequence she always presents