this extravagant destruction, were necessary for every tint that our butterflies wear on their wings.  Without those flaming ranges of mountains of iron they would have no red to show; even the poppy could have no red for her petals:  without the flames that were blasting the mountains of salt there could be no answering blue in any wing, or one blue flower for all the bees of Earth:  without the nightmare light of those frightful canyons of copper that awed the two spirits watching their ceaseless ruin, the very leaves of the woods we love would be without their green with which to welcome Spring; for from the flames of the various metals and wonders that for ever blaze in the Sun, our sunshine gets all its colours that it conveys to us almost unseen, and thence the wise little insects and patient flowers softly draw the gay tints that they glory in; there is nowhere else to get them.

And yet to Rodriguez and Morano all that they saw seemed wholly and hideously evil.

How long they may have watched there they tried to guess afterwards, but as they looked on those terrific scenes they had no way to separate days from minutes:  nothing about them seemed to escape destruction, and time itself seemed no calmer than were those shuddering mountains.

Then the thundering ranges passed; and afterwards there came a gleaming mountain, one huge and lonely peak, seemingly all of gold.  Had our whole world been set beside it and shaped as it was shaped, that golden mountain would yet have towered above it:  it would have taken our moon as well to reach that flashing peak.  It rode on toward them in its golden majesty, higher than all the flames, save now and then when some wild gas seemed to flee from the dread earthquakes of the Sun, and was overtaken in the height by fire, even above that mountain.

As that mass of gold that was higher than all the world drew near to Rodriguez and Morano they felt its unearthly menace; and though it could not overcome their spirits they knew there was a hideous terror about it.  It was in its awful scale that its terror lurked for any creature of our planet.  Though they could not quake or tremble they felt that terror.  The mountain dwarfed Earth.

Man knows his littleness, his own mountains remind him; many countries are small, and some nations:  but the dreams of Man make up for our faults and failings, for the brevity of our lives, for the narrowness of our scope; they leap over boundaries and are away and away.  But this great mountain belittled the world and all:  who gazed on it knew all his dreams to be puny.  Before this mountain Man seemed a trivial thing, and Earth, and all the dreams Man had of himself and his home.

The golden mass drew opposite those two watchers and seemed to challenge with its towering head the pettiness of the tiny world they knew.  And then the whole gleaming mountain gave one shudder and fell into the awful plains of the Sun.  Straight down before Rodriguez and Morano it slipped roaring, till the golden peak was gone, and the molten plain closed over it; and only ripples remained, the size of Europe, as when a tumbling river strikes the rocks of its bed and on its surface heaving circles widen and disappear.  And then, as though this horror left nothing more to be shown, they felt the Professor beckon to them from Earth.