we approached the bright cloud-encompassed orb, we lovingly watched her for a few seconds, as she came towards us, trudging along in her orbit. Up at last she duly rolls, and we easily effect our landing at one of the high latitude stations, where the climate is found so suitable to us. We always jump ashore upon Venus with the easy and confident familiarity of feeling entirely at home. This is especially the case amongst these arctic latitudes; for the chief feature of difference in the two planets, namely, the comparatively huge sun in the Venus sky, is appreciably toned down, alike in heat and light, by the cloud and cold, and the lofty mountain heights of those localities. The fair planet, with her dense cloud system, has, in fact, a remarkably equable climate, night and day temperatures differing much less than ours. Indeed, our earth seemed to the Venusians so extremely different, in those and other respects, from their own, that before their science had detected unmistakable signs of population, their conclusions had been all on the negative side, and consequently there were many pulpit and other homilies about great, but lifeless, worlds around them.
The inconvenience of the partially different atmospheric composition in Venus is being gradually rectified by successive contrivances, one of the latest of which, a most simple arrangement, I had now brought with me, and found to answer its purpose admirably. A small chlorine generator is fixed under the mouth, in connection with the respiratory movements, and, at every breathing inhalation, emits a tiny stream of the chlorine gas, which catches up the
