solar system, there would doubtless be revealed planets and satellites
in their order somewhat resembling those of our own solar family, yet
there would doubtless be many surprises in the view. Arriving near the
first sun to be visited, though the heavens would have changed their
shape, all the existing constellations having altered with the change
in the point of view, there would still be one familiar element in
that the new-found planets would be near by, and the nearest fixed
stars far away in the firmament.

With the speed of light a stellar voyage could be taken along the path
of the Milky Way, which would endure for thousands of years. Through
all the course the journeyer would perceive the same vast girdle of
stars, faint because they were far away, which gives the dim light of
our galaxy. At no point is it probable that he would find the separate
suns much more aggregated or greatly farther apart than they are in
that part of the Milky Way which our sun now occupies. Looking forth
on either side of the "galactic plane," there would be the same
scattering of stars which we now behold when we gaze at right angles
to the way we are supposing the spirit to traverse.

As the form of the Milky Way is irregular, the mass, indeed, having
certain curious divisions and branches, it well might be that the
supposed path would occasionally pass on one or the other side of the
vast star layer. In such positions the eye would look forth into an
empty firmament, except that there might be in the far away, tens of
thousands of years perhaps at the rate that light travels away from
the observer, other galaxies or Milky Ways essentially like that which
he was traversing. At some point the journeyer would attain the margin
of our star stratum, whence again he would look forth into the
unpeopled heavens, though even there he might discern other remote