wooded with vegetation, changing rapidly from Alpine to sub-tropical.
The air also grew warmer, and when the dividing ridge was crossed and
a thick forest entered, the snows and dreadful region of Deadmen's Ice
already seemed leagues and leagues away.

Probably a warm ocean current played on one side of the peninsula, while
a cold one swept the other, but for scientific aspects of the question I
cared little in my joy at being anew in a soft climate, amongst beautiful
flowers and vivid life again. Mile after mile slipped quickly by as
I strode along, whistling "Yankee Doodle" to myself and revelling in
the change. At one place I met a rough-looking Martian woodcutter,
who wanted to fight until he found I also wanted to, when he turned
very civil and as talkative as a solitary liver often is when his tongue
gets started. He particularly desired to know where I came from, and,
as in the case with so many other of his countrymen, took it for granted,
and with very little surprise, that I was either a spirit or an inhabitant
of another world. With this idea in his mind he gave me a curious piece
of information, which, unfortunately, I was never able to follow up.

"I don't think you can be a spirit," he said, critically eyeing my
clothes, which were now getting ragged and dirty beyond description.
"They are finer-looking things than you, and I doubt if their toes come
through their shoes like yours do. If you are a wanderer from the stars,
you are not like that other one we have down yonder," and he pointed to
the southward.

"What!" I asked, pricking my ears in amazement, "another wanderer from
the outside world! Does he come from the earth?"--using the word An
had given me to signify my own planet.