occurred. He had been sitting silent in his corner, occasionally taking a
glimpse through the peephole, or one of the windows, when suddenly he
slapped his thigh, and springing to his feet, exclaimed:

"They're mountains of crystal!"

"Mountains of crystal!" we echoed.

"Nothing else in the world, and I am ashamed not to have foreseen the
thing. It's plain enough when you come to think about it. Remember that
Venus being a world lying half in the daylight and half in the night, is
necessarily as hot on one side as it is cold on the other. All of the
clouds and floating vapors are on the day side, where the sunbeams act.
The heated air charged with moisture rises over the sunward hemisphere,
and flows off above, on all sides, toward the night side, while from the
latter cold air flows in beneath to take its place. Along the junction of
the two hemispheres the clouds and moisture are condensed by the intense
cold, and fall in ceaseless snowstorms. This snow descending for ages has
piled up in mountainous masses whose height may be increased in some
places by real mountain ranges buried beneath. The atmospheric moisture
cannot pass very far into the night hemisphere without being condensed,
and so it is all arrested within a ring, or band, extending completely
around the planet, and marking the division between perpetual day and
perpetual night. The appearance of gigantic flames is produced by the
sunbeams striking these mountains of ice and snow from behind and
breaking into prismatic fire."

We listened to this explanation, so simple and yet so wonderful, with
mingled feelings of astonishment and admiration. And then we turned again
to regard the phenomenon, which now, with our nearer approach, had become