"No! we were breathing, sensate things, were human kin and kind. The sudden vertigo sent me throbbing, like a stricken animal, against the high pillars of the room we had entered, and a reflex tide of emotion swept over me in a storm that shook me with convulsive sobs.
"My companion handed me a black wafer. I took it, it dissolved, a fierce acridity seemed formed in my mouth, and in an instant I felt strong and bold.
"The Registeries were offices in the alcove-like openings in the sides of this very long building. In the same building were the Courts, which are few, and here the rooms for the reception and storage of supplies for the City. The Hall of Registeries is prolonged into a series of huge buildings extending along the walls of the Canal.
"I was led by my unknown friend and Chapman to one of these recesses on which I recognized a globe of our earth with its continents in relief. Here upon simple tables were spread great bound books made up of thick creamy leaves of white paper. These were the Registers. The original home, planet, world, or star, from which each emigrant spirit had departed was, as far as possible, determined, and appropriately recorded. The details of their lives were inquired into, the condition and history of the sphere they had left examined, and thus by the revision and comparison of these narratives the history of the various worlds was in a fair way known, almost as accurately as their present inhabitants knew them.
"The alcoves of the Registeries were really ample rooms. Cases holding voluminous records were ranged upon their walls; maps, charts, even paintings and drawings, as made by the arriving spirits hung upon the walls, and in broad albums were gathered the portraits, in small size, of the incarnated persons. The Registeries were young men who, from long intercourse with the affairs and occupants of each of the different extra-Martian bodies, whence spirits came, had become familiar with their languages and circumstances and avocations.
"The keeping, indexing, compiling, illustration, of these extraordinary records is a difficult and inexhaustible task.
"The results are often reproduced to the Martians in lectures, bulletins, or in sections of the great newspaper Dia.
"The young men approached us as we entered the room, and after saluting my guide and also Chapman with the Martian cry, Tintotita, led me to a chair, and giving me one of the black wafers, whose acidity had a short time before so vigorously renewed my consciousness, began their inquiry.
"The photograph of each visitor is taken, and a process quite like our collodion or wet process is used. The portraits are more permanent than with the perishable dry plates. It is a curious thing to learn that for 100 years these records and pictures have been taken, and that there are on Mars hosts of unidentified spirits, who entered its wondrous precincts before that time.
"The duration of life in Mars is very various. There seems here an undiscovered law, and a group of observers in Mars are to-day trying to penetrate this mystery. It is asserted that there is evidence that Egyptians of the ante-Christian epoch are to-day living in Mars, but their identification is now almost impossible. On the other hand, it is a fact ascertained and recorded that in one hundred years many Martians die, while others scarcely survive the ordinary limit of our human life on earth. This gives a great interest to Martian society. Here for ages have possibly flown disembodied spirits from our earth; in their reincarnation they have assumed the features and faculties of youth; they have also, under changed conditions of life, and moderated functions and activity in living, been physically, perhaps mentally, modified. Their own memory of their past on Earth, however vivid, and then in exceptional beings, has slowly disappeared or left only vague cloud-like waverings and congeries of reminiscences.