“Your chemists have just arrived at that point of knowledge where ours were forty centuries ago. Yours recognize over sixty forms of matter as simple and elementary, while ours have reduced them all to one,—the unit out of which all creation is formed. From this you may infer that our discovery of the compound nature of the metals enables us to make them at pleasure. This was a most fortunate and timely knowledge for us, since they are distributed very sparsely on our planet. It will no doubt be a strange thing to tell you, that we make gold at a less cost than iron, and that consequently it is the cheapest metal in use. You are about to ask me whether we make diamonds. We have made them for centuries. Our factories turn them out in masses for the ornamental parts of buildings, for which they are remarkably adapted on account of their brilliancy and indestructibility.”
My strange visitor rested a little here, with the evident intention of reading my thoughts, and of enjoying my surprise. While I was marvelling what great things chemical science must have done in other ways, he appeared to anticipate my question.
“My brother,” said he, “we are indebted to the science of chemistry for more than I can readily enumerate. With us, as with you, a large number of common and abundant substances differ only a trifle in chemical composition from others which are in great demand for the purposes of life. The science of chemistry enables us to convert one into the other at will. Thus, from wood we manufacture sugar, starch, and any number of other useful commodities. By the double decomposition of air and water we generate a heat which, for economy and easy regulation, is better than anything the universe affords. The clumsy, unclean and inconvenient use of wood and coal for fuel is with us a practice of the past.
“But chemistry has done for us an immeasurably greater service. It has enabled us to provide for ourselves a food supply by the process of synthesis, which, in the extremity of crop shortage or failure, we can resort to as a means of averting famine. You are aware, in your present stage of chemical knowledge, that all food products are composed of four simple ingredients, Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Nitrogen, found in abundant supply in the atmosphere and its natural mixture. These, with two or three earthy matters from the soil, are the constituents of all food. We forestall the slow assimilation of these by the organs of animals and plants, and by our chemical skill are enabled to combine them in proper proportion to form the proximate elements of all varieties of food, wanting in nothing but the taste and flavor of the natural supply, and on that account, only used when compelled by necessity.
“Our advance in synthetic chemistry has enabled us to imitate nature’s products in many of their organic forms. Besides those nitrogen compounds which we manufacture as life sustainers, we produce many substances which are equivalent to those you obtain exclusively from animal and vegetable life. We obtain in this way substitutes for leather, horn, ivory, and also fats and oils, albumen, gluten, starch, etc., etc.; most of these better and in more convenient forms for industrial and culinary uses than nature furnishes them. Our textile fabrics are entirely derived from vegetable growth, and we give them a quality of slow or quick conduction of heat to accord with their purposes of summer or winter wear.
“You may safely infer from what I have said that we slaughter no animals for food or raiment. Such demoralizing cruelty we have never practiced. The ferocious examples of beasts and birds of prey we have never known, and we have no extensive wastes over which they could live and flourish. Our animals which are limited in variety compared with yours are all domesticated, and our treatment of them is so uniformly kind, that instead of avoiding us they court our society. We have a clean and beautiful creature, much smaller than your cow, which gives us milk. It is remarkably intelligent, and is often admitted into our households to nurse our infants, who become very fond of them. Our city parks are provided with these animals and it is a common sight to see them gamboling with children and quietly submitting themselves to their nourishment.
“It is a part of our religion to believe that every living creature is related, though distantly, to ourselves, and to those of them especially which are brought into our service, we owe not only an obligation of kindness, but the care of attention in sickness and old age. We have accordingly established places of retirement for them. The kind relations existing for ages between us and all animal kind has modified their conduct to us in a way that would be striking to you, and would lead you to believe that they possess more intelligence than you have given them credit for. They come to us in their troubles, and submit in the most human way to medical treatment in their hospitals. You would be interested to note the friendly familiarity existing between us and our birds, who in brilliancy of plumage and song are far ahead of yours. They abound in our city parks, and one has only to open the window and whistle and they will come flying into the apartment, engaging themselves in a concert of song, perched about on the furniture, as a happy privilege. On any other occasion when one comes silent and alone we know what it portends, and it is tenderly carried to the bird hospital.”
“You have,” I ventured to enquire, “railroads and boats for transportation?”
“We have neither,” answered my visitor, “nor do we require them, for reasons easily explained. There are two conditions of our planet which render the navigation of the air entirely safe and successful. They are the greater density of our atmosphere, and the diminished force of gravity compared with yours. Our air ships, as you would call them, are easily made to sustain and move large cargoes, by vacuum chambers and electric motors. Our inventors have long since surmounted the difficulties of adverse wind currents, and these vessels, of both public and private use, may be seen constantly moving about in all directions, and at all altitudes, with but few serious accidents.
“There are no large oceans like yours on Mars, and our rivers are so small as not to serve the purposes of commerce. You will perceive, then, that our facilities for navigating the air were bestowed upon us as a means of transportation, in lieu of the convenient waterways which you enjoy. As you may anticipate, from the small size of our rivers, there are no extensive mountainous water sheds upon our surface. Instead of your immense, desolate, and storm-beaten seas, we have a series of lakes, everywhere varying in size, but none of them larger than seventy-five of your miles long, and forty broad.