The first of these perils, then, was the graver one, perhaps the only grave one, and certainly to my imagination it was much the most terrible.

The idea of perishing of want in the infinite solitude of space, and being whirled round for ever the dead denizen of a planet one hundred feet in diameter, had in it something even more awful than grotesque.
On the thirty-ninth morning of my voyage, so far as I could calculate by the respective direction and size of the Sun and of Mars, I was within about 1,900,000 miles from the latter.

I proceeded without hesitation to direct the whole force of the current permitted to emerge from the apergion directly against the centre of the planet.
His diameter increased with great rapidity, till at the end of the first day I found myself within one million of miles of his surface.
His diameter subtended about 15', and his disc appeared about one-fourth the size of the Moon.

Examined through the telescope, it presented a very different appearance from that either of the Earth or of her satellite.

It resembled the former in having unmistakably air and water.