"This," he said, after closely examining the metal, "is native iron.
There's nothing remarkable in the fact that it should be here. All the
solid planets, as you know" (turning to me), "are very largely composed
of iron, and Venus, being nearer the center of the system, may have
proportionally more of it than the earth. And these fellows have found
out its usefulness, and how to work it. There's nothing surprising in
that, either, for some of our savages have done as much on the earth. Now
I'll make another prediction--we are going to find coal here. That is
inevitable, since we know that they burn it in the caverns. I shouldn't
wonder if it were close at hand, from the look of these rocks."
He approached the wall of the cavern containing the smithy, and
immediately exclaimed:
"Look here! Here it is!"
And sure enough, on joining him we saw a seam of as fine anthracite as
Pennsylvania ever produced.
"A Carboniferous Age on Venus!" Edmund continued. "What do you think of
that? But, of course, it was sure to be so; all the planets that are old
enough have been through practically the same stages. Think of it! The
plants that gave origin to this coal must have flourished here when Venus
still rotated on her axis rapidly enough to have day and night succeeding
one another on all sides of her, for now no vegetation except the
insignificant plants that grow in these caverns can live on this
hemisphere.
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