different from the world I had known--even the flowers. The big
building I had left was situated on the slope of a broad river
valley, but the Thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present
position. I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a
mile and a half away, from which I could get a wider view of this
our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred
and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the little
dials of my machine recorded.

'As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly
help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I
found the world--for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for
instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of
aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled
heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like
plants--nettles possibly--but wonderfully tinted with brown about
the leaves, and incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derelict
remains of some vast structure, to what end built I could not
determine. It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have
a very strange experience--the first intimation of a still stranger
discovery--but of that I will speak in its proper place.

'Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I
rested for a while, I realized that there were no small houses to be
seen. Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household,
had vanished. Here and there among the greenery were palace-like
buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such
characteristic features of our own English landscape, had
disappeared.