The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-lytton — Read

Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary way down the lamplit road and / towards the large building I have described. The road itself seemed like / a great Alpine pass, skirting rocky mountains of which the one through / whose chasm I had descended formed a link. Deep below to the left lay / a vast valley, which presented to my astonished eye the unmistakeable / evidences of art and culture. There were fields covered with a strange / vegetation, similar to none I have seen above the earth; the colour of / it not green, but rather of a dull and leaden hue or of a golden red.

There were lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been curved into / artificial banks; some of pure water, others that shone like pools of / naphtha. At my right hand, ravines and defiles opened amidst the rocks, / with passes between, evidently constructed by art, and bordered by trees / resembling, for the most part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite varieties / of feathery foliage, and stems like those of the palm-tree. Others were / more like the cane-plant, but taller, bearing large clusters of flowers. / Others, again, had the form of enormous fungi, with short thick stems / supporting a wide dome-like roof, from which either rose or drooped long / slender branches. The whole scene behind, before, and beside me far as / the eye could reach, was brilliant with innumerable lamps. The world / without a sun was bright and warm as an Italian landscape at noon, but / the air less oppressive, the heat softer. Nor was the scene before me / void of signs of habitation. I could distinguish at a distance, whether / on the banks of the lake or rivulet, or half-way upon eminences, / embedded amidst the vegetation, buildings that must surely be the homes / of men. I could even discover, though far off, forms that appeared to / me human moving amidst the landscape. As I paused to gaze, I saw to / the right, gliding quickly through the air, what appeared a small / boat, impelled by sails shaped like wings. It soon passed out of sight, / descending amidst the shades of a forest. Right above me there was no / sky, but only a cavernous roof. This roof grew higher and higher at the / distance of the landscapes beyond, till it became imperceptible, as an / atmosphere of haze formed itself beneath.