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.

The Time Machine