A Princess of Mars

"If, then, you are so familiar with earthly things," I asked, "why is

it that you do not recognize me as identical with the inhabitants of

that planet?"

She smiled again as one might in bored indulgence of a questioning

child.

"Because, John Carter," she replied, "nearly every planet and star

having atmospheric conditions at all approaching those of Barsoom,

shows forms of animal life almost identical with you and me; and,

further, Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies with

strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with hideous

contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to conceive;

while you, when found by the Tharkian warriors, were entirely

undisfigured and unadorned.

"The fact that you wore no ornaments is a strong proof of your

un-Barsoomian origin, while the absence of grotesque coverings might

cause a doubt as to your earthliness."

I then narrated the details of my departure from the Earth, explaining

that my body there lay fully clothed in all the, to her, strange

garments of mundane dwellers. At this point Sola returned with our

meager belongings and her young Martian protege, who, of course, would

have to share the quarters with them.

Sola asked us if we had had a visitor during her absence, and seemed

much surprised when we answered in the negative. It seemed that as she

had mounted the approach to the upper floors where our quarters were

located, she had met Sarkoja descending. We decided that she must have

been eavesdropping, but as we could recall nothing of importance that

had passed between us we dismissed the matter as of little consequence,

merely promising ourselves to be warned to the utmost caution in the

future.

Dejah Thoris and I then fell to examining the architecture and

decorations of the beautiful chambers of the building we were

occupying. She told me that these people had presumably flourished

over a hundred thousand years before. They were the early progenitors

of her race, but had mixed with the other great race of early Martians,

who were very dark, almost black, and also with the reddish yellow race

which had flourished at the same time.

These three great divisions of the higher Martians had been forced into

a mighty alliance as the drying up of the Martian seas had compelled

them to seek the comparatively few and always diminishing fertile

areas, and to defend themselves, under new conditions of life, against

the wild hordes of green men.

Ages of close relationship and intermarrying had resulted in the race

of red men, of which Dejah Thoris was a fair and beautiful daughter.

During the ages of hardships and incessant warring between their own

various races, as well as with the green men, and before they had

fitted themselves to the changed conditions, much of the high

civilization and many of the arts of the fair-haired Martians had

become lost; but the red race of today has reached a point where it

feels that it has made up in new discoveries and in a more practical

civilization for all that lies irretrievably buried with the ancient

Barsoomians, beneath the countless intervening ages.