#caesar's column

The speed of these aerial vessels is, as you know, very great--thirty-six hours suffices to pass from New York to London, in ordinary weather. 

These lights are not fed, as in the old time, from electric dynamos, but the magnetism of the planet itself is harnessed for the use of man. That marvelous earth-force which [is called] "the aurora borealis," is now used to illuminate this great metropolis, with a clear, soft, white light, like that of the full moon, but many times brighter. And the force is so cunningly conserved that it is returned to the earth, without any loss of magnetic power to the planet.