“We had gone perhaps ten miles when the ground began to rise very rapidly…In a short time we gained the foot of the mountains, and after traversing a narrow gorge came to an open valley, at the far extremity of which was a low table of land upon which I beheld an enormous city.” (13)
Clearly this imagery is taken from the landscape of the West. The narrator begins his story in Arizona, and I feel like that location was chosen specifically for its similarity to the landscape of Mars that he is describing. Was the author trying to create an accurate/realistic picture of Mars? Or is this entirely fictional and based off of Arizona’s landscape?