512 



MARS, RECENT STUDIES OF. 



about 612 miles across. Therefore, if this is a 

 system of Martial engineering, here is a ca^e 

 where the engineers gained 012 miles of nat- 

 ural water-way for each canal. This is just 

 what terrestrial engineers would have done 

 under the same circumstances. Look again at 

 a place marked A, between the fortieth and 

 fiftieth parallels of north latitude. It is about 

 three degrees of latitude in width and sixteen 

 of longitude in length, which makes it about 

 90 miles broad and 500 miles long. Four ca- 

 nals, from different directions, enter the western 

 end of this lonsr, narrow sheet of water ; and 

 three, from different directions also, enter its 

 eastern end ; none enter upon its sides. Lake 

 Nillacus is practically a round lake, and its 

 canals enter on all of its sides ; but this is a 

 long, narrow lake, and its canals enter its ends. 

 Here, then, is another example of what a skill- 

 ful engineer upon our own world would have 



extremity it is entered by two canals, at its 

 eastern end by two (here we encounter a little 

 uncertainty, growing out of the fact that the 

 original draughtsman was not sufficiently skilled 

 in map-drawing to make the verges of the two 

 hemispheres coincide), on its southern shore 

 by the canal that we followed from B to 0. 

 This canal trends nearly due north, and a con- 

 tinuation of its course would carry a vessel 

 through the western strait between the island 

 and the mainland into the extension of the 

 polar sea, still keeping up the character of en- 

 gineering design hitherto referred to ; and it is 

 curiously corroborative of design when we find 

 by the maps given that this system of canals 

 has been pushed as -far north as the eightieth 

 parallel ; for, as the axis of Mars is inclined to 

 the plane of its orbit seven degrees more than 

 that of our earth to its orbit, it follows that 

 the sun moves seven degrees farther poleward 



MAP OF THE PLANET MARS. 



done under like circumstances, simply because, 

 by entering a long stretch of water-way at its 

 ends, he gains both the water-way of its length 

 and breadth. If he entered at its sides he 

 would only gain the water-way of its width, 

 90 miles. The true engineer enters at the ends, 

 because he gains 500 miles of water-way and 

 the 90 besides. 



Moving eastward from A to the position B, 

 we come to what is either a section of a widen- 

 ing of the canal system or a natural water-way 

 about 300 miles in length; but, whichever it 

 may be, the same order is observed; it is en- 

 tered at one end by two canals coming from 

 different directions, and at the other by four, 

 all of which have the same divergent charac- 

 ter. Moving northward along one of those 

 canals that lead from its eastward end, we come 

 to a sound of the northern sea formed by the 

 coast of the mainland and that of a large isl- 

 and. This sound, or long, narrow sea, has a 

 length of somewhat over 600 miles and an 

 average width of about 100. At its western 



in the summer than on our planet, from which 

 fact there is due to the eightieth parallel of 

 latitude on Mars a mean temperature equiva- 

 lent to the seventy-third degree on our world, 

 or about the latitude of the North Cape of 

 Norway, which is inhabited to its extreme 

 point. In other words, the canal system of 

 Mars seems to come to an end where the popu- 

 lation begins to grow sparse before the influ- 

 ence of polar desolation. 



In a general way, we invite attention to the 

 points of convergence D and E on the western 

 hemisphere, near the twentieth degree of north 

 latitude, as they seem to partake of the nature 

 of the water-ways we have been considering, 

 and also F on the eastern hemisphere and the 

 same latitude. But let us take a glance at that 

 great estuary running northward up into the 

 land from the southern ocean, lying near the 

 eastern verge of the eastern hemisphere. Its 

 mouth opens southward at the tenth degree of 

 south latitude, and it penetrates above the 

 fortieth parallel of north latitude ; at the point 



