Dotted all over the reddish-ochre ground of the desert stretches of the planet, the so-called continents of Mars, are an innumerable number of dark circular or oval spots. They appear, furthermore, always in intimate association with the canals. They constitute so many hubs to which the canals make spokes. These spots, together with the canals that lead to them, are the only markings to be seen anywhere on the continental regions. Otherwise the great reddish-ochre areas are absolutely bare; of that pale fire-opal hue which marks our own deserts seen from far.
That these two things,--straight lines and roundish spots,--should, with our present telescopic means, be the sole markings to appear on the vast desert regions of the planet is suggestive in itself.
Another significant fact as to the character of either marking is the manifest
association of the two. In spite of the great number of the spots, not one of
them stands isolate. There is not a single instance of a spot that is not
connected by a canal to the rest of the dark areas. This remarkable inability
to stand alone shows that the spots and the canals are not unrelated phenomena,
for were there no tie between them they must occasionally exist apart.
Nor is this all. There is, apparently, no spot that is not joined to the rest
of the system, not only by a canal, but by more than one; for though some
spots, such as the Fountain of Youth, have appeared at first to be provided
with but a single canal connection, later observation has revealed concurrence
in the case. The spots are, therefore, not only part and parcel of the canal
system, but terminal phenomena of the same.
In the first place, as I have said, there appears to be no spot that has not
two or more canals running to it; in the second place, I find, reversely, that
apparently no canal junction is without its spot. Such association is a most
tell-tale circumstance. I believe the rule to have no exception. The more
prominent junctions all show spots; and with regard to the less conspicuous
ones, it is to be remembered that, as the canals are more easy to make out than
the spots, the relative invisibility of the latter is to be expected. From
which it would seem that the spots are fundamental features of the junctions,
and that for a junction to be spotless is, from its very nature, an
impossibility.
Next to their regularity of position is to be remarked their regularity of
form. Their typical shape seems to be circular; for the better the atmosphere,
the rounder they look. Under poor seeing they show as irregular patches
smooching the disk, much as the canals themselves show as streaks; the spots
differing from the canals in being thicker and not so long. As the seeing
improves, the patches differentiate themselves into round dots and connecting
lines. Such is the shape of the spots associated with single canals; that is,
canals not double. In the case of the double canals, the spots look like
rectangles with the corners rounded off. One of the most striking of all of
them is the Trivium Charontis, which is nearly square.
Now it will be noticed that these shapes are as unnatural as they are definite,
and that they all agree in one peculiarity: they are all convex, not concave,
to the entering canals. They are not, therefore, mere enlargements of the
canals, due to natural causes; for, were the spots enlargements of the canals,
at their crossing-points they should be more or less star-shaped, or concave to
the canals, whereas they are round, or roundish rectangles,--that is, convex
to the same. Such convexity negatives, at the outset, their being purely
natural outgrowths of the canals.
The majority of the spots are from 120 to 150 miles in diameter; thus
presenting a certain uniformity in size as well as in shape. There are also
smaller ones, not more than 75 miles across, or less.
To the spot category belong, apparently, all the markings other than canals to
be seen anywhere on the continental deserts of the planet, from the great Lake
of the Sun, which is 540 miles long by 300 miles broad, to the tiny Fountain of
Youth, which is barely distinguishable as a dot. That all are fundamentally of
a kind is hinted at by their shape and emphasized by their character, a point
to which we shall now come.
To this end, we will start with an account of where and how they begin to show;
for, like the canals, they are not permanent markings, but temporary phenomena.
It is in the region about the Solis Lacus that they appear first. The Solis
Lacus, or Lake of the Sun, is perhaps the most striking marking on Mars. It is
an oval spot in lat. 28 degrees S., with its greater diameter nearly perpendicular to
the meridians, and encircled by an elliptical ring of reddish-ochre land, which
in turn is bordered on the south by the blue-green regions of the south
temperate zone. The whole configuration is such as to simulate a gigantic eye
which uncannily turns round upon one as the planet slowly revolves. It is so
conspicuous a feature of the disk that it has been recognized for a great many
years. The resemblance to an eye is further borne out by a cordon of canals that
surround it on the north. Upon this cordon, composed of the Araxes, the Daemon,
and the Agathodaemon, are beaded a number of spots, two of them, the Phoenix
and the Tithonius lakes, being conspicuously prominent. Closer scrutiny reveals
several more of the same sort, only smaller. These are all interconnected by a
network of canals. Now just as it is in this region that the canals first show,
so likewise is it here that the spots first make their appearance.
Although it was here that at this last opposition the spots were first seen, it
was not here that their character and purpose became apparent. It was not until
later in the season, when the Eumenides-Orcus began to give evidence of being
yet more peculiarly beaded, that the true nature of the spots suggested itself
to me.
The Eumenides-Orcus is a very long and important canal, connecting the Phoenix
Lake with the Trivium Charontis. It is so long--3,540 miles from one end of it
to the other--that, although it starts in lat. 16 degrees N. and ends in lat. 12 degrees S.,
it belts the disk not many degrees inclined to the equator. For a great
distance it runs parallel to the northern coast of the Sea of the Sirens. From
this coast several canals strike down to it; some stopping at it, others
continuing on down the disk. Especially is the western end of the sea, called
the Gulf of the Titans, a point of departure for canals; no less than six of
them, and doubtless more, leaving the gulf in variously radiating directions.
At the place where these canals severally cross the Eumenides-Orcus, I began
in November to see spots. I also saw others along the Pyriphlegethon, an
important canal leading in a more northerly direction from the Phoenix Lake;
along the Gigas, a great canal running from the Gulf of the Titans all the way
to the Lake of the Moon; and along other canals in the same region. I then
noticed that the spots to the north of the Solis Lacus region had darkened,
since August, relatively to the more southern ones. In short, I became aware
both of a great increase in the number of spots, and of an increase in tint
in the spots previously seen.
It was apparent that the spots were part and parcel of the canal system, and
that in the matter of varying visibility they took after the canals,--
chronologically, very closely after them; for a comparison of the two leads me
to believe that the spots make their appearance subsequent, although but
little subsequent, to the canals which conduct to them.
Furthermore, the spots, like the canals, grow in conspicuousness with time.
Now, when we consider that nothing, practically, has changed between us and
them in the interval; that there has been no symptom of cloud or other
obscuration, before or after, over the place where they eventually appear,--
we are led to the conclusion that, like the canals, they grow.
Indeed, in the history of their development the two features seem quite
similar. Both grow, and both follow the same order and method in their growth.
Both are affected by one progressive change that sweeps over the face of the
planet from the pole to the equator, and then from the equator toward the
other pole. In the case of the southern hemisphere, it is, as we have just
seen, the most southern spots, like the most southern canals, that appear first
after the melting of the polar snows. Then gradually others begin to show
farther and farther north. The quickening of the spots, like the quickening of
the canals, is a seasonal affair. But there is more in it than this. It takes
place in a manner to imply that something more immediate than the change in
the seasons is concerned in it; immediate not in time, but in relation to the
result. A comparison of the behavior of three spots--the Phoenix Lake,
Ceraunius, the spot at the junction of the Iris and the Gigas, and the Cyane
Fons, a spot where the Steropes, a newly found canal, and the Nilus meet--
will serve to point out what this something is. The Phoenix Lake lies in lat.
17 degrees S., Ceraunius in lat. 12 degrees N., and the Cyane Fons in lat. 28 degrees N.
In August
of last year,the first of these markings was very conspicuous, the second but
moderately so, while the third was barely discernible.
That this factor is water seems, from the behavior of the blue-green areas
generally, to be pretty certain. But just as the so-called seas are undoubtedly
not seas, nor the canals waterways, so the spots are not lakes. Their mode of
growth, so far as it may be discerned, confirms this conclusion. Apparently, it
is not so much by an increase in size as by a deepening in tint that they
gradually become recognizable. They start, it would seem, as big as they are to
be, but faint in tone, premonitory shades of their future selves. They then
proceed to substantialize by darkening in tint throughout. Now, to deepen thus
in color with one consent all over would be a peculiar thing for a lake to do.
For had the lake appreciable depth to start with, it should always be visible;
and had it not, its bed would have to be phenomenally level to permit of its
being all flooded at once. If, however, the spots be not bodies of water, but
areas of verdure, their deepening in tint throughout is perfectly explicable,
since the darkening would be the natural result of a simultaneous growth of
vegetation. This inference is further borne out by the fact that to the spot
class belong unquestionably those larger oval markings of which the Lake of
the Sun is the most conspicuous example. For both are associated in precisely
the same manner with the canal system. Each spot is a centre of canal
connections in exactly the way in which the Solis Lacus or the Phoenix Lake
itself is. But the light coming from the Solis Lacus and the Phoenix Lake
showed, in Professor W. H. Pickering's observations, no sign of polarization
such as a sheet of water should show, and such as the polar sea actually did
show.
When we put all these phenomena together,--the presence of the spots at the
junctions of the canals, their strangely systematic shapes, their seasonal
darkening, and, last but not least, the resemblance of the great continental
regions of Mars to the deserts of the earth,--a solution of their character
suggests itself at once; to wit, that they are oases in the midst of that
desert, and oases not wholly innocent of design; for, in number, position,
shape, and behavior, the oases turn out as typical and peculiar a feature of
Mars as the canals themselves.
Each phenomenon is highly suggestive considered alone, but each acquires still
greater significance from its association with the other; for here in the oases
we have an end and object for the existence of canals, and the most natural one
in the world, namely, that the canals are constructed for the express purpose
of fertilizing the oases. Thus the mysterious rendezvousing of the canals at
these special points is at once explicable. The canals rendezvous so entirely
in defiance of the doctrine of chances because they were constructed to that
end. They are not purely natural developments, but cases of assisted nature,
just as they look to be at first sight. This, at least, is the only explanation
that fully accounts for the facts. Of course all such evidence of design may
be purely fortuitous, with about as much probability, as it has happily been
put, as that a chance collection of numbers should take the form of the
multiplication table.
In addition to this general dovetailing of detail to one conclusion is to be
noticed the strangely economic character of both the canals and the oases in
the matter of form. That the lines should follow arcs of great circles,
whatever their direction, is as unnatural from a natural standpoint as it would
be natural from an artificial one; for the arc of a great circle is the
shortest distance from one point upon the surface of a sphere to another. It
would, therefore, if topographically possible, be the course to take to conduct
water, with the least expenditure of time or trouble, from the one to the
other.
The circular shape of the oases is as directly economic as is the straightness
of the canals; for the circle is the figure which incloses the maximum area for
the minimum average distance from its centre to any point situated within it.
In consequence, if a certain amount of country were to be irrigated,
intelligence would suggest the circular form in preference to all others, in
order thus to cover the greatest space with the least labor.
Following is the list of the oases so far discovered :--
To see them, however, all that is needed is a sufficiently steady air, a
sufficiently attentive observer, and the suitable season of the Martian year.
When these conditions are observed, the sight may be seen without difficulty,
and is every way as strange as Schiaparelli, who first saw it, has described
it.
So far as the observer is concerned, what occurs is this: Upon apart of the
disk where up to that time a single canal has been visible, of a sudden, some
night, in place of the single canals he perceives twin canals,--as like,
indeed, as twins, if not more so, similar both in character and in
inclination, running side by side the whole length of the original canal,
usually for upwards of a thousand miles, of the same size throughout, and
absolutely parallel to each other. The pair may best be likened to the twin
rails of a railroad track. The regularity of the thing is startling.
In good air the phenomenon is quite unmistakable. The two lines are as distinct
and as distinctly parallel as possible. No draughtsman could draw them better.
They are thoroughly Martian in their mathematical precision. At the very first
glance, they convey, like all the other details of the canal system, the
appearance of artificiality. It may be well to state this here definitely, for
the benefit of such as, without having seen the canals, indulge in criticism
about them. No one who has seen the canals well--and the well is all
important for bringing out the characteristics that give the stamp of
artificiality, the straightness and fineness of the lines-would ever have any
doubt as to their seeming artificial, however he might choose to blind himself
to the consequences. An element akin to the comic enters criticism based, not
upon what the critics have seen, but upon what they have not. Books are
reviewed without being read, to prevent prejudice; but it is rash to carry the
same admirable broad-mindedness into scientific subjects.
In detail the doubles vary, chiefly, it would seem, in the distance the twin
lines lie apart. In the widest I have seen, the Ganges, six degrees separate
the two; in the narrowest,the Phison, four degrees and a quarter,--not a very
great difference between the extremes. Four degrees and a quarter on Mars
amount to 156 miles; six degrees, to 220. These, then, are the distances
between the centres of the twin canals. Each canal seems a little less than a
degree wide, or about 30 miles in the narrower instances; in the broader, a
little more than a degree, or about 45 miles. Between the two lines, in the
cases where the gemination, as it is called, is complete, lies reddish-ochre
ground similar to the rest of the surface of the bright regions. Deducting the
two half-widths of the bordering canals, we have, therefore, from 120 to 175
miles of clear country between the paralleling lines.
This gemination of a canal is certainly a passing strange phenomenon. Although,
in steady air, the observation is not a difficult one, to see the region where
it occurs minutely enough for a sufficient length of time to mark the details
of the process is another matter. I shall here give what I have been able to
gather at the last opposition, and shall hope to add to it at the next. One
element of mystery may be eliminated at the outset. The process is not so
sudden as it seems. It is perceived of a sudden by the observer because of
some specially favorable night. But it has been for some time developing. So
much is apparent from my observations. Suggestions of duality occurred weeks
before the thing stood definitely revealed. Furthermore, the gemination may
lie concealed from the observer some time after it is quite complete, owing to
lack of favorable atmospheric conditions. For it takes emphatically steady air
to see it unmistakably.
The next point is, that the phenomenon is individual to the particular canal.
Each canal differs from its neighbor not only in the distance the lines lie
apart, but in the time at which duplication occurs. The event seems to depend
both upon general seasonal laws governing all the duplications, and upon
causes intrinsic to the canal itself. Within limits, each canal doubles at its
own good time and after its own fashion. For example, although it seems to be
a rule that north and south canals double before east and west ones,
nevertheless, of two north and south lines, one will double, the other will
not, synchronously with a doubling running east and west; the same is true of
those running at any other inclination.
Now this shows that the duplication is not an optical illusion at this end of
the line; for, by any double refraction here, all the lines running in the same
direction over the disk should be similarly affected, which they are not. On
the contrary, there will be, say, two cases of doubling in quite different
directions coexistent with several single canals that run the same way.
Nor is there any probability of its being a case of double refraction at the
other end of the line,--that is, in the atmosphere of Mars; for in that case
it is hard to see why all the lines should not be affected, to say nothing of
the fact that, to render such double refraction possible, we must call upon a
noumenon to help us out, as we know of no substance capable of the quality upon
so huge a scale. Furthermore, what is cogent to the observer, though of no
particular weight with his hearers, the phenomenon has no look of double
refraction. It looks to be, what it undoubtedly is, a double existence.
Strengthening this conclusion is the mode of development of the doubling. This
appears to take place in two ways, although it is possible that the two are but
different instances of one and the same process. Of the first kind, during this
last opposition, the Ganges was an example.
The Ganges was in an interesting protoplasmic condition during the whole of
last summer. About to multiply by fission, it was not at first evident how this
would take place. Hints of gemination were visible when I first looked at it in
August. It showed then as a very broad but not dark swath of dusky color, of
nearly uniform width from one extremity to the other, with sides suggestively
even throughout. It is probable that they were then, as afterward, parallel,
and that the slight convergence apparent at the bottom was due simply to
foreshortening. The swath ran thus north-northwest all the way from the Gulf of
the Dawn to the Lacus Labeatis. By moments of better seeing, its two sides
showed darker than its middle; that is, it was already double in embryo, with
a dusky middle-ground between the twin lines.
In October the doubling had sensibly progressed. The double visions were more
frequent, and the ground between the twin lines had grown lighter. By November
the doubling was unmistakable, and the mid-clarification had become nearly
complete. It is to be remarked that the doubling did not involve the Fons
Juventae and the canal leading to it, both of which lay well to the right of
the Ganges. The space included between the East and West Ganges was very wide,
some six degrees. The canals themselves were, so far as could be seen, quite
similar, and about a degree, or 37 miles, wide. Both started in the Gulf of the
Dawn, and ran down to the lower Lake of the Moon, one entering each side of the
lake or oasis. Two thirds of the way down, both similarly touched the sides of
another oasis, an upper Lacus Lunae; the other I have called the Lacus
Labeatis. The length of each canal was 1200 miles.
Except for fleeting suspicions of gemination, and for possible doublings like
the parallelism of the two Hades, the next canal to show double was the Nectar,
which was so seen by Mr. Douglass on October 4, and under still better seeing,
a few minutes later, the doubling was detected by him extending straight
across the Solis Lacus. In the Solis Lacus this was evidently a case of
mid-clarification. What occurred in the Nectar seems more allied to the second
class of manifestations, such as happened later with the Euphrates and the
Phison.
Glimpses of a dual state in these canals we caught during the summer and
autumn, but it was not till the November presentation of the region that they
came out unmistakably twinned. On the 18th of that month, just as the twilight
was fading away, the air being very still and the definition exceptional, so
soon as the sunset tremors subsided, the Euphrates and its neighbor the Phison
I saw beautifully doubled, exactly like two great railroad tracks with bright
ground between, each set extending down the disk for a distance of 1600 miles.
After that evening, whenever the seeing was good enough, they continued to
present the same appearance. Now, with them no process of midway clarification,
such as had taken place in the Ganges, had previously made itself manifest.
They had, indeed, not been very well defined before duplication occurred, but
apparently sufficiently so not to hide such broadening had it taken place;
for, though the twin canals were not as far apart as the two Ganges, they were
quite comparably distant, being, instead of six, about four and a quarter
degrees from each other. Evidently, the process was, in the case of the
Euphrates at least, under way in October, and even earlier, but was not well
seen because the twin canals were not yet dark enough.
There seem, I may remark parenthetically, to be two other double canals in the
region between the Syrtis Major and the Sabaeus Sinus, one to the east of the
Phison, and another between the Phison and the Euphrates, both debouching at
the same points as the Phison and the Euphrates themselves. On the 19th of
November I suspected duplication in the Typhon, another canal in the same
region. It looked to be double, with dusky ground between.
On the 21st I similarly suspected the Jamuna and the Dardanus. Both looked
broad and dusky, with very ill-defined condensation at the sides. But the
seeing was not good enough On the 22d I brought my observations to an end, in
consequence of having to return East.
Exactly what takes place, therefore, in this curious process of doubling, I
cannot pretend to say. It has been suggested that a progressive ripening of
vegetation from the centre to the edges might cause a broad swath of green to
become seemingly two. There are facts, however, that do not tally with this
view. For example, the Ganges was always broad, but fainter, not narrower,
earlier in the season. The Phison, on the other hand, went through no such
process. Indeed, we are here very much in the dark, certainly very far off from
what does take place in Martian canal gemination. Perhaps we may learn
considerably more about it at the next opposition. At this the tendril end of
our knowledge of our neighbor we cannot expect hard wood.
From these observations, and those of Schiaparelli, I feel, however, tolerably
sure that the phenomenon is not only seasonal but vegetal. Why it should take
this form is one of the most pregnant problems about the planet. For it is the
most artificial-looking phenomenon of an artificial-looking disk.
All the canals that debouch into the dark regions are provided with these
terminal triangles, except those that lead out of long estuaries, like the
Nilosyrtis, the Hiddekel, the Gihon, and so forth. The double canals are
provided with twin triangles. That the triangular patches are phenomena
connected with the canals is evident from the fact that they never appear
elsewhere. What exact purpose they serve is not so clear, but it would seem to
be that of relay stations for the water before it enters the canals ; what we
see, upon this supposition, being, not the station or reservoir itself, but the
specially fertile area round it.
That, in addition to being in a way oases themselves, they serve some such
purpose as the above, is further hinted at by two facts: first, that whereas
the oases develop, apparently, after the canals leading to them, the triangular
spots develop before the canals that lead out of them; second, Mr. Douglass
finds that it is in them that the canals in the dark regions terminate. They
are the end of the one system at the same time that they are the beginning of
the other. They would, therefore, seem to be way-stations of some sort on the
road taken by the water from the polar cap to the equator.
Paralleling in appearance the oases in the bright regions are round spots that
occur at the junctions of the canals in the dark ones. Speaking figuratively,
these are the heads of the nails in the coffin of the idea that the seas are
seas: since, if the blue-green color came from water, there could not be
permanent darker dots upon it connected by equally dark streaks. Speaking
unfiguratively, this shows that the whole system of canals and specially
fertilized spots is not confined to the deserts, but extends in a modified
form over the areas of more or less vegetation.
There are thus two kinds of spots in the dark regions: those on their borders,
and those in their midst. The position of the former--on the edge of the great
deserts--implies a difference in kind, further emphasized by their shape.
Following is the list of both kinds detected at Flagstaff: --
SPOTS IN THE DARK REGIONS.
Lacus Phoenicis, November 1894.
By November, the Phoenix
Lake had become less salient, Ceraunius relatively more so, and the Cyane Fons
nearly as evident as Ceraunius had formerly been. In the Martian calendar, the
August observation corresponded to our 20th of June, the November one to our
1st of August. All three spots were practically within the equatorial regions.
Now, on the Earth, no such marked progression in seasonal change occurs within
the tropics. With us, it is to all intents and purposes equally green there
the year through. On Mars it is not. Clearly, some more definite factor than
the seasons enters into the matter upon our neighbor world.
Acherusia Palus
Aganippe Fons
Alcyonia
Ammonium
Aponi Fons
Aquae Apollinares
Aquae Calidae
Arachoti Fons
Arduenna
Arethusa Fons
Arsia Silva
Arsine
Augila
Bandusiae Fons
Biblis Fons
Castalia Fons
Ceraunius
Clepsydra Fons
Cyane Fons
Ferentinae Lucus
Fons Juventae
Gallinaria Silva
Hereynia Silva
Hibe
Hippocrene Fons
Hipponitis Palus
Hypelaeus
Labeatis Lacus
Lacus Ismenius
Lacus Lunae
Lacus Phoenicis
Lerne
Lucrinus Lacus
Lucus Angitiae
Lucus Feronia
Lucus Maricae
Maeisia Silva
Mapharitis
Mariotis
Meroe
Messeis Fons
Nitriae
Nodus Gordii
Pallas Lacus
Propontis
Serapium
Sirbonis Lacus
Solis Fons
Solis Lacus
Tithonius Lacus
Trinythios
Trivium Charontis
Utopia
II. Double Canals
Even more markedly unnatural is another phenomenon of this most phenomenal
system, of which almost every one has heard, and which almost nobody has seen,
--the double canals.
III. Spots in the dark regions
To return now from these outposts of investigation to our main subject-matter,
and to another phenomenon of more recent discovery than the double canals, and
yet more suggestive of interpretation. We have seen what shows at one end of
the canals, their inner end; namely, the oasis. But it seems that there is
also something exceptional at the other. At the mouth of each canal, at the
edge of the so-called seas, appears a curious dark spot, of the form of a
half-filled angle; the sort of a mark with which one checks items on a list.
Its form is singularly appropriate, according to mundane ideas, for it appears
before the canal itself is visible, as if to mark the spot where the canal will
eventually be. It lies in the so-called seas, and looks to be of the same
color as they, but deeper in tint.
We thus perceive that the blue-green areas are subjected to the same
engineering system as the bright ones. In short, no part of the planet is
allowed to escape from the all-pervasive trigonometric spirit. If this be
Nature's doing, she certainly here runs her mathematics into the ground.
Astrae Lacus.
Benacus Lacus.
Cynia Lacus.
Flevo Lacus.
Hesperidum Lacus.
Oxia Palus.
Spot at the mouth of the Phison.
" " " Euphrates.
" " " Daix on the Mare Icarium.
" " " Daix on the Sabaeus Sinus.
Spot on the Socratis Promontorium.
Spot on the western side of the Socratis Promontorium.
" " " " Margaritifer Sinus.
Spot at the mouth of the Jamuna on the Aurorae Sinus.
" " " Ganges " " "
" " " Hebe " " "
" " " Agathodaemon " "
" " " Ambrosia on the Mare Australe.
" " " Maeander on the Aonius Sinus.
" " " Gorgon on the Mare Sirenum.
" " " Erinaeus.
" " " Titan on the Sinus Titanum.
" " " Cophen on the Mare Cimmerium.
" " " Laestrygon on the Mare Cimmerium.
" " " Nereides " " "
" " " Cerberus " " "
" " " Chretes " " "
" " " Asopus on the Syrtis Major.
" " " Arosis " " "
" " " Typhon " " "
spot south of the mouth of the Typhon on the Syrtis Major.
Go to conclusion
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