Smyrna times., 1888-07-11
VIEWING THE RED PLANET.
speculations About tho Canals" in Mars
and Their Builders.

speculations About tho Canals in Mars
and Their Builders.
People who can obtain the privilege of
looking at Mars through the Lick tele-
scope should not neglect the opportunity.
Several years have elapsed since this re-
markable planet could be seen to such ad-
vantage as at present, and it will be three
years before we have an equal chance
again. 1t has certainly never been exam
ined before through a telescope of such
power as the monster refractor on Mount
Hamilton
It may be interesting to lovers of as
trOnomy to know that the eminent French
astronomer, NJ. PerrOtin, is engaged in a
minute study Of Mars, and that his dis
coveries confirm those Of NJ Schiaparilli
in every particular. It seems actually
true that the longitudinal stripes which
circle round the planet are bodies of water
which must, according to all laws of
probability, be artificial No one ever
saw or conceived a system of parallel
rivers from 1000 to 1900 miles long and
straight as plumb lines Everything is
possible, of course, but such straight
rivers it is impossible to reconcile with
the principles of cosmogony as we under
stand them. On this planet, at all events,
nature abhors a straight line, and by
analogy it should do so in Mars.
Yet, if these bodies of water 9re canals,
as Schiaparilli believed and Perrotin seems
hardly to doubt, what mOnst"ous works
they must be They are fro fifty to
eighty miles wide Fancy the labor of
digging such a canal the time it must
have taken, and the number of worlImen
it must have employed The pyramids of
Egypt are trihing in comparison The
Suez canal is 1877 feet wide at the surface,
and the Nicaragua somewhat wider Our
canals on this one horse globe are con-
sidered long when they reach 100 miles in
length The Panama canal will be less
than sixty miles long. The canals of
Mars reach a length of 1000 miles-say as
far as from here to Omaha. What a traffic
there must be to support such enterprisesl
On the waterways of China travellers de
scribe the incessant ebb and flow of
multitudinOus crowds, but to require
canals of such dimensions as we have de-
scribed, the movement of traffic in Mars
must be far more prodigious In fact,
they imply a population which almost
staggers belief; considering that the
volume of the planet is only One-sixth
that of the earth, the diameter being
4, 100 miles as against 5000 miles they
warrant the widest conjectures as to the
ueuSlIy VIII WHICH IL may DC peOploQ
What manner of man lives in Mars, if
there be men there, has always been a
favorable topic of speculation The law
of gTavitation tells US that he may be
fourteen feet high-not such a son of
Anak as the inhabitant of the asteroids,
but still one who would regard the Belgian
| giant as a remarkable dwarf Possibly
the enormous public works on Mars may
be explained on the theory that these tall
fellows can work in proportion to their
| stature-that one citizen of Mars can
| shovel as much dirt as two and a half den
! liens of this world.
Whether the grass of Mars is red, as
the old astronomers averred, modern tele
scopes have failed to decide 1t is very
| difficult to determine colors when an OBJ
| ject lens collects 80, 1000 times as much
| light as normally enters the human eye
! But the speculative astronomer is safe in
asserting his belief that Martian cabbages
are of the color of our beet roots, as no
one can disprove the assertion.-San
| Francisco Call.