Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1888-05-31
THE RED Planet.

SPECULATION ABOUT THE CANALS" OF
MARS AND THEIR BUILDERS.
san Francisco Call
People who can obtain the privilege
of looking at Mars through the Lick tel
escope should not neglect the OppOrtu-
nifty. Several years have elapsed since
that remarkable planet could be seen
to such advantage as at present, and it
will be three years before we have an
equal chance again. 1t has certainly
never been examined before through a
telescope of such power as the monster
refractor on Mount Hamilton.
1t may be interesting to lovers of as
trOnomv to know that the eminent
French astronomer, NJ. Perrotin, is en-
gagged in a minute study of Mars, and
that his discoveries confirm those of NJ.
Schiaparilli in every particular. 1t seems
actually true that the longitudinal stripes
which circle round the planet are bodies
of water, and must according to all laws
of probability, be artificial. No one ever
saw OF conceived a system Of rivers from
1000 to 1000 miles long and straight as
plumb line. Everything is possible of
course, but such straight rivers it Is i'm
possible to reconcile with the principles
of cosmogony as we understand them.
On this planet, at all events, nature alb
hors a straight line, and by analogy it
should do so in Mars.
Yes, if these bodies of water are ca
nails, as Schiaparilli believed and Perro-
tin seems hardly to doubt, what mon
strous works they must be! They are
from fifty to eighty miles wide. Fancy
the labor of digging such canal, the
time it must have taken and the number
of workmen it must have employed. The
pyramids of Egypt are trifing in COM
parison. The Suez Canal is 1877 feet
wide at the surface, and the Nicaragua
Canal is to be $50 feet; the Marian ca
mails are $500 times wider. Our canals
on this one-horse globe are considered
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 2,000miles as far
as from here to Omaha. What a traffic
there must be to support such enterpris-
es. On the waterways of China trav-
ellerS describe the inceSSant ebb and flow
of multitudious crowds, but to require
canals of such dimensions as we have
described, the movement of traffic in
Mars must be far more prodigious. In
fact, they imply population which al
most staggers belief; considering that
ha Of hn rA1a ir
sixth that of the earth, the diameter be-
ing 400 miles as against 5000 miles,
they warrant the widest conjectures as
to the destiny with which it may be
peopled.
What manner Of man lives in Mars,
if there be men there, has always been a
favOrite topic of speculation. The law
of grayitation tells us that he may be
IA 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 half
denizens of this world
Whether the grass of Mars is red, as
the old astronomers averred, modern tel
escopes have failed to decide. 1t is very
difficult to determine colors when an OBJ
ject lens collects 10000 times as much
light as normally enters the human eye
But the speculative astronomer is safe
in asserting his belief that Martian cab
bageS are of the color of our beet roots,
as no one can disprove the assertion.