Transcriber's Notes
When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has
been surrounded by _underscores_. The oe ligature has been replaced by
the letters oe. The Greek letter lambda has been represented as
[lambda]. Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. These
have been listed in a second transcriber's note at the end of the text.
MARS AND ITS CANALS
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[Illustration: _Mars’ Hill_]
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MARS
AND ITS CANALS
BY
PERCIVAL LOWELL
DIRECTOR OF THE OBSERVATORY AT FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA; NON-RESIDENT
PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY; FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND
SCIENCES; MEMBRE DE LA SOCIÉTÉ ASTRONOMIQUE DE FRANCE;
MEMBER OF THE ASTRONOMICAL AND ASTROPHYSICAL SOCIETY
OF AMERICA; MITGLIED DER ASTRONOMISCHEN GESELLSCHAFT;
MEMBRE DE LA SOCIÉTÉ BELGE D’ASTRONOMIE; HONORARY
MEMBER OF THE SOCIEDAD ASTRONOMICA DE MEXICO;
JANSSEN MEDALIST OF THE SOCIÉTÉ ASTRONOMIQUE
DE FRANCE, 1904, FOR RESEARCHES ON MARS;
ETC., ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
-------
Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To
G. V. SCHIAPARELLI
THE COLUMBUS OF A NEW PLANETARY WORLD
THIS INVESTIGATION UPON IT
IS APPRECIATIVELY
INSCRIBED
PREFACE
Eleven years have elapsed since the writer’s first work on Mars was
published in which were recorded the facts gleaned in his research up
to that time and in which was set forth a theory of their explanation.
Continued work in the interval has confirmed the conclusions there
stated; sometimes in quite unexpected ways. Five times during that
period Mars has approached the earth within suitable scanning distance
and been subjected to careful and prolonged scrutiny. Familiarity with
the subject, improved telescopic means, and long-continued training
have all combined to increased efficiency in the procuring of data and
to results which have been proportionate. A mass of new material has
thus been collected,—some of it along old lines, some of it in lines
that are themselves new,—and both have led to the same outcome. In
addition to thus pushing inquiry into advanced portions of the subject,
study has been spent in investigation of the reality of the phenomena
upon which so much is based, and in testing every theory which has been
suggested to account for them. From diplopia to optical interference,
each of these has been examined and found incompatible with the
observations. The phenomena are all they have been stated to be, and
more. Each step forward in observation has confirmed the genuineness of
those that went before.
To set forth science in a popular, that is, in a generally
understandable, form is as obligatory as to present it in a more
technical manner. If men are to benefit by it, it must be expressed to
their comprehension. To do this should be feasible for him who is
master of his subject and is both the best test of, and the best
training to, that post. Especially vital is it that the exposition
should be done at first hand; for to describe what a man has himself
discovered comes as near as possible to making a reader the
co-discoverer of it. Not only are thus escaped the mistaken glosses of
second-hand knowledge, but an aroma of actuality, which cannot be
filtered through another mind without sensible evaporation, clings to
the account of the pioneer. Nor is it so hard to make any well-grasped
matter comprehensible to a man of good general intelligence as is
commonly supposed. The whole object of science is to synthesize, and so
simplify; and did we but know the uttermost of a subject we could make
it singularly clear. Meanwhile technical phraseology, useful as
shorthand to the cult, becomes meaningless jargon to the uninitiate and
is paraded most by the least profound. But worse still for their employ
symbols tend to fictitious understanding. Formulæ are the anæsthetics
of thought, not its stimulants; and to make any one think is far better
worth while than cramming him with ill-considered, and therefore
indigestible, learning.
Even to the technical student, a popular book, if well done, may yield
most valuable results. For nothing in any branch of science is so
little known as its articulation,—how the skeleton of it is put
together, and what may be the mode of attachment of its muscles.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
PART I
NATURAL FEATURES
CHAPTER
I. ON EXPLORATION 3
II. A DEPARTURE-POINT 12
III. A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PAST MARTIAN DISCOVERY 20
IV. THE POLAR CAPS 32
V. BEHAVIOR OF THE POLAR CAPS 41
VI. MARTIAN POLAR EXPEDITIONS 54
VII. WHITE SPOTS 73
VIII. CLIMATE AND WEATHER 82
IX. MOUNTAINS AND CLOUD 96
X. THE BLUE-GREEN AREAS 108
XI. VEGETATION 119
XII. TERRAQUEOUSNESS AND TERRESTRIALITY 128
XIII. THE REDDISH-OCHRE TRACTS 148
XIV. SUMMARY 159
PART II
NON-NATURAL FEATURES
XV. THE CANALS 173
XVI. THEIR SYSTEM 184
XVII. GEMINATION OF THE CANALS 192
I. THE DIPLOPIC THEORY 196
II. THE INTERFERENCE THEORY 201
III. THE ILLUSION THEORY 202
XVIII. THE DOUBLE CANALS 204
XIX. CANALS IN THE DARK REGIONS 243
XX. OASES 249
XXI. CARETS ON THE BORDERS OF THE GREAT DIAPHRAGM 265
XXII. THE CANALS PHOTOGRAPHED 271
PART III
THE CANALS IN ACTION
XXIII. CANALS: KINEMATIC 281
XXIV. CANAL DEVELOPMENT INDIVIDUALLY INSTANCED 304
XXV. HIBERNATION OF THE CANALS 313
XXVI. ARCTIC CANALS AND POLAR RIFTS 325
XXVII. OASES: KINEMATIC 330
PART IV
EXPLANATION
XXVIII. CONSTITUTION OF THE CANALS AND OASES 337
XXIX. LIFE 348
XXX. EVIDENCE 360
XXXI. THE HUSBANDING OF WATER 366
XXXII. CONCLUSION 376
INDEX 385
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
MARS’ HILL _Frontispiece_
PAGE
THE HERMITAGE 8
THE SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS 18
MARTIAN MAPS BY:
I. BEER AND MAEDLER. 1840 26
II. KAISER. 1864 26
III. FLAMMARION (RÉSUMÉ). 1876 27
IV. GREEN. 1877 27
V. SCHIAPARELLI. 1877 28
VI. SCHIAPARELLI. 1879 28
VII. SCHIAPARELLI. 1881 29
VIII. SCHIAPARELLI. 1884 29
IX. LOWELL. 1894 30
X. LOWELL. 1896 30
XI. LOWELL. 1901 31
XII. LOWELL. 1905 31
SOUTH POLAR CAP. 1905 42
NORTH POLAR CAP. 1905 44
MARE ERYTHRAEUM, MARTIAN DATE, DECEMBER 30 120
MARE ERYTHRAEUM, MARTIAN DATE, JANUARY 16 122
MARE ERYTHRAEUM, MARTIAN DATE, FEBRUARY 1 124
MARE ERYTHRAEUM, MARTIAN DATE, FEBRUARY 21 126
MARS, ON MERCATOR’S PROJECTION 384
CUTS APPEARING IN TEXT
SOUTH POLAR CAP IN WINTER 56
HELLAS IN WINTER 59
WHITE SOUTH OF NECTAR AND SOLIS LACUS 59
NORTHERN CAP HOODED WITH VAPOR 64
NORTHERN CAP UNMASKED 65
DEPOSITION OF FROST 70
FIRST NORTHERN SNOW 72
WHITE IN ELYSIUM 75
WHITE IN THE PONS HECTORIS 78
PROJECTION ON TERMINATOR 101
LINES IN DARK AREA 117
MAP OF NORTH AMERICA AT THE CLOSE OF ARCHÆAN TIME 132
NORTH AMERICA AT OPENING OF UPPER SILURIAN PERIOD 134
MAP OF NORTH AMERICA AFTER THE APPALACHIAN REVOLUTION 135
NORTH AMERICA IN THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD 136
NORTH AMERICA, SHOWING THE PARTS UNDER WATER IN THE
TERTIARY ERA 137
EARTH’S DESERT AREAS, WESTERN HEMISPHERE 156
EARTH’S DESERT AREAS, EASTERN HEMISPHERE 157
SHOWING THE EUMENIDES-ORCUS 183
MARTIAN DOUBLES 206
MARTIAN DOUBLES 207
MOUTHS OF EUPHRATES AND PHISON. JUNE, 1903 219
PECULIAR DEVELOPMENT OF THE GANGES 228
DJIHOUN, THE NARROWEST DOUBLE 229
THE SABAEUS SINUS, EMBOUCHURE FOR THE DOUBLE HIDDEKEL
AND GIHON 232
THE PROPONTIS, 1905 247
FONS IMMORTALIS, JUNE 19 254
UTOPIA REGIO. 1903 256
ASCRAEUS LUCUS AND GIGAS. MARCH 2, 1903 258
PECULIAR ASSOCIATION OF THE LUCI ISMENII WITH DOUBLE
CANALS 260
LUCUS ISMENIUS. MARCH, 1903 262
SHOWING SEASONAL CHANGE. I 285
SHOWING SEASONAL CHANGE. II 285
MEAN CANAL CARTOUCHES 298
SHOWING DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRONTES:
I. FEBRUARY 25 306
II. MARCH 30 307
III. APRIL 3 307
IV. MAY 4 308
V. MAY 7 308
VI. JULY 18 309
CARTOUCHES OF THE BRONTES 311
AMENTHES ALONE IN FEBRUARY 319
AMENTHES FEEBLER AND STILL ALONE IN MARCH 319
APPEARANCE OF THOTH WITH TRITON AND CURVED NEPENTHES.
AMENTHES VANISHED, APRIL 20 320
ADVENT OF THE LUCUS MOERIS. MAY 29 321
AMENTHES WITH THOTH-NEPENTHES. JULY 322
CARTOUCHES OF AMENTHES, THOTH, AND THEIR COMBINATION 323
PHENOLOGY CURVES—EARTH 342
PHENOLOGY CURVES—MARS 343
PART I
NATURAL FEATURES
MARS AND ITS CANALS
CHAPTER I
ON EXPLORATION
From time immemorial travel and discovery have called with strange
insistence to him who, wondering on the world, felt adventure in his
veins. The leaving familiar sights and faces to push forth into the
unknown has with magnetic force drawn the bold to great endeavor and
fired the thought of those who stayed at home. Spur to enterprise since
man first was, this spirit has urged him over the habitable globe.
Linked in part to mere matter of support it led the more daring of the
Aryans to quit the shade of their beech trees, reposeful as that
umbrage may have been, and wander into Central Asia, so to perplex
philologists into believing them to have originated there; it lured
Columbus across the waste of waters and caused his son to have carved
upon his tomb that ringing couplet of which the simple grandeur still
stirs the blood:—
Á CASTILLA Y Á LEON
NUEVO MONDO DIÓ COLON;
(To Castile and Leon beyond the wave
Another world Columbus gave;)
it drove the early voyagers into the heart of the vast wilderness,
there to endure all hardship so that they might come where their kind
had never stood before; and now it points man to the pole.
Something of the selfsame spirit finds a farther field today outside
the confines of our traversable earth. Science which has caused the
world to shrink and dwindle has been no less busy bringing near what in
the past seemed inaccessibly remote. Beyond our earth man’s penetration
has found it possible to pierce, and in its widening circle of research
has latterly been made aware of another world of strange enticement
across the depths of space. Planetary distances, not mundane ones, are
here concerned, and the globe to be explored, though akin to, is yet
very different from, our own. This other world is the planet Mars.
Sundered from us by the ocean of ether, a fellow-member of our own
community of matter there makes its circuit of the sun upon whose face
features show which stamp it as cognate to that on which we live. In
spite of the millions of miles of intervening matterless void, upon it
markings can be made out that distantly resemble our earth’s topography
and grow increasingly suggestive as vision shapes them better; and yet
among the seemingly familiar reveal aspects which are completely
strange. But more than this: over the face of it sweep changes that
show it to be not a dead but a living world, like ours in this, and
luring curiosity by details unknown here to further exploration of its
unfamiliar ground.
To observe Mars is to embark upon this enterprise; not in body but in
mind. Though parted by a gulf more impassable than any sea, the
telescope lets us traverse what otherwise had been barred and lands us
at last above the shores we went forth to seek. Real the journey is,
though incorporeal in kind. Since the seeing strange sights is the
essence of all far wanderings, it is as truly travel so the eye arrive
as if the body kept it company. Indeed, sight is our only far viatic
sense. Touch and taste both hang on contact, smell stands indebted to
the near and even hearing waits on ponderable matter where sound soon
dissipates away; only sight soars untrammeled of the grosser adjunct of
the flesh to penetrate what were otherwise unfathomable space.
What the voyager thus finds himself envisaging shares by that very fact
in the expansion of the sense that brought him there. No longer tied by
means of transport to seas his sails may compass or lands his feet may
tread, the traveler reaches a goal removed in kind from his own
habitat. He proves to have adventured, not into unknown parts of a
known world, but into one new to him in its entirety. In extent alone
he surveys what dwarfs the explorer’s conquests on Earth. But size is
the least of the surprises there in store for him. What confronts his
gaze finds commonly no counterpart on Earth. His previous knowledge
stands him in scant stead. For he faces what is so removed from every
day experience that analogy no longer offers itself with safety as a
guide. He must build up new conceptions from fresh data and slowly
proceed to deduce the meaning they may contain. Science alone can help
him to interpretation of what he finds, and above all must he wean
himself from human prejudice and earthbound limitation. For he deals
here with ultramundane things. With just enough of cosmogony in common
to make decipherment not despairable this world is yet so different
from the one he personally knows as to whet curiosity at every turn. He
is permitted to perceive what piques inquiry and by patient adding of
point to point promises at last a rational result.
Like mundane exploration, it is arduous too; _ad astra per aspera_ is
here literally true. For it is a journey not devoid of hardship and
discomfort by the way. Its starting-point preludes as much. To get
conditions proper for his work the explorer must forego the haunts of
men and even those terrestrial spots found by them most habitable.
Astronomy now demands bodily abstraction of its devotee. Its deities
are gods that veil themselves amid man-crowded marts and impose
withdrawal and seclusion for the prosecution of their cult as much as
any worshiped for other reason in more primeval times. To see into the
beyond requires purity; in the medium now as formerly in the man. As
little air as may be and that only of the best is obligatory to his
enterprise, and the securing it makes him perforce a hermit from his
kind. He must abandon cities and forego plains. Only in places raised
above and aloof from men can he profitably pursue his search, places
where nature never meant him to dwell and admonishes him of the fact by
sundry hints of a more or less distressing character. To stand a mile
and a half nearer the stars is not to stand immune.
Thus it comes about that today besides its temples erected in cities,
monasteries in the wilds are being dedicated to astronomy as in the
past to faith; monasteries made to commune with its spirit, as temples
are to communicate the letter of its law. Pioneers in such profession,
those already in existence are but the precursors of many yet to come
as science shall more and more recognize their need. Advance in
knowledge demands what they alone can give. Primitive, too, they must
be as befits the still austere sincerity of a cult, in which the
simplest structures are found to be the best.
Still the very wildness of the life their devotee is forced to lead has
in it a certain fittingness for his post in its primeval detachment
from the too earthbound, in concept as in circumstance. Withdrawn from
contact with his kind, he is by that much raised above human prejudice
and limitation. To sally forth into the untrod wilderness in the cold
and dark of a winter’s small hours of the morning, with the snow feet
deep upon the ground and the frosty stars for mute companionship, is
almost to forget one’s self a man for the solemn awe of one’s
surroundings. Fitting portal to communion with another world, it is
through such avenue one enters on his quest where the common and
familiar no longer jostle the unknown and the strange. Nor is the
stillness of the stars invaded when some long unearthly howl, like the
wail of a lost soul, breaks the slumber of the mesa forest, marking the
prowling presence of a stray coyote. Gone as it came, it dies in the
distance on the air that gave it birth; and the gloom of the pines
swallows up one’s vain peering after something palpable, their tops
alone decipherable in dark silhouette against the sky. From amid
surroundings that for their height and their intenancy fringe the
absolute silence of space the observer must set forth who purposes to
cross it to another planetary world.
[Illustration: _The Hermitage_]
But the isolation of his journey is not always so forbidding. His
coming back is no less girt with grandeur of a different though equally
detached a kind. Even before the stars begin to dim in warning to him
to return, a faint suffusion as of half-suspected light creeps into the
border of the eastern sky. Against it, along the far pine-clad horizon,
mesa after mesa in shaggy lines of sentineling earth, stands forth dark
marshaled in the gloom, informed with prescience of what is soon to
come. Imperceptibly the pallor grows, blanching the face of night and
one by one extinguishing the stars. Slowly then it takes on color,
tingeing ever so faintly to a flush that swells and deepens as the
minutes pass. One had said the sky lay dreaming of the sun in pale
imagery at first that gathers force and feeling till the dreamer turns
thus rosy red in slumbering supposition of reality. Then the blush dies
out. The crimson fades to pink, the pink to ashes. The stars have
disappeared and yet it is not day. It is the supreme moment of the
dawn, the hush with which the Earth awaits its full awakening. For now
again the color gathers in the east, not with the impalpable suffusion
it had before but nearer and more vivid. No longer reflectively remote,
rays imminent of the sun strike the upper air, the most adventurously
refrangible turning the underside of a few stray clouds into flame-hued
bars of glowing metal. They burn thus in the silent east first red,
then orange, and then gold, each spectral tint in prismatic revelation
coming to join the next till in a sudden blinding burst of splendor the
solar disk tops the horizon’s rim.
Not less impressive is the journey when the afternoon watch has
replaced the morning vigil by the drawing of the planet nearer to the
sun. Lost in the brilliance of the dazzling sky, the planet lies hid
from the senses’ search. The quest were hopeless did not the mind guide
the telescope to its goal. To theory alone is it visible still, and so
to its predicted place the observer sets his circles, and punctual to
the prophecy the planet swings into the field of view. One must be
dulled by long routine to such mastery of mind not to have the act
itself clothe with a sense of charmed withdrawal the object of his
quest.
So much and more there are of traveler’s glimpses by the way,
compensation that offsets the frequent discomfort, and even balking of
his purpose by inopportune cloud. For the best of places is not
perfect, and a storm will sometimes rob him of a region he wished to
see. He must learn to wait upon his opportunities and then no less to
wait for mankind’s acceptance of his results; for in common with most
explorers he will encounter on his return that final penalty of
penetration, the certainty at first of being disbelieved.
In such respect he will be even worse off than were the other world
discoverers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For they at least
could offer material proof of things that they had seen. Dumb Indians
and gold spoke more convincingly than the lips of the great navigators.
To astronomy, too, that other world was due. Without a knowledge of the
earth’s shape and size got from Francisco of Pisa, Columbus had never
adventured himself upon the deep. But more than this, an astronomer it
was, in the person of Americus Vespucius, who first discovered the new
world, by recognizing it as such; Columbus never dreaming he had
lighted upon a world that was new. Nor does it impair one jot or tittle
of his glory that he knew it not. Nothing can deprive him of the
imperishable fame of launching forth into the void in hope of a beyond,
though he found not what he sought but something stranger still.
So, curiously, has it been with the trans-etherian. To Schiaparelli the
republic of science owes a new and vast domain. His genius first
detected those strange new markings on the Martian disk which have
proved the portal to all that has since been seen, and his courage in
the face of universal condemnation led to exploration of them. He made
there voyage after voyage, much as Columbus did on Earth, with even
less of recognition from home. As with Columbus, too, the full import
of his great discovery lay hid even to him and only by discoveries
since is gradually resulting in recognition of another sentient world.