| 1. RAILROADS, ILLINOIS 37 MILES | 2. STREETS, MONTREAL ½ MILE |
| 3. IRRIGATION CANALS, ARIZONA 1-1/3 MILES | 4. CANALS, GRONINGEN, HOLLAND 10 MILES |
| 5. MARS, SCHIAPARELLI'S MAP | 6. MARS, LOWELL'S GLOBE |
ARTIFICIAL LINES
RAILWAYS, STREETS, CANALS, ETC.
Let us now glance at a series of figures on Plate VI, page 113; their artificial character may be recognized at once. They are all designed for channels or thoroughfares for the transportation of men, merchandise, or water. No. 1 represents a tracing from a railroad map of a county in Illinois. The convergence of lines to common centres, and, in one case, parallel lines may be seen. The length of the region represented is thirty-seven miles. No. 2 is a tracing of streets in a district of Montreal, covering an extent of half a mile. No. 3 is a tracing of a small region near Phœnix, Arizona, showing irrigating canals. The larger ones follow contour lines of the surface; the smaller ones are usually laid out in rectangular form to correspond with the original land sections and sub-sections, the boundary lines of which run north and south, east and west. No. 4 represents the canals converging on Groningen, Holland. No. 5 is a tracing from a hemispherical map of Mars made by Schiaparelli, and No 6 is traced from a photograph of a globe on which Lowell has carefully drawn the canals, oases, etc., of Mars covering a land extent of 7,400 miles. The remarkable artificiality of all these figures must be admitted. The lines on the first four figures are laid out by an intelligence for similar purposes. No. 1 for the conveyance of passengers and freight; No. 2 for the traffic of a city; No. 3 for the conveyance of water; No. 4 for purposes of navigation, and Nos. 5 and 6, according to Lowell's view, for the conveyance of water from melting polar snow caps for irrigation purposes. A simple, rational explanation, as their great width and geodetic precision forbid any other.
Let one contemplate these lines of Mars and compare them with the natural cracks on Plate V and he will appreciate the emphatic words of Lowell when he says: "The mere aspect is enough to cause all theories about glaciation, fissures, or surface cracks to die an instant and natural death." Consider any other possible tracing of lines on the face of the Earth as the result of Nature's forces, such as river beds, cañons, chasms, fissures, faults, rifts, precipitous valleys, fiords, the results of sharp folds in the strata, parallel chains of mountains, and none of these lines would be straight, none of them would be of uniform width, and few of them would have the enormous breadth of the Martian lines, they would begin nowhere and, with the exception of the rivers, end nowhere. This definition holds good as the result of natural forces from the microscopic crackle on a dinner plate, to a crack in the Earth's crust fifteen hundred miles long.
Having briefly alluded to some of the theories advanced to explain the geodetic network of lines encircling Mars—theories in one case so puerile, and in another case an interpretation so monstrous, though endorsed by astronomers of standing—we turn to the suggestion that these various lines are artificial, that they were designed for a definite purpose, namely, to conduct water from those regions alone where water is found for the purposes of irrigation. We shall call attention to a parallel case where the great ice caps and glaciers of the Himalaya Mountains supply water, by their melting, for thousands of miles of irrigating canals. Let us ask ourselves whether if the snows of the Himalayas gradually failed, the crowded millions of India would not if necessary reach out to the farthest North for this precious fluid? Our great centres of population at the present time are reaching out in every direction for water supply. How long would it take New York City to decide in case of water famine to tap the Great Lakes to the north, or to establish pipe lines to the north pole, if it were necessary to go that distance for water?
From the foregoing it is seen that the question of water supply has engaged the energies of man from pre-historic times. These great irrigating works are found, however, in regions of sterility, or light rainfall, from the rude irrigating canals of ancient Peru and Arizona to the marvellous accomplishments of the hydraulic engineer in India and Egypt. This demand for more water is not, however, confined to regions of sterility, the reaching out of cities for supplies of water for potable purposes and for the wasteful disposal of sewage was inevitable. What shall we say, however, of the notes of warning in regions of rain?
England is considered a land of humidity and copious rains, and yet the alarm is already sounded that in the no distant future an appalling catastrophe may threaten her in the failure of her water supply. In a special despatch to the "New York Herald," Mr. Bently, president of the Royal Meteorological Society, is quoted as saying at its Annual Meeting, "So enormous now is the drain upon the country's available supplies, so much have the growth of cities, the disappearance of forested areas, the extent of street surface impervious to moisture, and the diversion of the rivers, lakes, and other natural fresh water reservoirs from their natural function of irrigators and distributors of the all essential moisture to the land interfered in England with nature's arrangements, that English engineers and meteorologists at no distant date may find a task of almost insuperable difficulty awaiting their endeavors."
Dr. Mill, a rainfall expert, on being consulted by a "Daily Mail" correspondent regarding this alarming statement, was of the opinion that the question would require early consideration. We quote his words as follows: "Legislation is needed in the immediate future for the regulation of the rivers. The great question is how to store the water which at present runs to waste on the coasts."
"The planting of trees on the high water-sheds is one of the first solutions of the problem. The chief difficulty lies in the scarcity of suitable land available for building large reservoirs, and at some future date the services of engineers will be required to reform the present arrangement of reservoirs."
"In Austria the government issues an annual report on the condition of the Danube and detailed statistics of the rainfall, with a view to storing all the available water supplies. The work done by the Austrian government I am doing in regard to the British Isles on my own responsibility, but the rainfall and the river conditions are only a portion of a much larger problem."