We noticed that he was frequently smiling and chuckling to himself as if he were intensely pleased; and presently he came over to us, rubbing his hands together in high glee, and said to John, "Heh, mon, I reckon I see my way to making a fortune when we return home, out of the ideas and wrinkles I'm getting here from the work of the Martian engineers!"
John laughed, and congratulated him heartily on his brilliant outlook for the future, remarking that he did not appear to regret coming to Mars.
"Indeed, I don't," M'Allister replied; "I'm thinking it will prove the very best thing I've done in my life."
"Well, sir," said Merna, "I told you those machines would suit you as an engineer; are you satisfied now you have seen them?"
"More than satisfied," answered M'Allister; "they are the most extraordinary and most ingenious machines I ever saw, and I wouldn't have missed them for anything!"
At the sides of each high-level canal we saw a series of locks and weirs so constructed that vessels can pass on, in successive stages, from the high-level to the low-level canals, and vice versâ.
These locks and weirs are all within the area enclosed by the embankments forming the carets, which accounts for the long and extensive space the latter cover, as the locks are necessarily a considerable distance apart from each other to allow for a length of canal to be traversed before the next lock is reached. They are, however, not in themselves sufficiently conspicuous to be separately discerned from the earth by our telescopic observers.
Machinery for forcing the water along the canals is also provided at most of the junctions everywhere on the planet. In this connection it must be remembered that the water is carried by the canals from one hemisphere to the other, and, after passing the equator, must therefore move in a direction contrary to that of ordinary gravitation.
Thus at one season of the year the water passes from the north polar regions down into the southern hemisphere, and at the opposite period of the year it is carried in the same way from the south polar regions right into the northern hemisphere.
Gravitation being almost non-effective as regards the flow of water on Mars, the movement would be extremely slow everywhere were it not for the machinery, which adds to the speed of the flow. The average rate of the movement of the water in the canals is about fifty-one miles a day, and it takes about fifty-two days for the water to pass from about latitude 72° down to the equator, a distance of 2650 miles.