Mars and Its Canals

by Percival Lowell

Lucus Ismenius. March 1903.

The spots make common termini for all the canals of a given neighborhood. In other words, canals converge to the places occupied by the spots and do not cross haphazard according to the laws of chance. Only one instance exists where a spot fails to gather to itself the whole sheaf of canals and even there it collects all but two. This anomaly is the Pseboas Lucus. The peculiarity of this oasis is that it lies not on, but just off, the Protonilus. That it does so is exceeding curious, considering that it is the sole example of such extra-canaline position. Strictly speaking, it is not the Protonilus but the point where the Protonilus turns into the Nilosyrtis to which it stands thus neighboringly aloof. And this may explain the anomaly. For the Nilosyrtis has not the full geometric regularity of the normal canal, and seems to have been a more or less fundamental feature of the region.

For the rest, the Lucus has the form and possesses the canal connections appropriate to its state. It is apparently round, and lies between the twin lines of the Phison and also between those of the Vexillum.

Not far from the Pseboas Lucus are to be found all the examples of the third class of spots; for so far they have not been observed outside of Aeria, a region peculiarly peopled by double canals. With double canals they are necessarily associated, inasmuch as they consist of shading in the form of a square or parallelogram, filling the deltas between two pairs that cross. Thus have shown the Coloe Palus at the crossing of the double Phison with the double Astaboras, and the Juturna Fons where the double Sitacus traverses the double Euphrates.

At these same places a fourth kind is sometimes noticeable: a four-square set of pin-points or a two-square set of the same at the corners of the line-made parallelogram. This kind may well be synchronous with the third, though it has only been noticed at consecutive presentations. The third, however, has no observed dependence upon the first or second classes. And this serves to make more probable the true objectivity of the circular and the square figures respectively shown by each.

The spots apparent in the dark regions do not appreciably differ in either size or shape from the bulk of those visible in the light. Equally with them they seem to be round, small, and nearly black. They would seem, too, in the great diaphragm—or larger contiguous sombre region—to be equally plentifully distributed.

CHAPTER XXI
CARETS ON THE BORDERS OF THE GREAT DIAPHRAGM

Functionally related to the canal system, and yet in look and location contrasted with its other details, is a further set of markings, detected by me in 1894, and reseen at subsequent oppositions since, along the north border of the southern seas. They lie upon what used to be thought the continental coastline, the fringing edge of that almost continuous band of shading that belts the Martian globe throughout the southern subtropic zone and called by Schiaparelli the great diaphragm. The terrane lends itself to the appellative, forming, as it does, a dark dividing strip of country between the brilliant reddish-ochre hemisphere on the north and the half-toned islands to the south of it. By Schiaparelli it was thought to be one long Mediterranean, and though its marine character is now disproved, that it lies lower than the bright ochre regions is likely. To this difference of level is probably due the peculiar phenomenon which there manifested itself to careful scrutiny in 1894. For it was there only that it occurred.

The phenomenon in question consisted of nicks in the coastline, of triangular shape and filled with shading. They occurred at intervals along it and were of the general form of carets, such marks as one makes in checking items down a list. Their position was always where a canal debouched from the diaphragm upon its career across the open continent. The canal itself was by no means necessarily visible. On the contrary, at first it was usually absent. Such was the case with those marking the departure-points of the Phison and Euphrates and of the Amenthes and Lethes, which appeared, without being well defined, from the moment the planet came to be scanned.