CHAPTER XXXI
THE HUSBANDING OF WATER
That the canals and oases are of artificial origin is thus suggested by their very look; when we come to go further and inquire into what may be their office in the planet’s economy, we find that the idea in addition to its general probability now acquires particular support. For this we are indebted in part to study of their static aspect, but chiefly to what has been learnt of their kinematic action.
Dearth of water is the key to their character. Water is very scarce on the planet. We know this by the absence of any bodies of it of any size upon the surface. So far as we can see the only available water is what comes from the semi-annual melting at one or the other cap of the snow accumulated there during the previous winter. Beyond this there is none except for what may be present in the air. Now, water is absolutely essential to all forms of life; no organisms can exist without it.
But as a planet ages, it loses its oceans as has before been explained, and gradually its whole water supply. Life upon its surface is confronted by a growing scarcity of this essential to existence. For its fauna to survive it must utilize all it can get. To this end it would be obliged to put forth its chief endeavors, and the outcome of such work would result in a deformation of the disk indicative of its presence. Lines of communication for water purposes, between the polar caps, on the one hand, and the centres of population, on the other, would be the artificial markings we should expect to perceive.
Now, it is not a little startling that the semblance of just such signs of intelligent interference with nature is what we discern on the face of Mars,—in the canals and oases. So dominant in its mien is the pencil-like directness of the canals as to be the trait that primarily strikes an unprejudiced observer who beholds this astounding system of lines under favorable definition for the first time, and its impressiveness only grows on him with study of the phenomena. That they suggested rule and compass, Schiaparelli said of them long ago, without committing himself as to what they were. In perception the great observer was, as usual, quite right; and the better they are seen the more they justify the statement. Punctilious in their precision, they outdo in method all attempts of freehand drawing to copy them. Often has the writer tried to represent the regularity he saw, only to draw and redraw his lines in vain. Nothing short of ruling them could have reproduced what the telescope revealed. Strange as their depiction may look in the drawings, the originals look stranger still. Indeed, that they should look unnatural when properly depicted is not unnatural if they are so in fact. For it is the geodetic precision which the lines exhibit that instantly stamps them to consciousness as artificial. The inference is so forthright as to be shared by those who have not seen them to the extent of instant denial of their objectivity. Drawings of them look too strange to be true. So scepticism imputes to the draughtsman their artificial fashioning, not realizing that by so doing it bears unconscious witness to their character. For in order to disprove the deduction it is driven to deny the fact. Now the fact can look after itself and will be recognized in time. For that the lines are as I have stated is beyond doubt. Each return of the planet shows them more and more geometric as sites are bettered and training improves.
Suggestive of design as their initial appearance is, the idea of artificiality receives further sanction from more careful consideration, even from a static point of view, on at least eight counts:—
1. Their straightness;
2. Their individually uniform size;
3. Their extreme tenuity;