But as we approach one of these spots the spires and roofs (or what answer on Mars for spires and roofs) of a town make their appearance. And quickly we find ourselves in strange streets and avenues, surrounded by throngs of such people as the wildest traveller's tale has never pictured on the earth. We are led to a lofty outlook, from which we can see far across the level country, and behold the radiating belts, along which alone the land is fruitful, stretching away in every direction, and at each crossing-place widening into an island of green dotted with the dwellings of a town or city. The red glare of the leafless and waterless wilderness, contrasting with the emerald lines that intersect it, makes a scene of overwhelming strangeness. In the remote distance our guides point out to us the metropolis of this part of Mars, placed in the broadest of the verdant spots, where our charts show the "Lake of the Sun," and surrounded by an immense system of irrigated belts, running out across the desert to the distant sea-swamps on all sides like the spokes of an enormous wheel, and so conspicuous that the Lick telescope and other telescopes have shown them from the earth. Every one of those lines is sucking moisture from the polar overflow, and storing up subsistence for the great city and all the inhabitants of the land.
For this is not merely the harvest season on Mars; it is the time when every thought is on the future, and every energy is bent to the preservation of life upon the planet. Did we think that we had learned how to make the earth yield to us the full measure of its fertility? Bah! We had to come to Mars to find out that science. If we should return to this scene in a few months the story would be plain. Then the desert would have resumed its sway uninterrupted; the swamp oceans, half water and half leaves, would have returned to dust; the irrigating ditches would have dried up, and the productive belts would be like so many narrow bands of prairie that had been swept with fire. At such a time the "canals" of the planet Mars disappear from the sight of terrestrial astronomers, and the so-called "oceans" turn pale.
Then we may imagine the inhabitants of that most singular planet reaping the fruit of their foresight and industry; then is the season of social joys in the Martian metropolis on the site of the "Lake of the Sun"; then men go no longer forth to the fields to toil for the future, because that future for which they worked has come, and there is to be no more toil, until once again, with the slow swing of the seasons, the southern pole, burdened under its accumulated winter snows, beholds the sun, and at its touch dissolves into life-giving water.
So much for some of the broad features of life on Mars as recent discoveries permit us to picture them, although it should be borne in mind that astronomy, as a science, does not assert—though it does not deny—that there is life at all on Mars. It allows us to draw our own conclusions. Now, then, continuing the supposition that there may be inhabitants on Mars, let us consider some other queer things that we should probably behold and experience on paying them a visit.
Mars is small compared with our world, its diameter being only about 4200 miles, and its surface between one-third and one-fourth as extensive as the earth's. Knowing its size and density, we can calculate how great its gravitation is—in other words, how much bodies weigh on its surface. If we tip the scales at 150 pounds on the earth, we should find that our weight had been reduced, in going to Mars, to about 67 pounds. It is hardly possible to tell exactly how we should behave in such circumstances. Doubtless we should feel as if we were walking on air, or as if we could jump over a house, for our muscular strength would remain the same. Imagine the feelings of an elephant suddenly removed to Mars!
But the most singular effect that we should behold of this comparative lack of weight on Mars might be upon its own inhabitants. The chances are not small that we should find ourselves amid a lot of giants there, averaging about fifteen feet tall. It is easy to prove that on Mars a man of that height would, in proportion to his muscular strength, be no heavier or clumsier than our average descendant of Adam is. Yet he would be absolutely stronger and able to perform harder work. Then, too, the things he had to lift would be far lighter, bulk for bulk, than similar things on the earth. Accordingly, during our visit to one of those "irrigation belts" that Mr. Lowell has imagined, we might behold feats of strength in the digging of ditches and the garnering of the fruits of the soil that would fill us with astonishment.
And that leads us to something else rather queer. There are reasons for thinking that a small globe like Mars might, because it would cool faster, get into a habitable condition sooner than the earth. If so, the people of Mars may have family trees that would put our longest genealogies completely into the shade, and their history as a race may exceed ours by an enormous length of time.