Of the
greatest influence must be different arrangement of the seas and the
continents upon Mars and upon the earth, regarding which a glance at the
map will say more than would be possible in many words. We have already
emphasized the fact of the extraordinary periodical flood, which at
every revolution of Mars inundates the northern polar region at the
melting of the snow. Let us now add that this inundation is spread out
to a great distance by means of a network of canals, perhaps
constituting the principal mechanism (if not the only one) by which
water (and with it organic life) may be diffused over the arid surface
of the planet. Because on Mars it rains very rarely, or perhaps even it
does not rain at all. And this is the proof.
Let us carry ourselves in imagination into celestial space, to a point
so distant from the earth that we may embrace it all at a single glance.
He would be greatly in error who had expected to see reproduced there
upon a great scale the image of our continents with their gulfs and
islands and with the seas that surround them which are seen upon our
artificial globes. Then without doubt the known forms or parts of them
would be seen to appear under a vaporous veil, but a great part (perhaps
one-half) of the surface would be rendered invisible by the immense
fields of cloud, continually varying in density, in form, and in extent.
Such a hindrance, most frequent and continuous in the polar regions,
would still impede nearly half the time the view of the temperate zones,
distributing itself in capricious and ever varying configurations.
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