[C]
Every canal (for now we shall so call them) opens at its ends either
into a sea, or into a lake, or into another canal, or else into the
intersection of several other canals. None of them have yet been seen
cut off in the middle of the continent, remaining without beginning or
without end. This fact is of the highest importance. The canals may
intersect among themselves at all possible angles, but by preference
they converge toward the small spots to which we have given the name of
lakes. For example, seven are seen to converge in Lacus Phoenicis,
eight in Trivium Charontis, six in Lunae Lacus, and six in Ismenius
Lacus.
The normal appearance of a canal is that of a nearly uniform stripe,
black, or at least of a dark color, similar to that of the seas, in
which the regularity of its general course does not exclude small
variations in its breadth and small sinuosities in its two sides. Often
it happens that such a dark line opening out upon the sea is enlarged
into the form of a trumpet, forming a huge bay, similar to the estuaries
of certain terrestrial streams. The Margaritifer Sinus, the Aonius
Sinus, the Aurorae Sinus, and the two horns of the Sab?us Sinus are thus
formed, at the mouths of one or more canals, opening into the Mare
Erythraeum or into the Mare Australe. The largest example of such a gulf
is the Syrtis Major, formed by the vast mouth of the Nilosyrtis, so
called. This gulf is not less than 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) in
breadth, and attains nearly the same depth in a longitudinal direction.
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