Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/909

Rh equator, under the tropics as well as in more distant latitudes; and it does not seem that they are tops of mountains, for they are near the seas, and are symmetrically and relatively connected with certain rectangular canals. Moreover, many of them seem to mark parallels of latitude and meridians, and one is involuntarily reminded of geodetic signals when examining these triangles, squares, and rectangles.

I do not think that these luminous points have been placed by engineers or astronomers of the world of Mars, and it would be preposterous to suppose that the sixty rectangular canals, parallel and double, which we admire upon this same planet, putting all the Martian seas in communication with each other, are the work of the inhabitants of the sphere—this is not the conclusion I wish to draw. Nevertheless, it is none the less true that if the inhabitants of Mars wished to address signals to us, this mode of proceeding would be one of the most simple, and it is even now the only one thinkable by us. They could not do better than place these luminous points at particular distances according to geometrical figures.

One sees, for example, at the intersection of the 267th meridian with the 14th parallel of north latitude a region limited by points at the respective distances of Amiens, Le Mans, and Bourges. If the inhabitants of Mars wished to address signals to us, they could not have chosen a better place for their luminous beacons, although I am far from saying that it is so. But only if it were so, it is we who would not have understood.

The inhabitants of Mars being of a much more ancient origin than we are, may be more advanced in the line of progress, and enjoy a more enlightened and spiritual life. We may even admit without temerity that they are more learned than we are in the study of nature, and that they know our world better than we know theirs, and that our astronomical science is only in its infancy compared to theirs.

If, then, the people of Mars, living perhaps a highly intelligent life, did think of addressing signals to our world in the idea that our planet was also inhabited by an intellectual race, they probably concluded when they received no reply that astronomy and optics were not advanced with us, and that we had not progressed beyond mere material instincts.

Perhaps the Martian academies declare this world to be uninhabitable and un- inhabited, (1) because it does not identically resemble their own country, (2) because we have only one moon whilst they have two, (3) because our years are too short, and (4) because our sky is often murky, whilst theirs is always pure, and for a thousand other reasons quite as demonstrable.

If the Martians had any idea of sending us signals, it is not likely they have at the present time; it is probable they tried it in the Stone Age, two or three hundred thousand years ago, before man's appearance here. Perhaps, even, they addressed our planet in the period of the mammoth, the hipparion, or cave-bear, the iguanodon and the dinosaurians, or they may have recommenced it two or three thousand years ago.

Man, as we know, has only existed in this world for a hundred thousand years.

Astronomical instruments have only been invented since 1609, and the geographical details of Mars have only been discovered since the year 1858. Moreover, complete preparations for the study of this geography only date from the year 1862. The first detailed triangulation of the planet, the first geographical map comprising the smallest objects visible with the telescope and micrometically measured, was only commenced in 1877, continued in 1879, and finished in 1882.

It is not, therefore, many years since Mars entered into the sphere of our observation. And one can also say that there is but a small number of the inhabitants of this world who have observed it in all its details, and of these the most experienced is Signor Schiaparelli, director of the observatory at Milan.

The geographical map of the planet Mars has just been made with infinite care by the above-mentioned astronomer. One might really consider it a terrestrial sphere of continents, islands, coasts, peninsulas, gulfs, waters. Moreover, clouds, rains, inundations, snows, seasons, winters and summers, springs and autumns,