Page:Mars - Lowell.djvu/170

 stood out in marked contrast to the still deep blue-green regions by its side. Later the surroundings themselves faded, and their bleaching had the effect of once more partially obliterating Hesperia.

While Hesperia was thus getting itself noticed, the rest of the south temperate zone, as we may call it for identification’s sake, was unobtrusively pursuing the same course. Whereas in June all that part of the disk comprising the two Thyle, Argyre II., and like latitudes was chiefly blue-green, by October it had become chiefly yellow. Still further south, what had been first white, then blue, then brown, turned ochre.

Certain smaller details of the change that came over the face of the dark regions at the time were as curious as they were marked. For example, the Fastigium Aryn, the tip of the triangular cape which, by jutting out from the continent, forms the forked bay called the Sabaeus Sinus, and which, because of its easy identification, has been selected for the zero meridian of Martian longitudes, began in October to undergo strange metamorphosis. On October 15 it shot out a sort of tail southward. On the 16th this tail could be followed all the way to Deucalionis Regio, to which it made a bridge across from the continent, thus cutting the Sabaeus Sinus completely in two. After it