possessing moments of really distinct vision is imperative. For the canals to come out in all their fineness and geometrical precision, the air must be steady enough to show the markings on the planet's disk with the clear-cut character of a steel engraving. No one who has not seen the planet thus can pass upon the character of these lines.
Although skepticism as to the existence of the so-called canals has been now pretty well dispelled by these and other observations, disbelief still makes a desperate stand against their peculiar appearance, dubbing accounts of their straightness and duplication as sensational, whatever they may mean in such connection; for that they are both straight and double, as described, is certain,--a statement I make after having seen them, instead of before doing so, as is the case with the gifted objectors. Doubt, however, will not wholly cease till more people have seen them, which will not happen till the importance of atmosphere in the study of planetary detail is more generally appreciated than it is to-day. To look for the canals with a large instrument in poor air is like trying to read a page of fine print kept dancing before one's eyes, with the additional disadvantage that increase of magnification increases the motion. Advance in our study of other worlds depends upon choosing the very best atmospheric sites for our observatories.
It is interesting to recall, in connection with this incredulity about the canals, that precisely the same thing happened in the case of the discovery of Jupiter's satellites and with Huyghens' explanation of Saturn's ring. We are apt to imagine that our age of the world has a monopoly of skepticism. But this is a mistake. The spirit that denies has always been abroad; only in early days he was reputed to be the devil.
II. Map and Catalogue
As we shall now have to call these Martian things by their names,--our names, that is,--it may be well to consider cursorily the nomenclature which has been evolved on the subject. Unfortunately, the planet has been quite too much benamed,--benamed, indeed, out of all recognition. There are no less than five or six systems current for its general topographical features. The result is that it has become something of a specialty just to know the names. The Syrtis Major, for example, appears under the following aliases: the Syrtis Major, the Mer du Sablier, the Kaiser Sea, the Northern Sea, to say nothing of translations of these, such as the Hourglass Sea; after which ample baptism it is a trifle disconcerting to have the sea turn out, apparently, not to be a sea at all. Everybody has tried his hand at naming the planet, first and last; naming a thing being man's nearest approach to creating it. Proctor made a chart of the planet, and named it thoroughly; Flammarion made another chart, and also named it thoroughly, but differently; Green drew a third map, and gave it a third set of names ; Schiaparelli followed with a fourth, and furnished it with a brand-new set of his own; and finally W. H. Pickering found it necessary to give a few new names, just for particularization. To know, therefore, what part of the planet anybody means when he mentions it, one has to keep in his head enough names for five worlds. To cap which, it is to be remarked that not one of them is the thing's real--that is, its Martian-- name, after all!Fortunately, with the canals, matters are not so desperate, because so few people have seen them. Schiaparelli's monopoly of the sight pleasingly prevented, in their case, christening competition. What is more, he named them, very judiciously and most picturesquely, after mythologic river names. Where he got his names is another matter. Whether he started by being as learned in such lore as he afterward became may well be doubted. Certainly, one of the greatest discoveries made at Flagstaff has been the discovery of the meaning of Schiaparelli's names; some of them still defying the penetrating power of the ordinary encyclopaedia. Among them are classical mythologic ones of the class known only to that himself mythical character, Macaulay's every school boy; which speaks conclusively for their reconditeness. Others, I firmly believe, even that omniscient schoolboy can never have heard of. Want of space here precludes instances; but as a simple example I may say that the translation to Mars of the Phison and the Gihon, the two lost rivers of Mesopotamia, satisfactorily accounts for their not being found on earth by modern explorers.
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