Page:Mars - Lowell.djvu/258

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194
MARS

which lay well to the right of the Ganges. The space included between the East and West Ganges was very wide, some six degrees. The canals themselves were, so far as could be seen, quite similar, and about a degree, or 37 miles, wide. Both started in the Gulf of the Dawn, and ran down to the lower Lake of the Moon, one entering each side of the lake or oasis. Two thirds of the way down, both similarly touched the sides of another oasis, an upper Lacus Lunae; the other I have called the Lacus Labeatis. The length of each canal was 1200 miles.

Except for fleeting suspicions of gemination, and for possible doublings like the parallelism of the two Hades, the next canal to show double was the Nectar, which was so seen by Mr. Douglass on October 4, and under still better seeing, a few minutes later, the doubling was detected by him extending straight across the Solis Lacus. In the Solis Lacus this was evidently a case of mid-clarification. What occurred in the Nectar seems more allied to the second class of manifestations, such as happened later with the Euphrates and the Phison.

Glimpses of a dual state in these canals we caught during the summer and autumn, but it was not till the November presentation of the region that they came out unmistakably twinned. On the 18th of that month, just as the twilight was fading away, the air being very still and