and spacious
squares which divided them, must have covered an area of something like
two hundred square miles.

"There's the London of Mars!" said Redgrave, pointing down towards it;
"where the London of Earth will be in a few thousand years, close to the
Equator. And, you see, all those other towns and cities are crowded
round the canals! I daresay when we go across the northern and southern
temperate zones we shall find them in about the state that Siberia or
Antarctica are in."

"I daresay we shall," replied Zaidie; "Martian civilisation is crowding
towards the Equator, though I should call that place down there the
greater New York of Mars, and--see--there's Brooklyn just across the
canal. I wonder what they're thinking about us down there."

Phobos revolves from west to east almost along the plane of its
primary's equator. To left and right they saw the huge ice-caps of the
South and North Poles gleaming through the red atmosphere with a pale
sunset glimmer. Then came the great stretches of sea, often obscured by
vast banks of clouds, which, as the sunlight fell upon them, looked
strangely like earth-clouds at sunset.

Then, almost immediately underneath them, spread out the great land
areas of the equatorial region. The four continents of Halle, Galileo,
and Tycholand; then Huygens--which is to Mars what Europe, Asia, and
Africa are to the Earth, then Herschell and Copernicus. Nearly all of
these land masses were split up into semi-regular divisions by the
famous canals which have so long puzzled terrestrial observers.

"Well, there is one problem solved at any rate," said Redgrave, when,
after a journey of nearly four hours, they had crossed the western
hemisphere. "Mars is getting very old, her seas are diminishing, and her
continents are increasing. Those canals are the remains of gulfs and
straits which have been widened and deepened and lengthened by human, or
I should say Martian, labour, partly, I've no doubt, for purposes of
navigation and partly to keep the inhabitants of the interior of the
continents within measurable distance of the sea. There's not the
slightest doubt about that. Then, you see, there are scarcely any
mountains to speak of so far, only ranges of low hills."

"And that means, I suppose," said Zaidie, "that they've all been worn
down as the mountains of the earth are being. I was reading Flammarion's
'End of the World' last night, and he, you know, describes the earth at
the last