thirty-five-million-mile

Updated: June 18, 2025

The celebrated Italian astronomer, Schiaparelli, took advantage of this opportunity to make a trigonometrical survey of the surface of Mars as coolly and confidently as if he were not taking his sights across a thirty-five-million-mile gulf of empty space and in the course of this survey he was astonished to perceive that the reddish areas, then called continents, were crossed in many directions by narrow, dusky lines, to which he gave the suggestive name of ``canals. Thus a kind of firebrand was cast into the field of astronomical speculation, which has ever since produced disputes that have sometimes approached the violence of political faction.

Garrett Putman Serviss - Curiosities of the Sky