In fact, about the only feature outside the polar snow caps that he would instantly recognize, would be the great ice cap of the Himalayas. India, that vast region extending from latitude 35° nearly to the equator, with its great plains and sterile regions, with its overpowering heat, and a dense population, depends for the sustenance of many of its millions upon the thousands of miles of irrigating canals, fed from the melting snow caps of the Himalayas. India has no great lakes, but in the northern plains great rivers course their way to the sea. The Ganges and the Indus and their tributaries derive their waters from the melting glaciers, and from these, a most extensive irrigating system of canals and reservoirs draw their waters. As the heat increases the ice melts more rapidly, and so more water is supplied at just the time when it is most needed. The whole scheme is on so vast a scale that a Martian would recognize its meaning, though he would wonder at the tortuous outlines of the larger canals. Flammarion has, in a similar manner, presented the arguments of Martian astronomers as to whether life exists anywhere but upon the planet Mars. He says, among other fancies, that the sapient Martian argues that houses could not be built on the Earth, on account of the violence with which building materials, such as bricks, blocks, etc., would drop, and thus endanger life. Believing that Mars is rightly balanced as to temperature, the Earth being so much nearer the Sun, would be too hot for life to exist. The Martian conceives himself to be supremely complete "even to the point that artists wishing to represent God in our sanctuaries have figured Him in the image of a Martian man." The Martian considers our year too short. In his reflections he says: "During the period in which one of us attains the middle age of fifty years those on Earth have become decrepit old men of ninety-four, if, indeed, they are not already dead."