here we remained then through the entire course of twenty-four hours and saw in succession as they passed from night into day beneath our feet the land of chryse , the great continent of tharsis , the curious region of intersecting canals which puzzled astronomers on the earth had named the gordian knot , the continental lands of memnonia , amazonia and aeolia , the mysterious centre where hundreds of vast canals came together from every direction , called the trivium charontis ; the vast circle of elysium , a thousand miles across , and completely surrounded by a broad green canal ; the continent of libya , which , as i remembered , had been half covered by a tremendous inundation whose effects were visible from the earth in the year 1889 , and finally the long , dark sea of the syrtis major , lying directly south of the land of hellas .