A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
astonishing play of light and shade in the distance, especially around
the heavier clouds. Deep shadows were cast beneath, and then suddenly,
between two clouds, there would come a ray of unusual beauty, and
remarkable intensity. And yet it was not like the sun, for it gave no
heat.
The effect was sad and excruciatingly melancholy. Instead of a noble
firmament of blue, studded with stars, there was above me a heavy roof
of granite, which seemed to crush me.
Gazing around, I began to think of the theory of the English captain who
compared the earth to a vast hollow sphere in the interior of which the
air is retained in a luminous state by means of atmospheric pressure,
while two stars, Pluto and Proserpine, circled there in their mysterious
orbits. After all, suppose the old fellow was right!
In truth, we were imprisoned--bound as it were, in a vast excavation.
Its width it was impossible to make out; the shore, on either hand,
widening rapidly until lost to sight; while its length was equally
uncertain. A haze on the distant horizon bounded our view. As to its
height, we could see that it must be many miles to the roof. Looking
upward, it was impossible to discover where the stupendous roof began.
The lowest of the clouds must have been floating at an elevation of two
thousand yards, a height greater than that of terrestrial vapors, which
circumstance was doubtless owing to the extreme density of the air.
I use the word "cavern" in order to give an idea of the place. I cannot
describe its awful grandeur; human language fails to convey an idea of
its savage sublimity. Whether this singular vacuum had or had not been
caused by the sudden cooling of the earth when in a state of fusion, I
could not say. I had read of most wonderful and gigantic caverns--but,
none in any way like this.
The great grotto of Guachara, in Colombia, visited by the learned
Humboldt; the vast and partially explored Mammoth Cave in Kentucky--what
were these holes in the earth to that in which I stood in speechless
admiration! with its vapory clouds, its electric light, and the mighty
ocean slumbering in its bosom! Imagination, not description, can alone
give an idea of the splendor and vastness of the cave.
I gazed at these marvels in profound silence. Words were utterly wanting
to indicate the sensations of wonder I experienced. I seemed, as I stood
upon that mysterious shore, as if I were some wandering inhabitant of a
distant planet, present for the first time at the spectacle of some
terrestrial phenomena belonging to another existence. To give body and
existence to such new sensations would have required the coinage of new
words--and here my feeble brain found itself wholly at fault. I looked
on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not
altogether unmingled with fear!
The unexpected spectacle restored some color to my pallid cheeks. I
seemed to be actually getting better under the influence of this
novelty. Moreover, the vivacity of the dense atmosphere reanimated my
body by inflating my lungs with unaccustomed oxygen.
It will be readily conceived that after an imprisonment of forty-seven
days, in a dark and miserable tunnel it was with infinite delight that I
breathed this saline air. It was like the genial, reviving influence of
the salt sea waves.
My uncle had already got over the first surprise.
With the Latin poet Horace his idea was that--
Not to admire is all the art I know,
To make man happy and to keep him so.
"Well," he said, after giving me time thoroughly to appreciate the
marvels of this underground sea, "do you feel strong enough to walk up
and down?"
"Certainly," was my ready answer, "nothing would give me greater
pleasure."
"Well then, my boy," he said, "lean on my arm, and we will stroll along
the beach."
I accepted his offer eagerly, and we began to walk along the shores of
this extraordinary lake. To our left were abrupt rocks, piled one upon
the other--a stupendous titanic pile; down their sides leaped
innumerable cascades, which at last, becoming limpid and murmuring
streams, were lost in the waters of the lake. Light vapors, which rose
here and there, and floated in fleecy clouds from rock to rock,
indicated hot springs, which also poured their superfluity into the vast
reservoir at our feet.
Among them I recognized our old and faithful stream, the Hansbach,
which, lost in that wild basin, seemed as if it had been flowing since
the creation of the world.
"We shall miss our excellent friend," I remarked, with a deep sigh.
"Bah!" said my uncle testily, "what matters it? That or another, it is
all the same."
I thought the remark ungrateful, and felt almost inclined to say so; but
I forbore.
At this moment my attention was attracted by an unexpected spectacle.
After we had gone about five hundred yards, we suddenly turned a steep
promontory, and found ourselves close to a lofty forest! It consisted of
straight trunks with tufted tops, in shape like parasols. The air seemed
to have no effect upon these trees--which in spite of a tolerable breeze
remained as still and motionless as if they had been petrified.
I hastened forward. I could find no name for these singular formations.
Did they not belong to the two thousand and more known trees--or were we
to make the discovery of a new growth? By no means. When we at last
reached the forest, and stood beneath the trees, my surprise gave way to
admiration.
In truth, I was simply in the presence of a very ordinary product of the
earth, of singular and gigantic proportions. My uncle unhesitatingly
called them by their real names.
"It is only," he said, in his coolest manner, "a forest of mushrooms."
On close examination I found that he was not mistaken. Judge of the
development attained by this product of damp hot soils. I had heard that
the Lycoperdon giganteum reaches nine feet in circumference, but here
were white mushrooms, nearly forty feet high, and with tops of equal
dimensions. They grew in countless thousands--the light could not make
its way through their massive substance, and beneath them reigned a
gloomy and mystic darkness.
Still I wished to go forward. The cold in the shades of this singular
forest was intense. For nearly an hour we wandered about in this visible
darkness. At length I left the spot, and once more returned to the
shores of the lake, to light and comparative warmth.
But the amazing vegetation of subterraneous land was not confined to
gigantic mushrooms. New wonders awaited us at every step. We had not
gone many hundred yards, when we came upon a mighty group of other trees
with discolored leaves--the common humble trees of Mother Earth, of an
exorbitant and phenomenal size: lycopods a hundred feet high; flowering
ferns as tall as pines; gigantic grasses!
"Astonishing, magnificent, splendid!" cried my uncle; "here we have
before us the whole flora of the second period of the world, that of
transition. Behold the humble plants of our gardens, which in the first
ages of the world were mighty trees. Look around you, my dear Harry. No
botanist ever before gazed on such a sight!"
My uncle's enthusiasm, always a little more than was required, was now
excusable.
"You are right, Uncle," I remarked. "Providence appears to have designed
the preservation in this vast and mysterious hothouse of antediluvian
plants, to prove the sagacity of learned men in figuring them so
marvelously on paper."
"Well said, my boy--very well said; it is indeed a mighty hothouse. But
you would also be within the bounds of reason and common sense, if you
added that it is also a vast menagerie."
I looked rather anxiously around. If the animals were as exaggerated as
the plants, the matter would certainly be serious.
"A menagerie?"
"Doubtless. Look at the dust we are treading under foot--behold the
bones with which the whole soil of the seashore is covered--"
"Bones," I replied, "yes, certainly, the bones of antediluvian animals."
I stooped down as I spoke, and picked up one or two singular remains,
relics of a bygone age. It was easy to give a name to these gigantic
bones, in some instances as big as trunks of trees.
"Here is, clearly, the lower jawbone of a mastodon," I cried, almost as
warmly and enthusiastically as my uncle; "here are the molars of the
Dinotherium; here is a leg bone which belonged to the Megatherium. You
are right, Uncle, it is indeed a menagerie; for the mighty animals to
which these bones once belonged, have lived and died on the shores of
this subterranean sea, under the shadow of these plants. Look, yonder
are whole skeletons--and yet--"
"And yet, nephew?" said my uncle, noticing that I suddenly came to a
full stop.
"I do not understand the presence of such beasts in granite caverns,
however vast and prodigious," was my reply.
"Why not?" said my uncle, with very much of his old professional
impatience.
"Because it is well known that animal life only existed on earth during
the secondary period, when the sedimentary soil was formed by the
alluviums, and thus replaced the hot and burning rocks of the primitive
age."
"I have listened to you earnestly and with patience, Harry, and I have a
simple and clear answer to your objections: and that is, that this
itself is a sedimentary soil."
"How can that be at such enormous depth from the surface of the earth?"
"The fact can be explained both simply and geologically. At a certain
period, the earth consisted only of an elastic crust, liable to
alternative upward and downward movements in virtue of the law of
attraction. It is very probable that many a landslip took place in those
days, and that large portions of sedimentary soil were cast into huge
and mighty chasms."
"Quite possible," I dryly remarked. "But, Uncle, if these antediluvian
animals formerly lived in these subterranean regions, what more likely
than that one of these monsters may at this moment be concealed behind
one of yonder mighty rocks."
As I spoke, I looked keenly around, examining with care every point of
the horizon; but nothing alive appeared to exist on these deserted
shores.
I now felt rather fatigued, and told my uncle so. The walk and
excitement were too much for me in my weak state. I therefore seated
myself at the end of a promontory, at the foot of which the waves broke
in incessant rolls. I looked round a bay formed by projections of vast
granitic rocks. At the extreme end was a little port protected by huge
pyramids of stones. A brig and three or four schooners might have lain
there with perfect ease. So natural did it seem, that every minute my
imagination induced me to expect a vessel coming out under all sail and
making for the open sea under the influence of a warm southerly breeze.
But the fantastic illusion never lasted more than a minute. We were the
only living creatures in this subterranean world!
During certain periods there was an utter cessation of wind, when a
silence deeper, more terrible than the silence of the desert fell upon
these solitary and arid rocks--and seemed to hang like a leaden weight
upon the waters of this singular ocean. I sought, amid the awful
stillness, to penetrate through the distant fog, to tear down the veil
which concealed the mysterious distance. What unspoken words were
murmured by my trembling lips--what questions did I wish to ask and did
not! Where did this sea end--to what did it lead? Should we ever be able
to examine its distant shores?
But my uncle had no doubts about the matter. He was convinced that our
enterprise would in the end be successful. For my part, I was in a state
of painful indecision--I desired to embark on the journey and to
succeed, and still I feared the result.