A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
There was the giant Mastodon, twisting and turning his horrid trunk,
with which he crushed the rocks of the shore to powder, while the
Megatherium--his back raised like a cat in a passion, his enormous claws
stretched out, dug into the earth for food, at the same time that he
awoke the sonorous echoes of the whole place with his terrible roar.
Higher up still, the first monkey ever seen on the face of the globe
clambered, gamboling and playing up the granite hills. Still farther
away, ran the Pterodactyl, with the winged hand, gliding or rather
sailing through the dense and compressed air like a huge bat.
Above all, near the leaden granitic sky, were immense birds, more
powerful than the cassowary and the ostrich, which spread their mighty
wings and fluttered against the huge stone vault of the inland sea.
I thought, such was the effect of my imagination, that I saw this whole
tribe of antediluvian creatures. I carried myself back to far ages, long
before man existed--when, in fact, the earth was in too imperfect a
state for him to live upon it.
My dream was of countless ages before the existence of man. The
mammifers first disappeared, then the mighty birds, then the reptiles of
the secondary period, presently the fish, the crustacea, the mollusks,
and finally the vertebrata. The zoophytes of the period of transition in
their turn sank into annihilation.
The whole panorama of the world's life before the historic period,
seemed to be born over again, and mine was the only human heart that
beat in this unpeopled world! There were no more seasons; there were no
more climates; the natural heat of the world increased unceasingly, and
neutralized that of the great radiant Sun.
Vegetation was exaggerated in an extraordinary manner. I passed like a
shadow in the midst of brushwood as lofty as the giant trees of
California, and trod underfoot the moist and humid soil, reeking with a
rank and varied vegetation.
I leaned against the huge column-like trunks of giant trees, to which
those of Canada were as ferns. Whole ages passed, hundreds upon hundreds
of years were concentrated into a single day.
Next, unrolled before me like a panorama, came the great and wondrous
series of terrestrial transformations. Plants disappeared; the granitic
rocks lost all trace of solidity; the liquid state was suddenly
substituted for that which had before existed. This was caused by
intense heat acting on the organic matter of the earth. The waters
flowed over the whole surface of the globe; they boiled; they were
volatilized, or turned into vapor; a kind of steam cloud wrapped the
whole earth, the globe itself becoming at last nothing but one huge
sphere of gas, indescribable in color, between white heat and red, as
big and as brilliant as the sun.
In the very centre of this prodigious mass, fourteen hundred thousand
times as large as our globe, I was whirled round in space, and brought
into close conjunction with the planets. My body was subtilized, or
rather became volatile, and commingled in a state of atomic vapor, with
the prodigious clouds, which rushed forward like a mighty comet into
infinite space!
What an extraordinary dream! Where would it finally take me? My feverish
hand began to write down the marvelous details--details more like the
imaginings of a lunatic than anything sober and real. I had during this
period of hallucination forgotten everything--the Professor, the guide,
and the raft on which we were floating. My mind was in a state of
semioblivion.
"What is the matter, Harry?" said my uncle suddenly.
My eyes, which were wide opened like those of a somnambulist, were fixed
upon him, but I did not see him, nor could I clearly make out anything
around me.
"Take care, my boy," again cried my uncle, "you will fall into the sea."
As he uttered these words, I felt myself seized on the other side by the
firm hand of our devoted guide. Had it not been for the presence of mind
of Hans, I must infallibly have fallen into the waves and been drowned.
"Have you gone mad?" cried my uncle, shaking me on the other side.
"What--what is the matter?" I said at last, coming to myself.
"Are you ill, Henry?" continued the Professor in an anxious tone.
"No--no; but I have had an extraordinary dream. It, however, has passed
away. All now seems well," I added, looking around me with strangely
puzzled eyes.
"All right," said my uncle; "a beautiful breeze, a splendid sea. We are
going along at a rapid rate, and if I am not out in my calculations we
shall soon see land. I shall not be sorry to exchange the narrow limits
of our raft for the mysterious strand of the subterranean ocean."
As my uncle uttered these words, I rose and carefully scanned the
horizon. But the line of water was still confounded with the lowering
clouds that hung aloft, and in the distance appeared to touch the edge
of the water.
CHAPTER 30
TERRIFIC SAURIAN COMBAT
Saturday, August 15th. The sea still retains its uniform monotony. The
same leaden hue, the same eternal glare from above. No indication of
land being in sight. The horizon appears to retreat before us, more and
more as we advance.
My head, still dull and heavy from the effects of my extraordinary
dream, which I cannot as yet banish from my mind.
The Professor, who has not dreamed, is, however, in one of his morose
and unaccountable humors. Spends his time in scanning the horizon, at
every point of the compass. His telescope is raised every moment to his
eyes, and when he finds nothing to give any clue to our whereabouts, he
assumes a Napoleonic attitude and walks anxiously.
I remarked that my uncle, the Professor, had a strong tendency to resume
his old impatient character, and I could not but make a note of this
disagreeable circumstance in my journal. I saw clearly that it had
required all the influence of my danger and suffering, to extract from
him one scintillation of humane feeling. Now that I was quite recovered,
his original nature had conquered and obtained the upper hand.
And, after all, what had he to be angry and annoyed about, now more than
at any other time? Was not the journey being accomplished under the most
favorable circumstances? Was not the raft progressing with the most
marvelous rapidity?
What, then, could be the matter? After one or two preliminary hems, I
determined to inquire.
"You seem uneasy, Uncle," said I, when for about the hundredth time he
put down his telescope and walked up and down, muttering to himself.
"No, I am not uneasy," he replied in a dry harsh tone, "by no means."
"Perhaps I should have said impatient," I replied, softening the force
of my remark.
"Enough to make me so, I think."
"And yet we are advancing at a rate seldom attained by a raft," I
remarked.
"What matters that?" cried my uncle. "I am not vexed at the rate we go
at, but I am annoyed to find the sea so much vaster than I expected."
I then recollected that the Professor, before our departure, had
estimated the length of this subterranean ocean as at most about thirty
leagues. Now we had traveled at least over thrice that distance without
discovering any trace of the distant shore. I began to understand my
uncle's anger.
"We are not going down," suddenly exclaimed the Professor. "We are not
progressing with our great discoveries. All this is utter loss of time.
After all, I did not come from home to undertake a party of pleasure.
This voyage on a raft over a pond annoys and wearies me."
He called this adventurous journey a party of pleasure, and this great
inland sea a pond!
"But," argued I, "if we have followed the route indicated by the great
Saknussemm, we cannot be going far wrong."
"'That is the question,' as the great, the immortal Shakespeare, has it.
Are we following the route indicated by that wondrous sage? Did
Saknussemm ever fall in with this great sheet of water? If he did, did
he cross it? I begin to fear that the rivulet we adopted for a guide has
led us wrong."
"In any case, we can never regret having come thus far. It is worth the
whole journey to have enjoyed this magnificent spectacle--it is
something to have seen."
"I care nothing about seeing, nor about magnificent spectacles. I came
down into the interior of the earth with an object, and that object I
mean to attain. Don't talk to me about admiring scenery, or any other
sentimental trash."
After this I thought it well to hold my tongue, and allow the Professor
to bite his lips until the blood came, without further remark.
At six o'clock in the evening, our matter-of-fact guide, Hans, asked for
his week's salary, and receiving his three rix-dollars, put them
carefully in his pocket. He was perfectly contented and satisfied.
Sunday, August 16th. Nothing new to record. The same weather as before.
The wind has a slight tendency to freshen up, with signs of an
approaching gale. When I awoke, my first observation was in regard to
the intensity of the light. I keep on fearing, day after day, that the
extraordinary electric phenomenon should become first obscured, and then
go wholly out, leaving us in total darkness. Nothing, however, of the
kind occurs. The shadow of the raft, its mast and sails, is clearly
distinguished on the surface of the water.
This wondrous sea is, after all, infinite in its extent. It must be
quite as wide as the Mediterranean--or perhaps even as the great
Atlantic Ocean. Why, after all, should it not be so?
My uncle has on more than one occasion, tried deep-sea soundings. He
tied the cross of one of our heaviest crowbars to the extremity of a
cord, which he allowed to run out to the extent of two hundred fathoms.
We had the greatest difficulty in hoisting in our novel kind of lead.
When the crowbar was finally dragged on board, Hans called my attention
to some singular marks upon its surface. The piece of iron looked as if
it had been crushed between two very hard substances.
I looked at our worthy guide with an inquiring glance.
"Tander," said he.
Of course I was at a loss to understand. I turned round towards my
uncle, absorbed in gloomy reflections. I had little wish to disturb him
from his reverie. I accordingly turned once more towards our worthy
Icelander.
Hans very quietly and significantly opened his mouth once or twice, as
if in the act of biting, and in this way made me understand his meaning.
"Teeth!" cried I, with stupefaction, as I examined the bar of iron with
more attention.
Yes. There can be no doubt about the matter. The indentations on the bar
of iron are the marks of teeth! What jaws must the owner of such molars
be possessed of! Have we then, come upon a monster of unknown species,
which still exists within the vast waste of waters--a monster more
voracious than a shark, more terrible and bulky than the whale? I am
unable to withdraw my eyes from the bar of iron, actually half crushed!
Is, then, my dream about to come true--a dread and terrible reality?
All day my thoughts were bent upon these speculations, and my
imagination scarcely regained a degree of calmness and power of
reflection until after a sleep of many hours.
This day, as on other Sundays, we observed as a day of rest and pious
meditation.
Monday, August 17th. I have been trying to realize from memory the
particular instincts of those antediluvian animals of the secondary
period, which succeeding to the mollusca, to the crustacea, and to the
fish, preceded the appearance of the race of mammifers. The generation
of reptiles then reigned supreme upon the earth. These hideous monsters
ruled everything in the seas of the secondary period, which formed the
strata of which the Jura mountains are composed. Nature had endowed them