As we trudged along,our feet crushed innumerable shells of every shape and size-once the dwelling place of animals of every period of creation.
I particularly noticed some enormous shells-carapaces (turtle and tortoise species)the diameter of which exceeded fifteen feet.
They had in past ages belonged to those gigantic Glyptodons of the Pliocene period,of which the modern turtle is but a minute specimen.In addition,the whole soil was covered by a vast quantity of stony relics,having the appearance of flints worn by the action of the waves,and lying in successive layers one above the other.Icame to the conclusion that in past ages the sea must have covered the whole district.Upon the scattered rocks,now lying far beyond its reach,the mighty waves of ages had left evident marks of their passage.
On reflection,this appeared to me partially to explain the existence of this remarkable ocean,forty leagues below the surface of the earth's crust.According to my new,and perhaps fanciful,theory,this liquid mass must be gradually lost in the deep bowels of the earth.I had also no doubt that this mysterious sea was fed by infiltration of the ocean above,through imperceptible fissures.
Nevertheless,it was impossible not to admit that these fissures must now be nearly choked up,for if not,the cavern,or rather the immense and stupendous reservoir,would have been completely filled in a short space of time.Perhaps even this water,having to contend against the accumulated subterraneous fires of the interior of the earth,had become partially vaporized.Hence the explanation of those heavy clouds suspended over our heads,and the superabundant display of that electricity which occasioned such terrible storms in this deep and cavernous sea.
This lucid explanation of the phenomena we had witnessed appeared to me quite satisfactory.However great and mighty the marvels of nature may seem to us,they are always to be explained by physical reasons.Everything is subordinate to some great law of nature.
It now appeared clear that we were walking upon a kind of sedimentary soil,formed like all the soils of that period,so frequent on the surface of the globe,by the subsidence of the waters.
The Professor,who was now in his element,carefully examined every rocky fissure.Let him only find an opening and it directly became important to him to examine its depth.
For a whole mile we followed the windings of the Central Sea,when suddenly an important change took place in the aspect of the soil.
It seemed to have been rudely cast up,convulsionized,as it were,by a violent upheaving of the lower strata.In many places,hollows here and hillocks there attested great dislocations at some other period of the terrestrial mass.
We advanced with great difficulty over the broken masses of granite mixed with flint,quartz,and alluvial deposits,when a large field,more even than a field,a plain of bones,appeared suddenly before our eyes!It looked like an immense cemetery,where generation after generation had mingled their mortal dust.
Lofty barrows of early remains rose at intervals.They undulated away to the limits of the distant horizon and were lost in a thick and brown fog.
On that spot,some three square miles in extent,was accumulated the whole history of animal life-scarcely one creature upon the comparatively modern soil of the upper and inhabited world had not there existed.
Nevertheless,we were drawn forward by an all-absorbing and impatient curiosity.Our feet crushed with a dry and crackling sound the remains of those prehistoric fossils,for which the museums of great cities quarrel,even when they obtain only rare and curious morsels.A thousand such naturalists as Cuvier would not have sufficed to recompose the skeletons of the organic beings which lay in this magnificent osseous collection.
I was utterly confounded.My uncle stood for some minutes with his arms raised on high towards the thick granite vault which served us for a sky.His mouth was wide open;his eyes sparkled wildly behind his spectacles (which he had fortunately saved),his head bobbed up and down and from side to side,while his whole attitude and mien expressed unbounded astonishment.
He stood in the presence of an endless,wondrous,and inexhaustibly rich collection of antediluvian monsters,piled up for his own private and peculiar satisfaction.
Fancy an enthusiastic lover of books carried suddenly into the very midst of the famous library of Alexandria burned by the sacrilegious Omar,and which some miracle had restored to its pristine splendor!Such was something of the state of mind in which Uncle Hardwigg was now placed.
For some time he stood thus,literally aghast at the magnitude of his discovery.
But it was even a greater excitement when,darting wildly over this mass of organic dust,he caught up a naked skull and addressed me in a quivering voice:
"Harry,my boy-Harry-this is a human head!""A human head,Uncle!"I said,no less amazed and stupefied than himself.
"Yes,nephew.Ah!Mr.Milne-Edwards-ah!Mr.De Quatrefages-why are you not here where I am-I,Professor Hardwigg!"
