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experiences would have prepared him for the discovery that the catastrophe
which had overwhelmed other sites had brought destruction to his own country
as well.
But he had failed to realize how it might extend to France; and when now he
was obliged with his own eyes to witness the waves of ocean rolling over what
once had been the lovely shores of Provence, he was wellnigh frantic with
desperation.
"Am I to believe that Gourbi Island, that little shred of Algeria, constitutes
all that is left of our glorious
France? No, no; it cannot be. Not yet have we reached the pole of our new
world. There isthere must besomething more behind that frowning rock. Oh, that
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for a moment we could scale its towering height and look beyond! By Heaven, I
adjure you, let us disembark, and mount the summit and explore! France lies
beyond."
Disembarkation, however, was an utter impossibility. There was no semblance of
a creek in which the
Dobryna could find an anchorage. There was no outlying ridge on which a
footing could be gained. The precipice was perpendicular as a wall, its
topmost height crowned with the same conglomerate of crystallized lamellae
that had all along been so pronounced a feature.
With her steam at high pressure, the yacht made rapid progress towards the
east. The weather remained perfectly fine, the temperature became gradually
cooler, so that there was little prospect of vapors accumulating in the
atmosphere; and nothing more than a few cirri, almost transparent, veiled here
and there the clear azure of the sky. Throughout the day the pale rays of the
sun, apparently lessened in its magnitude, cast only faint and somewhat
uncertain shadows; but at night the stars shone with surpassing brilliancy. Of
the planets, some, it was observed, seemed to be fading away in remote
distance. This was the case with
Mars, Venus, and that unknown orb which was moving in the orbit of the minor
planets; but Jupiter, on the other hand, had assumed splendid proportions;
Saturn was superb in its luster, and Uranus, which hitherto
Off on a Comet
CHAPTER XVI. THE RESIDUUM OF A CONTINENT
54
had been imperceptible without a telescope was pointed out by Lieutenant
Procope, plainly visible to the naked eye. The inference was irresistible that
Gallia was receding from the sun, and traveling far away across the planetary
regions.
On the 24th of February, after following the sinuous course of what before the
date of the convulsion had been the coast line of the department of Var, and
after a fruitless search for Hyeres, the peninsula of St.
Tropez, the Lerius Islands, and the gulfs of Cannes and Jouar, the
Dobryna arrived upon the site of the Cape of Antibes.
Here, quite unexpectedly, the explorers made the discovery that the massive
wall of cliff had been rent from the top to the bottom by a narrow rift, like
the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and at the base of the opening, level with
the sea, was a little strand upon which there was just space enough for their
boat to be hauled up.
"Joy! joy!" shouted Servadac, half beside himself with ecstasy; "we can land
at last!"
Count Timascheff and the lieutenant were scarcely less impatient than the
captain, and little needed his urgent and repeated solicitations: "Come on!
Quick! Come on! no time to lose!"
It was halfpast seven in the morning, when they set their foot upon this
untried land. The bit of strand was only a few square yards in area, quite a
narrow strip. Upon it might have been recognized some fragments of that
agglutination of yellow limestone which is characteristic of the coast of
Provence. But the whole party was far too eager to wait and examine these
remnants of the ancient shore; they hurried on to scale the heights.
The narrow ravine was not only perfectly dry, but manifestly had never been
the bed of any mountain torrent.
The rocks that rested at the bottom just as those which formed its sideswere
of the same lamellous formation as the entire coast, and had not hitherto been
subject to the disaggregation which the lapse of time never fails to work. A
skilled geologist would probably have been able to assign them their proper
scientific classification, but neither Servadac, Timascheff, nor the
lieutenant could pretend to any acquaintance with their specific character.
Although, however, the bottom of the chasm had never as yet been the channel
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of a stream, indications were not wanting that at some future time it would be
the natural outlet of accumulated waters; for already, in many places, thin [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]