Off on a Comet by Jules Verne (best non fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

THE RESIDUUM OF A CONTINENT

Almost unconsciously, the voyagers in the Dobryna fell into the habit

of using Gallia as the name of the new world in which they became aware they

must be making an extraordinary excursion through the realms of space.

Nothing, however, was allowed to divert them from their ostensible object

of making a survey of the coast of the Mediterranean, and accordingly they

persevered in following that singular boundary which had revealed itself

to their extreme astonishment.

Having rounded the great promontory that had barred her farther

progress to the north, the schooner skirted its upper edge.

A few more leagues and they ought to be abreast of the shores

of France. Yes, of France.

But who shall describe the feelings of Hector Servadac when,

instead of the charming outline of his native land,

he beheld nothing but a solid boundary of savage rock?

Who shall paint the look of consternation with which he gazed upon

the stony rampart—rising perpendicularly for a thousand feet—

that had replaced the shores of the smiling south?

Who shall reveal the burning anxiety with which he throbbed

to see beyond that cruel wall?

But there seemed no hope. Onwards and onwards the yacht made

her way, and still no sign of France. It might have been supposed

that Servadac’s previous 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 well-nigh 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 is—there must be—something more behind that frowning rock.

Oh, that 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 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 half-past 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 sides—were 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

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 layers of snow were glittering upon the surface of the fractured rocks,

and the higher the elevation that was gained, the more these layers were found

to increase in area and in depth.

“Here is a trace of fresh water, the first that Gallia has exhibited,”

said the count to his companions, as they toiled up the precipitous path.

“And probably,” replied the lieutenant, “as we ascend we shall find not

only snow but ice. We must suppose this Gallia of ours to be a sphere,

and if it is so, we must now be very close to her Arctic regions;

it is true that her axis is not so much inclined