Journey to the Sun, page 11
Its cries mingled with a kind of growling evidently coming from the trunk of the tree and announcing the ill humor of the individual whose habitation it presumably was. Then, suddenly, I perceived two red eyes, blazing with anger, shining in the depths of the dark hole, and almost at the same time, a large hair head appeared in the opening. It was a she-bear that was nursing her cubs in that vegetal lair.
It considered the scene that was unfolding outside for nearly five minutes, and it seemed to me that its prudence was making it employ that time in deliberating as to the manner in which it ought to act in the circumstances. Finally, it made its decision, emerged from its hole and set off in pursuit the coati, which fear of its new enemy had caused it climb almost to the summit of the tree. I was then able to consider it at my ease, and I saw that it was absolutely no different from the bears that still inhabit the solitary mountains of the Alps today, except that it was slightly larger.
I admired the prudence of the animal, which never lifted a paw to place it on a higher branch without having made sure two or three times that its other feet were clinging solidly to the bark. In spite of its slowness, I saw that it was an excellent climber, and I had no doubt that it would soon reach the coati, which was trembling in every limb.
As the bear got closer, the other climbed higher; it had soon reached the summit of the tree, however, and its position then became critical; already the bear was no more than a few feet away. It could already feel the humidity of its breath on its fur, bristling with fear, when desperation caused it to make a final decision. Braving the danger of a fall from a height of a hundred feet, it ventured on to a small branch scarcely strong enough to support the weight of its body, and advanced, vacillating, almost to its extremity.
The bear was amazed on seeing it make that maneuver, and did not risk pursuing it any further, but, after having made quite sure of its own position, it put its heavy paw on the branch and started shaking it with all its might, as bears do in the Alps when, climbing a beech, they shake its branches to cause beech-nuts they cannot reach to fall.
The poor coati clung on as best it could with its nails, but it was impossible to maintain its equilibrium for long and it was tipped upside-down; nevertheless, it did not fall, and the dog, a spectator of the singular scene, expressed its impatience by redoubling its barking.
The bear shook more forcefully; the branch gave way and broke; the coati let go, fell heavily to the ground, and the dog, immediately hurling itself up it, killed it, seized it in the middle of its back, picked it up and carried it off into the wood to eat it.
The bear descended again, growling, with the same prudent precautions it had taken while climbing; then, when it saw the hunter decamping briskly toward the forest, carrying its booty, it went back into its hole and disappeared from our sight.
Sixth Epoch of the Sixth Period
“Do you remember,” the genius said to me, “in what geological epoch you left the readers of the Musée des Familles?”
“Certainly: in the fifth epoch of the sixth period—which is to say, if I’m not mistaken, the very epoch in which we have arrived while traversing this forest.”
“You’re right, so prepare yourself to see how the Earth made arrangements to become absolutely similar to what it is today, in the living world.
“As you can see,” the demon continued, “there’s no longer any difference between the vegetation of this epoch and that of your time; the forests are composed of oaks, elms, birches, etc., etc., all similar to the ones you know; the grasslands are dotted with the same flowers and the willow, the alder and the poplar shade the streams whose limpid waters flow among the rocks.
“The anoplotheria and the paleotheria no longer exist, but they’ve been replaced by other animals, the majority of which still exist in your century, after having been subjected nevertheless to a few slight changes of form, such as, for example, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the tapir, cattle, the horse, deer, antelopes, sheep, pigs and a host of others.
“There are also a few that will be lost, and they’re the most singular, so let’s direct our stroll in such a fashion as to encounter them. You’ve already seen the dinotherium, of which I make a mole until someone can prove to me that it’s a whale; there’s a second species of it, Dinotherium bavaricum, somewhat smaller than the one you know; I won’t show it to you, nor five or six species of elephants, including the mammoth.
“Here’s one that is appearing for the first time to your eyes: it’s Fischer’s elasmotherium; the animal has features reminiscent of three very different species: the rhinoceros, whose stature it has, the horse and the elephant. It has mild mores and only nourishes itself on grass.
“Also grazing alongside that one is the giant sivatherium, which, in its conformation, appears to be intermediate between ruminants and pachyderms; as you can see, its stature surpasses that of the rhinoceros, and the size of its head approaches that of an elephant, but what distinguishes it from all the pachyderms, except the giraffe, are its two horns, covered with skin and hair, placed between its eyes. Its skull is enormously developed at the rear; and its nose, raised far above the face and advanced in an arch over the external nostrils, gives is a physiognomy more stupid than malevolent. Its bones are found in the Sivalik Mountains, extending from the Himalayas, and it’s probably for that reason that it was named after the Hindu god Siva.
“Many of the animals of your time are already multiplying prodigiously in the forests. Among the small carnivores there are polecats, weasels, bats, shrews, moles, badgers and gluttons; among the large there are dogs, wolves, foxes, bars, tigers, lions and jaguars.
“Among the birds that populate the woods are vultures, sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, crows, pigeons and woodcocks; ducks and gulls are floating on the rivers; pheasants, grouse and quail are nesting in the plain, and swallows are attaching their nests to the rocks of shores.
“The landscape that is opening up ahead of you already has the same physiognomy that it will have in your time; there are plains mingled with woodlands, hills covered with forests, and, in the distance, chains of mountains of which rain and frost have already eroded the summits in such a way as to draw away the alluvial deposits that covered them and lay bare the rocks that form, so to speak, their interior skeleton. Once, lakes and subterranean currents undermined their enormous base, but upheavals or earthquakes, dislocating their mass, have let out the waters contained in their bosom. Those waters have precipitated into the valleys through those accidental issues, and their dark and dried beds have formed grottoes and caverns that serve as lairs for monstrous reptiles, dinotheria, tigers, bears and other carnivores.
“Nothing is better calculated to inspire dread than exploring those vast subterranean solitudes, illuminated by the uncertain light of torches, in which one cannot help thinking about the possibility of remaining there, buried by some unexpected landslide, or getting lost there if some accident extinguishes the torch to which you have entrusted your life. Advancing through the darkness and silence under immense vaults, the least superstitious mind is truck by panic; one fears encountering in some remote corner of those somber labyrinths one of those fantastic and terrible beings that once lived, and might have escaped the destruction of time.
“Soon, however, a dazzling sight causes vain terrors to be forgotten; the light of torches is reflected in a thousand ways from walls hung with stalactites as brilliant as diamonds; garlands festoons and elegant columns of alabaster are suspended from the damp vaults where porticoes and a thousand other more or less bizarre figures are formed. Over there is a stalagmite imitating a gladiator getting ready for combat; here an old woman crouching down; further away a brooding chicken, a vase, a font, etc., etc.”
“I’ve heard much talk of those marvels,” I replied, “and I’d be curious to see them.”
“Nothing is easier. Follow me into the forest and, at the foot of that mountain raising its bald head above the clouds, I’ll satisfy your curiosity for the last time.”
We plunged into the wood in order to reach the foot of the mountain and I saw a further host of animals resting peacefully in the shade of the dense foliage; but, as almost all of them were familiar, I paid little attention to them.
“I was walking with my head down, in scholarly meditation, when a wild apple, hurled with force, struck me on the shoulder and reawakened my torpid attention. Surprised by that unexpected assault, I was looking around, without being able to discover where it had come from, when a second, launched in the same manner, came whistling past my ear, and led me to look up into a nearby tree.
“It’s an ape!” I exclaimed. “That’s an ape!”
“You’re not mistaken.”
“We’re probably in Java or the Moluccas, for, if my memory serves me right, that species is only found there.”
“Yes, in modern times, but in the geological epoch we’re in, it lived in France, and it’s in Provence that the naturalist Lartet found its fossil bones in 1837.46
“The gibbon, or wouwou,” the demon added, “has a tranquil nature and rather mild mores, and it prefers fruits to any other nourishment. It always holds itself upright, even when it walks on all fours, because its arms are as long as its body and legs, which gives it a very bizarre appearance. It amuses itself in the reeds and climbs the tallest bamboo stems, swaying with its long arms in the manner of trapeze artists. It ordinarily attains four feet in height, lacks a tail and has slight calluses on its buttocks. Its face is flat and brown and the eyes are surrounded by a circle of gray hairs; it has canine teeth larger, proportionately, to those of a human; the ears are bare, black and rounded; the fur is wooly and soft, ash-gray in color. In sum, it would closely approximate human form if the excessive length of its arms did not render it deformed.
“Travelers recount that on the frontiers of China one sometimes encounters a frightful being named the féfé, which has human form, very long arms and a black hairy body, walking lightly and very rapidly. Woe betide the poor traveler who encounters one in the darkness of night! Like a sinister phantom, the féfé attaches itself to his footsteps, follows him silently; then, profiting from all its advantages, it seizes him from behind, enlaces him in its enormous arms, rags him into the depths of the rest and devours him pitilessly. If the féfé, cited by Neuhof, is not an imaginary creature, it is perhaps only a gibbon whose story has been embroidered by credulity.”47
After having observed the gibbon, which ceased to harass us as soon as it saw that we were not afraid of it, we continued to advance into the forest, and did not take long to find ourselves at the foot of the mountain, in a valley where a limpid stream ran.
I perceived, slipping through the foliage, a very extraordinary creature that I mistook at first for a man six feet tall, but I soon realized my error, for it had a body covered with fur and feet furnished with long digits like a hand. It was a chimpanzee, another species of orang, of which I have already given an account and a description in the Musée des Familles in 1836.
I followed it with my eyes and saw it enter a hut of foliage rather artistically constructed. Its female was sitting at the entrance of that picturesque habitation, tenderly occupied in caressing and nursing its infant.
“A few fossil bones of that animal will be found,” the demon told me, “And people will not fail to mistake them for those of a human, because the geologist who will discover them will not have a skeleton of a chimpanzee with which to compare them rigorously. But if the work of the Englishman Tyson should ever fall into his hands he will be able to make that comparison and recognize his error. He will see that the chimpanzee had a femur proportionately thinner and longer than a human, a more curved vertebral column, smaller vertebrae with different apophyses, a narrower skull with a more receding brow, etc.”
After having crossed the steam on the edge of which we found ourselves, we climbed the hill with a great deal of difficulty, for we were walking through a dense thicket.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“In the environs of Souvignargues, in the département of the Gard,” the genius told me. He pointed to a hole in the rock. “And here’s a cavern.”48
We approached the opening, but the grotto was so deep and dark that, to begin with, I could not distinguish anything inside it.
“Let’s go in,” said the genius.
I confess that I hesitated, because I could hear the howling of hyenas in the vicinity, and the growling of bears. Some distance away, a rhinoceros and an aurochs were engaging in a furious combat. I thought that the cavern must be the lair of those dangerous animals, and I saw that the earth near the opening had indeed been recently flattened and trodden down.
“Are you afraid?” the demon asked.
“I fear encountering here animals even more redoubtable than the coati, the dog and he bear whose battle caused me so much emotion a little while ago,” I replied.
However, the demon darted a glance at my so energetically ironic that I was ashamed of my weakness, and I went into the grotto with a determined tread. We advanced fifty aces in darkness, which thickened increasingly, and my foot collided several times with soft objects that I could not make out, and which almost caused me to fall.
“Let’s stop,” I said to the demon, sitting down on a projection. “I can’t go any further until my eyes, dazzled by the bright light from which we’ve emerged, have become accustomed to the gloom.”
Gradually, my pupils dilated, and I was able to perceive, vaguely at first, the objects that surrounded us. A hyena, with its skull split as if someone had struck it with an ax, was extended at our feet, and a few morsels of bar flesh, half-devoured, were lying on the ground here and there, exhaling a very unpleasant odor. I noticed a few bones that had been gnawed by powerful jaws, for the marks of the teeth that had attacked them were still perceptible; but what astonished me most was a kind of bowl made of clay dried in the sun and not fired, very crudely made, and half full of the still-fuming blood of a hyena. The genius pointed out that its edges still bore the bloody traces of the lips that had drunk the disgusting liquid it contained. Beside the bowl I saw a fragment of flint, shaped in the approximate from of a trenchant ax, wedged in the end of a split stick, and secured quite firmly with strips of bearskin. The instrument vaguely resembled a Canadian tomahawk.
As I began to distinguish objects more easily, I sought to penetrate the depths of the lair with my gaze. First I discovered a kind of black mass, which I thought I saw move, which attracted my attention. Then I distinguished a bear-skin which seemed to me to be hiding an object extended on a thick bed of moss, grass and dry leaves.
Placing his finger over his mouth, the genius gave me a sign to remain silent and approach with precaution, which I did. Then he lifted up the bear-skin and revealed to my eyes the most singular and most horrible of all the animals that I had seen thus far. There were three of them, two large and one small, which I recognized as the young of the horrible species.
The male was lying on his side, sleeping almost in the attitude of a dog—which is to say, with his body curved in a circle. He might have had the stature of a medium-sized bear, and his entire body was similarly covered in smooth, brown, rather sparse hair. His forepaws terminated in a large flat lump of flesh divided into five fingers, much like the hand of an ape, but the fingers were thicker and more robust, and the palm of the hand was defended by a kind of sole of thick and callused leather. His body had almost the same form as that of a chimpanzee, but without the grace and lightness, for it was stout, thickset and sturdily muscled. In certain places it was devoid of hair, but it was difficult for me to describe the color of his skin, for it was covered with so much dirt and ordure that I could scarcely judge that it might be a dark coppery brown.
The animal’s head was the most horrible thing of all. A long mane covered the cranium entirely and almost all the face, in such a way that one could only see, through that tangled wooly forest two enormous lips that terminated in an advanced and very large muzzle, which were themselves surrounded by a second reddish wooly mane, full of ordure, blood and little shreds of dried flesh. A little above those gross brownish-red lips, two oval holes appeared, which I recognized as nostrils, although they were not surmounted by any protuberance similar to a nose. An inch and a half above those holes, on either side of the face, two thick arches of stiff black hair framed two eyes that must, it appeared to me, although they were closed by sleep, be able to launch a ferocious glare. The rest of the face was covered by the hairs forming the mane.
I had the courage to bend down toward that extraordinary being in order to look at him more closely, but at that moment he clicked his teeth, grinding them against one another in such a frightful manner that I raised myself up again with a start. His sleep was not interrupted, however; mentally, I thanked Heaven for that.
The female was lying in almost the same attitude as the male, but a little hairless monster was hanging by all four paws on to her belly. Its skin was russet and livid, repulsively dirty, and I recognized it for her young. She only differed from her male by the paler brown of her mane, which only covered the cranium and not the face.
Those disgusting animals exhaled an odor so fetid, the result of their dirtiness, that I held my nose and asked the genius in a low voice what those extraordinary beasts could be.
At that question, the devil uttered a long burst of laughter, which woke them up. The female ran away on all fours, carrying her little one away, which clung on to her belly more forcefully; but the male uttered a kind of guttural and ferocious growl, darted a glittering glance at me, raised himself up on his hind legs, seized the flint tomahawk with his forepaws and, with a furious bound, launched himself toward me, raising the terrible weapon over my head.
