Journey to the Sun, page 4
“You think that the butte of Montmartre…?”
“Let’s be clear. I’m not talking here about our low hills, composed of more of less horizontal layers of sediments; they were obviously formed by tranquil waters that initially deposited them and then by running waters that degraded their terrains and hollowed out valleys therein. It’s not the same for the high mountains whose immense chains furrow the globe in various directions.”
“To what can you attribute their formation?”
“The primordial crust of the globe is composed of granite and syenite in massive rocks devoid of stratification, and then of gneiss, mica schist and clay schist, but the latter distinctively stratified. Now, if you examine the interior of high mountains, you’ll see those same superior layers, once continuous, dislocated and broken into a multitude of fragments, no longer offering anything but massifs of disrupted stratifications, presenting such disorder that it’s necessary to attribute the dislocation to an upheaval. If you start from low plains, heading toward those massive chains, and examine attentively the superimposed layers of sediments over which you’re walking, you’ll see them lose their horizontal position as you get closer to the heights, rearing up more or less abruptly and taking an oblique position; you’ll see them pierced, torn and lifted up on the flanks of the mountains. It’s necessary to conclude that the masses of the great chains have been formed by elevation or eruption, and that they have emerged from the bosom of the earth, breaking violently and lifting up the superior crust, and piercing the sedimentary layers. That explains why you see granite exhibiting itself nakedly on their frowning crest, as well as in the profound valleys.”
“What interior agent could have lifted up such masses as the Cordilleras, the Pyrenees and the Alps?”
“Caloric,17 the elastic gases resulting from chemical decompositions and, in brief, all the agents that occasion earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, whose source of activity is situated beneath the mineral crust. Their action no longer has, at present, the frightful energy that it once had, but it’s true nonetheless that it still exists. It usually announces itself by subterranean noises, shocks that succeed one another with varying rapidity and force, and which, with incredible celerity, make themselves felt over immense distances. If the mineral crust breaks and splits, it gives passage to materials that are pushed out—hence volcanoes spitting flames, vomiting lava, hurling scoria or ashes, giving issue to torrents of muddy water, etc., etc. Hence solfataras, or sulfur-pits; salsas gushing salt-water and mud; lagonis impetuously exhaling gases and boiling water vapor; ardent fountains emitting jets of gas that can be ignited by a candle or catch fire naturally; and fire-wells that the Chinese are able to use in their factories.
“But if the mineral crust presents an equal resistance in all its parts it is lifted up en masse and overturns the layers of sediment that are superposed on it—hence a granitic mountain. The last century, and even this one, have furnished us a few examples. In 1759, in Mexico, following an earthquake, a plain three or four miles square was suddenly lifted up and metamorphosed into a mountain five hundred feet high. In 1707 a new island suddenly rose from the bosom of the sea near Santorini, and its birth was unaccompanied by any volcanic phenomenon; in 1822, during the earthquake that destroyed several towns in Chile, it was observed that the coast was raised in a sensible fashion over an extent of more than thirty leagues; finally, modern observations prove conclusively that the level of Sweden is gradually rising, by virtue of causes that are still acting.
“One very singular thing follows from what I’ve just told you, which is that you can judge the approximate age of mountains by the observation of the layers that girdle them. The layers that have been pierced by the elevation of the granitic crust will be inclined and backed up against the mountain, because they have been lifted up by it. On the contrary, the layers deposited after the eruption will have taken the horizontal position usual to terrains of sedimentary deposits.
“During that fifth period, as the sea has constantly covered the soil of Paris, with the exception of a few islands no bigger than this one, you can understand that animals and terrestrial vegetables could scarcely multiply, so you won’t perceive any. Around the islands that have some verdure however, lizards are still hidden that have a physiognomy as unbecoming as those we’ve already seen. Look, there’s one gliding through the marine algae; it’s a mesosaur, whose size attains at least twenty-five feet in length. In that pool behind us you’ll find crocodiles; in the clumps of sedge, from which the Egyptians made the first paper, there are iguanodons; quantities of turtles are grazing the focus on flat beaches.
“If the class of terrestrial animals has made little progress, in recompense, that of fish could not have multiplied more, and the sea contains sharks compared to which those of your modern era are mere minnows. If you like, I’ll take you to see one of those whale-sized animals at close range.”
“Morbleu, no!” I replied, with a certain vivacity. “In spite of the strength of your arguments, I don’t have any appetite for risking the role of Jonah. Tell me instead where we are at present.”
“Underneath the École Militaire.”
“At a great depth?”
Exactly twenty-nine meters underneath the École’s well—which is to say that we’re placed on the white chalk that forms the inferior bed of the Paris basin. We’re going to pass on to another period, during which you’ll see the Earth change its face completely.”
Sixth Period
I opened my eyes in a charming woodland, the vegetation of which already differed a great deal from that of preceding periods, for dicotyledons showed themselves for the first time in more considerable numbers than the monocotyledons. Meanwhile, a few palm trees raised their beautiful heads here and there like parasols. The slopes of hills were covered with pines, firs and other conifers of species that I had not seen previously. I recognized several trees bearing catkins. I also saw a nut-bearing tree whose fruits were a trifle angular and pointed at the summit. I noticed a maple, a willow and an elm. What surprised me extremely was a coconut palm laden with fruits rising up in the midst of a cinnamon laurel bush whose flowers perfumed their air with their aromatic perfume.
Aha! I thought. My devil must be right, and it’s the organization of beings, not the atmospheric temperature that has changed, for coconut palms, cinnamon bushes, fir trees and elm trees wouldn’t grow well together today wherever one placed them; some dread warmth as much as the others detest cold. Then again, how can one explain the association in bone caves of tigers of the torrid zone and pikas, inhabitants of the icy poles; hyenas from hot countries and gluttons from northern Siberia; Russian reindeer and African rhinoceroses? All that can’t fail to appear singular to a man who believes in the infallibility of scientists. Could we not, reasoning on the same principles as them, sustain precisely the contrary, and conclude that the temperature, instead of being high, was then much colder than today, since pines, elms, pikas, gluttons and reindeer are beings that can only live in icy climates?
A plain of vast extent was designed around me as far as my eyes could see; however, by virtue of a few hillocks distributes here and there, it was easy to see that it was slightly hollowed out in a valley, and that we were occupying the lowest part, very nearly.
“You see,” said the Lame Devil, “the basin formed by the white chalk, of which a layer of siliceous pudding-stone, one of sand and one of plastic clay mixed with lignite has already accumulated a few inequalities. This immense basin extends toward Beauce, Perche, Basse-Normandie, Orléanais, Gâtinais français, etc. etc. As it’s going to be subjected to several major changes, I’ll show you all its evolutions. We’ll follow them by eye as one follows the changes of scene at the Opéra. There’s more; with my magic crutch, I’ll play the part of the showman in a traveling menagerie; I’ll show you and name the extraordinary animals that populated the earth in these remote times and left their bony fragments buried in the quarries of Paris and its surrounding areas.
“We can divide this period into five quite distinct epochs.
First Epoch
Five meters above the zero
of the Pont de la Tournelle.18
“That’s the one in which we are at present, the one in which the fresh waters have retired and left a layer of plastic clay on the chalk basin: the one, in sum, when we’ve finally reached the level of Paris. You see that little sandy valley; it’s precisely at the height of the zero of the Pont de la Tournelle, and it’s from that zero, marking the low waters of the Seine, that we’ll depart henceforth to measure the thickness of the soil as we rise up with it.”
“In that case, we won’t rise much, because the cellar of the house in which I live is only a few feet above that zero.”
“Well, my dear friend, there’s your poor science in default again, for here, eight or ten thousand years before you’ll cover your fire and put on your night-cap in order to go to bed, I’ll place you in a boat propelled by sails on a beautiful fresh-water lake five hundred meters above your dwelling. But here’s the sea invading us. See how it’s rising, how rapidly it’s gaining. Already, one can no longer see the ground. It’s just like the Opéra, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely. It’s like a change of scene, and in all probability, even the blast of the whistle won’t be lacking.”
“I’m showing you in five minutes what happened in several hundred centuries. It’s only slowly that the sea has successively abandoned its vast beaches and its profound abysses to cover and uncover the continents. Otherwise, nature would be horribly disrupted and all organized beings would have perished in those frightful catastrophes. Can’t you see, on the contrary, that the creation of animals follows a regular and successive march, analytically, if I can make use of that expression; that it commences with the simplest and passes on to the complex, and from there to the even more complex, and that it will eventually conclude with the most perfect, humankind.
“Has it been observed that the march in question has recommenced several times? Has it been observed that it has recommenced with unique formations of simple beings after being halted in the formation of more complex ones? And besides, are not water and air, those ever-active agents sufficient to explain everything in a simple and natural manner without having recourse to instantaneous and general catastrophes? Air and water decompose and disaggregate superficial rocks incessantly; rain and frost degrade sheer mountains, ice undermines them at the base; hence landslides and detritus, which, constantly carried away by streams to rivulets, and by them to rivers, and by rivers to the sea, must eventually fill in the basins of the Ocean.
“The abysms filled up in one place are opened in another by currents and tempests, from which a continual change of location results. The deltas, the tongues of land that form at the mouths of great rivers, are a striking proof of it; it’s known that the promontories formed by the mouths of the Po advance into the Adriatic by some two hundred feet a year; it’s known that the Nile deposits five inches of sediment every hundred year on the floor of the Egyptian basin; it’s known that the dunes of sand raised by the wind on the shores of the sea would gain nearly sixty feet a year on the continent if barriers weren’t opposed to them; it’s known...”
“Ah! I understand. You think that the sea has only covered the continents so many times one after another; that while we were observing the first period of formation in Paris, we might have been observing the second at Port Jackson; that the same causes ought to have produced the same effects, albeit in different epochs; that if the layers of sediment have been superimposed in the same way all over the Earth, it’s because the mass of the waters, sliding around the globe, so to speak, like a slug circling an orange, has left the same traces everywhere even though it hasn’t been everywhere at the same time. You think...”
“What?”
“Some of our geologists, however, place in the same epoch the formation of analogous layers in all parts of the world, which would prove…”
“Eh! Who the devil was talking about your geologists, you pitiless chatterbox? Have I said a single word to you about your geologists?”
Out of prudence, I cut the dissertation short, for I could see that my demon’s face was beginning to take on tints of red and violet, like a salmon-trout from Lake Geneva. He calmed down, though, and continued.
“The Ocean that you see is populated by an immense quantity of cetaceans, fish and mollusks. Among the latter one can already count more than twelve hundred species, but the dominant genres are those of cerites, milliolites, nummulites, turritellas, volutes etc.”
Second Epoch
Thirty-eight meters above the zero point
of the Pont de la Tournelle
The sea had retired as quickly as it had come. The vegetation seemed to me to be very nearly similar to that of the preceding epoch.
“This formation,” said the genius, “is composed of an inferior layer of glauconite, enormous banks of gross chalk and a bed of marine sandstone. It’s from that formation that the material were extracted from which the whole of Paris was built.
Third Epoch
Eighty meters above the zero point
of the Pont de la Tournelle
“The marine sandstone,” said the genius, “has been covered again by the fresh waters of a vast lake, which has deposited the thick layer of siliceous chalk, inferior lacustrian chalk and gypsum, in which numerous quarries of plaster and green marl will be opened.”
The landscape was charming, but so intercut by lakes, pools, marshes and streams that one doubted whether one was on firm ground or an island forming part of a vast fresh water archipelago. The vegetation had changed little; however, it seemed to me that the palm trees were more dominant, and I could easily distinguish three species. One of them, Culmites nodosus, which closely resembled a rattan, had a thin, flexible, articulated stem of prodigious length, extending from tree to tree in the fashion of lianas, twisting around their branches, dividing at the summit into two sections, each terminating in a beautiful tuft of foliage. Another palm tree attracted attention by virtue of its magnificent fan of leaves, several ribs of which were fused at the base for a part of their length. I also saw Nerium laurier-roses, Phyllites nerioïdes, displaying their lovely flowers in groves of cinnamon.
As I stretched myself out limply on a bed of moss in the shadow of a coconut palm, my ears were agreeably struck by the joyful song of a warbler.
“There,” I exclaimed, “is the first bird that creation has engendered!”
“Yes,” said the genius, “but it’s not the only one. You’ll see the water of the lakes rippled beneath the heavy bodies of pelicans, while ibises and sea-swallows run lightly along the strands. Woodcocks inhabit the rushes of the ponds in the woods; owls hide in the cavernous trunks of old elms, and huge buzzards soar in circles in the air, watching out for quails whose size yields nothing to that of your homing pigeons. If you lend an attentive ear, you’ll also hear the monotonous song of the cicada, the cricket and the grasshopper. Superb butterflies, larger than a hand, suspend their vagabond flight momentarily to pose their delicate feet on the petals of flowers. Silently slipping under the moss are numerous families of coleopterans, whose wing-cases are ornamented with the brightest metallic colors; finally, bees are buzzing around perfumed corollas to collect the honey that will nourish them in winter. Those are the first insects.
“Scarcely have they been born than nature has placed enemies in ambush in the hollow trunks of trees and holes in ricks, ready to pursue them in the air to seize and devour them. The class of Chiroptera has just appeared to replace that of pterodactyls. They’re no longer winged lizards but bats. Those animals, like humans, apes and elephants, have teats on their breasts.
“In that pond, Sciaenes are swimming, of which, by virtue of the course of the centuries, analogues can only be found in salt water: amia calvia, but which have two fins; mormyrids, trout, cyprins, carps, pikes, living like freshwater fish, having very nearly the same habits, but nevertheless only resembling them in general form.
“There’s one of those animals you dread so much, a crocodile, crawling in the marshes seeking to seize its prey. It has lost its colossal size, and its aspect ought to astonish you less, for, in its form, especially that of the head, it has a great deal of analogy with the crocodile of the Nile and the caimans of America.” The genius pointed with his crutch. “Close by, there are two freshwater turtles; the one with the soft carapace belongs to the genus Trionyx, the other to Emys.
“Finally, the mammals have been created. What is very remarkable is that a family that will occupy a comparative small place in 1836 is, in this antediluvian century, the most generally distributed over the surface of the globe. That is the family of pachyderms. All the species composing it lack a clavicle; they do not have the faculty of spreading their fingers, which are all entirely enveloped by a nail in the form of a hoof. All of them live on vegetables, but some ruminate and others do not. Here’s one of the former.”
Indeed, I saw an animal passing by that had the stature of the largest horses, with the most bizarre physiognomy, It was a great palaeotherium, Palaeotherium magnum. Its nose terminated in a rather short muscular trunk, similar to that of a tapir; its muzzle was shrunken under the base of the trunk; its eyes were small and as stupid as a pig’s; its head was enormous, its body short and thickset; its legs were short and massive, its feet terminated by three fingers encrusted in hooves, of which the middle one was much larger than the others. Its entire body was covered in coarse short hair.
“That animal,” the demon continued, “nourishes itself on grains, fruits and green herbaceous stems, but more often on the fleshy roots of aquatic plants that it finds by digging in the mud of the marshes and uproots with its trunk. Its character isn’t ferocious, but brutal and stupid. In sum, it likes the banks of fresh waters and loves to wallow in the mud.
