Read the chapter
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Chapter 27. THE CENTRAL SEA
At first I saw absolutely nothing, my eyes unready for the sudden bright light.
My eyes, wholly unused to the brightness of light, couldn't bear the sudden light, and I had to close them.
When I could open them again, I stood still, far more stunned than surprised.
Not all the wildest ideas of imagination could have made such a scene!
"The sea the sea," I cried.
"Yes," replied my uncle, in a tone of pardonable pride.
"The Central Sea. No future navigator will deny the fact of my having discovered it, and hence of acquiring a right of giving it a name."
It was quite true, a vast, endless stretch of water indeed lay before us.
A vast, endless stretch of water, the end of a lake if not of an ocean, spread before us until it was lost in the distance.
The indented shore was soft golden sand mixed with small shells, the long-deserted home of creatures of a past age.
The waves broke without stopping, and with a peculiarly sonorous murmur you find in underground places.
A light frothy spray rose as the wind blew along the clear waters, and many a drop of spray was blown into my face.
A mighty rock mass rose to an unimaginable height, leaving a narrow opening, where we stood was a wide stretch of shore.
On all sides were capes and promontories and enormous cliffs, partly worn by the endless breaking of the waves over countless ages.
And as I looked from side to side, the mighty rocks faded away like a thin film of cloud.
It was really an ocean, with all the usual signs of an inland sea, only horribly wild, so hard, cold and savage.
One thing shocked and puzzled me greatly.
How was I able to look at that vast sheet of water instead of being in total darkness?
The wide scene before me was lit up like day.
But it lacked the dazzling brightness and the warm light of the sun, the pale cold light of the moon, and the brightness of the stars.
The light in this underground region, from its trembling and flickering character and its clear dry whiteness, was clearly electric.
It also showed a slight rise in temperature and greater strength compared with the moon.
It was something like the aurora borealis, only its effects were constant and could light up the whole ocean cavern.
The huge vault above our heads, the sky so to speak, looked like a mass of cloudy vapors in constant motion.
I'd at first have supposed that, under such atmospheric pressure as must exist there, the evaporation of water couldn't really happen.
And yet, by some physical law my memory couldn't call up, heavy dense clouds were rolling along that mighty roof, partly hiding it.
Electric currents made an astonishing show of light and shade in the distance, especially around the heavier clouds.
Deep shadows were cast beneath, and then suddenly between two clouds there would come a ray of unusual beauty and great intensity.
And yet it wasn't like the sun, for it gave no heat.
The effect was sad and painfully melancholy.
Instead of a noble blue sky with stars, there was above me a heavy roof of granite that seemed to crush me.
Looking around, I began to think of the idea of the English captain.
He had compared the earth to a vast hollow sphere in which the air is kept in a light state by atmospheric pressure.
Two stars, Pluto and Proserpine, circled there in their mysterious orbits.
After all, suppose the old fellow was right!
In truth, we were imprisoned, bound as it were in a vast excavation.
Its width it was impossible to make out, the shore on either hand widened quickly until lost to sight, while its length was equally uncertain.
A haze on the distant horizon limited our view.
As to its height, we could see it must be many miles to the roof.
Looking upward, it was impossible to discover where the stupendous roof began.
The lowest of the clouds must have been floating at an elevation of two thousand yards.
This height was greater than that of ordinary vapors and was probably due to the great density of the air.
I use the word "cavern" to give an idea of the place.
I can't describe its awful grandeur, human language fails to give an idea of its savage sublimity.
Whether this strange empty space had been caused by the sudden cooling of the earth from a molten state, I couldn't say.
I had read of most wonderful and huge caverns, but none like this.
The great grotto of Guachara in Colombia, visited by the learned Humboldt, was small compared to the hole in which I stood.
The vast, partly explored Mammoth Cave in Kentucky was also small compared to it.
I stood in speechless wonder, surrounded by cloudy vapors and electric light, while the mighty ocean slept in its depths.
Imagination, not description, can alone give an idea of the splendor and size of the cave.
I looked at these marvels in deep silence.
Words were totally lacking to show the feelings of wonder I had.
As I stood on that mysterious shore, I seemed like a wandering being from a distant planet.
I felt as if I were seeing for the first time land phenomena belonging to another existence.
To give form and life to such new feelings would have needed the making of new words.
And here my weak brain found itself at fault.
I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not without fear.
The unexpected sight returned some color to my pale cheeks.
I seemed to be actually getting better under the influence of this novelty.
Also, the liveliness of the dense atmosphere brought life back to my body by filling my lungs with unusual oxygen.
You'll see that after forty-seven days trapped in a dark tunnel, I breathed this salty air with great delight.
It was like the kind, reviving effect of salt sea waves.
My uncle had already got over his first surprise.
With the Latin poet Horace his idea was that
Not to admire is all the art I know
To make man happy and to keep him so.
"Well," he said, after giving me time fully to take in the wonders of this underground sea, "do you feel strong enough to walk up and down?"
"Certainly," was my ready answer, "nothing would give me greater pleasure."
"Well then, my boy," he said, "lean on my arm, and we'll stroll along the beach."
I took his offer eagerly, and we began to walk along the shores of this extraordinary lake.
To our left were steep rocks, piled one upon another, a stupendous titanic pile.
Down their sides jumped many waterfalls, which at last, becoming clear murmuring streams, were lost in the waters of the lake.
Light vapors rose and drifted in thin clouds from rock to rock, revealing hot springs that poured into the reservoir at our feet.
Among them I recognized our old faithful stream, the Hansbach, lost in that wild basin and seeming to have flowed since creation.
"We shall miss our excellent friend," I said with a deep sigh.
"Bah!" said my uncle testily, "what matters it? That or another, it's all the same."
I thought the remark ungrateful, and almost wanted to say so, but I stopped myself.
At that moment my attention was caught by an unexpected sight.
After we had gone about five hundred yards we suddenly turned a steep promontory and found ourselves close to a tall forest.
It had straight trunks with tufted tops in the shape of parasols.
The air seemed unaffected, despite a fair breeze, these trees stood motionless as if petrified.
I hurried forward, I could find no name for these strange formations.
Were they not part of the two thousand and more known trees, or were we to find a new growth?
No, When we reached the forest and stood under the trees, my surprise turned to admiration.
In truth, I was simply in front of a very ordinary product of the earth, but of singular and gigantic size.
My uncle without doubt called them by their real names.
"It's only," he said, in his calm way, "a forest of mushrooms."
On close examination I found he wasn't wrong.
Judge of the growth reached by this product of damp hot soils.
I had heard that the Lycoperdon giganteum reaches nine feet in circumference.
But here were white mushrooms nearly forty feet high, and with tops of equal size.
They grew in countless thousands, the light couldn't get through their thick substance, and beneath them reigned a gloomy and mysterious darkness.
Still I wanted to go forward, the cold in the shade of this strange forest was strong.
For nearly an hour we wandered about in this visible darkness.
At last I left the spot and once more returned to the shores of the lake, to light and comparative warmth.
But the amazing life of subterranean land wasn't limited to giant mushrooms.
New wonders waited for us at every step.
We hadn't gone many hundred yards when we came upon a great group of other trees with discolored leaves.
They were the common simple trees of Mother Earth, but of an enormous and extraordinary size.
There were lycopods a hundred feet high, flowering ferns as tall as pines, and gigantic grasses.
"Astonishing, magnificent, splendid!" cried my uncle.
"Here we have before us the whole flora of the second period of the world, that of transition."
"Behold the humble plants of our gardens which in the first ages of the world were mighty trees."
"Look around you, my dear Harry."
"No botanist ever before saw such a sight!"
My uncle's excitement, always a little more than was needed, was now excusable.
"You're right, Uncle," I said.
"Providence looks to have planned the keeping in this vast and mysterious hothouse of ancient plants, to prove the wisdom of learned men in drawing them so marvelously on paper."
"Well said, my boy very well said, it's indeed a mighty hothouse. But you'd also be sensible if you added that it's also a vast menagerie."
I looked rather anxiously around, If the animals were as exaggerated as the plants, the matter would be serious.
"A menagerie?"
"Of course. Look at the dust under our feet, see the bones that cover the whole soil of the seashore,"
"Bones," I answered, "yes, surely, the bones of antediluvian animals."
I bent down as I spoke and picked up one or two strange remains, relics of a past age.
It was easy to give a name to these gigantic bones, in some cases as big as trunks of trees.
"Here's clearly the lower jawbone of a mastodon," I cried, almost as warmly and excitedly as my uncle.
"Here are the molars of the Dinotherium, and here's a leg bone that belonged to the Megatherium."
"You're right, Uncle, it's indeed a menagerie, for the mighty animals to which these bones once belonged."
They lived and died on the shores of this subterranean sea under the shadow of these plants.
"Look, over there are whole skeletons and yet"
"And yet, nephew?" said my uncle, noticing I had suddenly stopped.
"I don't understand the presence of such beasts in granite caverns, however vast and huge," I answered.
"Why not?" said my uncle with much of his old professional impatience.
It's well known that animal life existed on earth only during the secondary period.
At that time the sedimentary soil was formed by the alluviums and thus replaced the hot and burning rocks of the primitive age.
"I have listened to you earnestly and with patience, Harry,"
"And I have a simple and clear answer to your objections and that's that this itself is a sedimentary soil."
"How can that be at such a great depth from the surface of the earth?"
"The fact can be explained both simply and geologically."
"At a certain time the earth had only an elastic crust, open to up and down movements because of the law of attraction."
"It's very likely that many landslips took place in those days and that large parts of sedimentary soil were thrown into huge and mighty chasms."
"Quite possible," I dryly remarked.
But, Uncle, if these antediluvian animals once lived here, isn't it likely one of those monsters is hidden now behind yonder mighty rocks?
As I spoke I looked sharply around, checking every point of the horizon, but nothing alive seemed to exist on these empty shores.
I now felt rather tired and told my uncle so.
The walk and excitement were too much for me in my weak state.
I therefore sat at the end of a promontory at the foot of which the waves broke in endless rolls.
I looked around a bay formed by projections of vast granitic rocks.
At the extreme end was a small port protected by huge pyramids of stones.
A brig and three or four schooners could have lain there with perfect ease.
It seemed so natural that every minute my imagination expected a vessel to come out under full sail.
I imagined it heading for the open sea under a warm southerly breeze.
But the strange illusion never lasted more than a minute.
We were the only living creatures in this underground world!
For certain periods there was a complete stop of wind.
A silence deeper and more terrible than the silence of the desert fell on these lonely and dry rocks.
It seemed to hang like a lead weight on the waters of this strange ocean.
I tried, amid the awful stillness, to see through the distant fog to tear down the veil that hid the mysterious distance.
What unspoken words my trembling lips made what questions did I want to ask and didn't!
Where did this sea end to what did it lead?
Would we ever be able to examine its distant shores?
But my uncle had no doubts about the matter.
He was sure our enterprise would in the end be successful.
For my part I was in a state of painful doubt, I wanted to travel and to succeed and still I feared the result.
After we had spent an hour or more in silent watching of the wondrous sight, we rose and went down towards the bank.
We were on our way to the grotto, I wasn't sorry to reach it.
After a small meal I sought refuge in sleep and at last after many and tedious struggles sleep came over my weary eyes.