The Residuum Of A Continent

: BOOK I.
: Off On A Comet

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 ha 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 as to prolong day and night

as at the poles of the earth, but the rays of the sun must reach us here

only very obliquely, and the cold, in all likelihood, will be intense."



"So cold, do you think," asked Servadac, "that animal life must be

extinct?"



"I do not say that, captain," answered the lieutenant; "for, however

far our little world may be removed from the sun, I do not see why its

temperature should fall below what prevails in those outlying regions

beyond our system where sky and air are not." "And what temperature may

that be?" inquired the captain with a shudder.



"Fourier estimates that even in those vast unfathomable tracts, the

temperature never descends lower than 60 degrees," said Procope.



"Sixty! Sixty degrees below zero!" cried the count. "Why, there's not a

Russian could endure it!"



"I beg your pardon, count. It is placed on record that the English

have survived it, or something quite approximate, upon their Arctic

expeditions. When Captain Parry was on Melville Island, he knew the

thermometer to fall to 56 degrees," said Procope.



As the explorers advanced, they seemed glad to pause from time to time,

that they might recover their breath; for the air, becoming more and

more rarefied, made respiration somewhat difficult and the ascent

fatiguing. Before they had reached an altitude of 600 feet they noticed

a sensible diminution of the temperature; but neither cold nor fatigue

deterred them, and they were resolved to persevere. Fortunately, the

deep striae or furrows in the surface of the rocks that made the bottom

of the ravine in some degree facilitated their progress, but it was not

until they had been toiling up for two hours more that they succeeded in

reaching the summit of the cliff.



Eagerly and anxiously did they look around. To the south there was

nothing but the sea they had traversed; to the north, nothing but one

drear, inhospitable stretch.



Servadac could not suppress a cry of dismay. Where was his beloved

France? Had he gained this arduous height only to behold the rocks

carpeted with ice and snow, and reaching interminably to the far-off

horizon? His heart sank within him.





The whole region appeared to consist of nothing but the same strange,

uniform mineral conglomerate, crystallized into regular hexagonal

prisms. But whatever was its geological character, it was only too

evident that it had entirely replaced the former soil, so that not a

vestige of the old continent of Europe could be discerned. The

lovely scenery of Provence, with the grace of its rich and undulating

landscape; its gardens of citrons and oranges rising tier upon tier

from the deep red soil--all, all had vanished. Of the vegetable kingdom,

there was not a single representative; the most meager of Arctic plants,

the most insignificant of lichens, could obtain no hold upon that stony

waste. Nor did the animal world assert the feeblest sway. The mineral

kingdom reigned supreme.



Captain Servadac's deep dejection was in strange contrast to his general

hilarity. Silent and tearful, he stood upon an ice-bound rock, straining

his eyes across the boundless vista of the mysterious territory. "It

cannot be!" he exclaimed. "We must somehow have mistaken our bearings.

True, we have encountered this barrier; but France is there beyond! Yes,

France is there! Come, count, come! By all that's pitiful, I entreat

you, come and explore the farthest verge of the ice-bound track!"



He pushed onwards along the rugged surface of the rock, but had not

proceeded far before he came to a sudden pause. His foot had come in

contact with something hard beneath the snow, and, stooping down, he

picked up a little block of stony substance, which the first glance

revealed to be of a geological character altogether alien to the

universal rocks around. It proved to be a fragment of dis-colored

marble, on which several letters were inscribed, of which the only part

at all decipherable was the syllable "Vil."



"Vil--Villa!" he cried out, in his excitement dropping the marble, which

was broken into atoms by the fall.



What else could this fragment be but the sole surviving remnant of some

sumptuous mansion that once had stood on this unrivaled site? Was it not

the residue of some edifice that had crowned the luxuriant headland of

Antibes, overlooking Nice, and commanding the gorgeous panorama that

embraced the Maritime Alps and reached beyond Monaco and Mentone to the

Italian height of Bordighera? And did it not give in its sad and too

convincing testimony that Antibes itself had been involved in the great

destruction? Servadac gazed upon the shattered marble, pensive and

disheartened.



Count Timascheff laid his hand kindly on the captain's shoulder, and

said, "My friend, do you not remember the motto of the old Hope family?"



He shook his head mournfully.



"Orbe fracto, spes illoesa," continued the count--"Though the world be

shattered, hope is unimpaired."



Servadac smiled faintly, and replied that he felt rather compelled to

take up the despairing cry of Dante, "All hope abandon, ye who enter

here."



"Nay, not so," answered the count; "for the present at least, let our

maxim be Nil desperandum!"