Nevertheless,though I could neither see nor discover anything,my imagination carried me away into wild hypotheses.I was in a kind of waking dream.I thought I saw on the surface of the water those enormous antediluvian turtles as big as floating islands.Upon those dull and somber shores passed a spectral row of the mammifers of early days,the great Liptotherium found in the cavernous hollow of the Brazilian hills,the Mesicotherium,a native of the glacial regions of Siberia.
Farther on,the pachydermatous Lophrodon,that gigantic tapir,which concealed itself behind rocks,ready to do battle for its prey with the Anoplotherium,a singular animal partaking of the nature of the rhinoceros,the horse,the hippopotamus and the camel.
There was the giant Mastodon,twisting and turning his horrid trunk,with which he crushed the rocks of the shore to powder,while the Megatherium-his back raised like a cat in a passion,his enormous claws stretched out,dug into the earth for food,at the same time that he awoke the sonorous echoes of the whole place with his terrible roar.
Higher up still,the first monkey ever seen on the face of the globe clambered,gamboling and playing up the granite hills.Still farther away,ran the Pterodactyl,with the winged hand,gliding or rather sailing through the dense and compressed air like a huge bat.
Above all,near the leaden granitic sky,were immense birds,more powerful than the cassowary and the ostrich,which spread their mighty wings and fluttered against the huge stone vault of the inland sea.
I thought,such was the effect of my imagination,that I saw this whole tribe of antediluvian creatures.I carried myself back to far ages,long before man existed-when,in fact,the earth was in too imperfect a state for him to live upon it.
My dream was of countless ages before the existence of man.The mammifers first disappeared,then the mighty birds,then the reptiles of the secondary period,presently the fish,the crustacea,the mollusks,and finally the vertebrata.The zoophytes of the period of transition in their turn sank into annihilation.
The whole panorama of the world's life before the historic period,seemed to be born over again,and mine was the only human heart that beat in this unpeopled world!There were no more seasons;there were no more climates;the natural heat of the world increased unceasingly,and neutralized that of the great radiant Sun.
Vegetation was exaggerated in an extraordinary manner.I passed like a shadow in the midst of brushwood as lofty as the giant trees of California,and trod underfoot the moist and humid soil,reeking with a rank and varied vegetation.
I leaned against the huge column-like trunks of giant trees,to which those of Canada were as ferns.Whole ages passed,hundreds upon hundreds of years were concentrated into a single day.
Next,unrolled before me like a panorama,came the great and wondrous series of terrestrial transformations.Plants disappeared;the granitic rocks lost all trace of solidity;the liquid state was suddenly substituted for that which had before existed.This was caused by intense heat acting on the organic matter of the earth.
The waters flowed over the whole surface of the globe;they boiled;they were volatilized,or turned into vapor;a kind of steam cloud wrapped the whole earth,the globe itself becoming at last nothing but one huge sphere of gas,indescribable in color,between white heat and red,as big and as brilliant as the sun.
In the very center of this prodigious mass,fourteen hundred thousand times as large as our globe,I was whirled round in space,and brought into close conjunction with the planets.My body was subtilized,or rather became volatile,and commingled in a state of atomic vapor,with the prodigious clouds,which rushed forward like a mighty comet into infinite space!
What an extraordinary dream!Where would it finally take me?My feverish hand began to write down the marvelous details-details more like the imaginings of a lunatic than anything sober and real.
I had during this period of hallucination forgotten everything-the Professor,the guide,and the raft on which we were floating.My mind was in a state of semioblivion.
"What is the matter,Harry?"said my uncle suddenly.
My eyes,which were wide opened like those of a somnambulist,were fixed upon him,but I did not see him,nor could I clearly make out anything around me.
"Take care,my boy,"again cried my uncle,"you will fall into the sea."As he uttered these words,I felt myself seized on the other side by the firm hand of our devoted guide.Had it not been for the presence of mind of Hans,I must infallibly have fallen into the waves and been drowned.
"Have you gone mad?"cried my uncle,shaking me on the other side.
"What-what is the matter?"I said at last,coming to myself.
"Are you ill,Henry?"continued the Professor in an anxious tone.
"No-no;but I have had an extraordinary dream.It,however,has passed away.All now seems well"'I added,looking around me with strangely puzzled eyes.
"All right,"said my uncle;"a beautiful breeze,a splendid sea.
We are going along at a rapid rate,and if I am not out in my calculations we shall soon see land.I shall not be sorry to exchange the narrow limits of our raft for the mysterious strand of the subterranean ocean."As my uncle uttered these words,I rose and carefully scanned the horizon.But the line of water was still confounded with the lowering clouds that hung aloft,and in the distance appeared to touch the edge of the water.