Chapter 30 - Page 2

noheat. The general effect was sad, supremely melancholy. Instead ofthe shining firmament, spangled with its innumerable stars, shiningsingly or in clusters, I felt that all these subdued and shadedfights were ribbed in by vast walls of granite, which seemed tooverpower me with their weight, and that all this space, great as itwas, would not be enough for the march of the humblest of satellites.

Then I remembered the theory of an English captain, who likened theearth to a vast hollow sphere, in the interior of which the airbecame luminous because of the vast pressure that weighed upon it;while two stars, Pluto and Proserpine, rolled within upon the circuitof their mysterious orbits.

We were in reality shut up inside an immeasurable excavation. Itswidth could not be estimated, since the shore ran widening as far aseye could reach, nor could its length, for the dim horizon boundedthe new. As for its height, it must have been several leagues. Wherethis vault rested upon its granite base no eye could tell; but therewas a cloud hanging far above, the height of which we estimated at12,000 feet, a greater height than that of any terrestrial vapour,and no doubt due to the great density of the air.

The word cavern does not convey any idea of this immense space; wordsof human tongue are inadequate to describe the discoveries of him whoventures into the deep abysses of earth.

Besides I could not tell upon what geological theory to account forthe existence of such an excavation. Had the cooling of the globeproduced it? I knew of celebrated caverns from the descriptions oftravellers, but had never heard of any of such dimensions as this.

If the grotto of Guachara, in Colombia, visited by Humboldt, had notgiven up the whole of the secret of its depth to the philosopher, whoinvestigated it to the depth of 2,500 feet, it probably did notextend much farther. The immense mammoth cave in Kentucky is ofgigantic proportions, since its vaulted roof rises five hundred feet[1] above the level of an unfathomable lake and travellers haveexplored its ramifications to the extent of forty miles. But whatwere these cavities compared to that in which I stood with wonder andadmiration, with its sky of luminous vapours, its bursts of electriclight, and a vast sea filling its bed? My imagination fell powerlessbefore such immensity.

I gazed upon these wonders in silence. Words failed me to express myfeelings. I felt as if I was in some distant planet Uranus or Neptune- and in the presence of phenomena of which my terrestrial experiencegave me no cognisance. For such novel sensations, new words werewanted; and my imagination failed to supply them. I gazed, I thought,I admired, with a stupefaction mingled with a certain amount of fear.

The unforeseen nature of this spectacle brought back the colour to mycheeks. I was under a new course of treatment with the aid ofastonishment, and my convalescence was