Chapter 38 - Page 2

of man receded farback into the history of the ages past; he was a predecessor of themastodon; he was a contemporary of the southern elephant; he lived ahundred thousand years ago, when, according to geologists, thepleiocene formation was in progress.

Such then was the state of palæontological science, and what we knewof it was sufficient to explain our behaviour in the presence of thisstupendous Golgotha. Any one may now understand the frenziedexcitement of my uncle, when, twenty yards farther on, he foundhimself face to face with a primitive man!

It was a perfectly recognisable human body. Had some particular soil,like that of the cemetery St. Michel, at Bordeaux, preserved it thusfor so many ages? It might be so. But this dried corpse, with itsparchment-like skin drawn tightly over the bony frame, the limbsstill preserving their shape, sound teeth, abundant hair, and fingerand toe nails of frightful length, this desiccated mummy startled usby appearing just as it had lived countless ages ago. I stood mutebefore this apparition of remote antiquity. My uncle, usually sogarrulous, was struck dumb likewise. We raised the body. We stood itup against a rock. It seemed to stare at us out of its empty orbits.We sounded with our knuckles his hollow frame.

After some moments' silence the Professor was himself again. OttoLiedenbrock, yielding to his nature, forgot all the circumstances ofour eventful journey, forgot where we were standing, forgot thevaulted cavern which contained us. No doubt he was in mind back againin his Johannæum, holding forth to his pupils, for he assumed hislearned air; and addressing himself to an imaginary audience, heproceeded thus:

"Gentlemen, I have the honour to introduce to you a man of thequaternary or post-tertiary system. Eminent geologists have deniedhis existence, others no less eminent have affirmed it. The St.Thomases of palæontology, if they were here, might now touch him withtheir fingers, and would be obliged to acknowledge their error. I amquite aware that science has to be on its guard with discoveries ofthis kind. I know what capital enterprising individuals like Barnumhave made out of fossil men. I have heard the tale of the kneepan ofAjax, the pretended body of Orestes claimed to have been found by theSpartans, and of the body of Asterius, ten cubits long, of whichPausanias speaks. I have read the reports of the skeleton of Trapani,found in the fourteenth century, and which was at the time identifiedas that of Polyphemus; and the history of the giant unearthed in thesixteenth century near Palermo. You know as well as I do, gentlemen,the analysis made at Lucerne in 1577 of those huge bones which thecelebrated Dr. Felix Plater affirmed to be those of a giant nineteenfeet high. I have gone through the treatises of Cassanion, and allthose memoirs, pamphlets, answers, and rejoinders publishedrespecting the skeleton of Teutobochus, the invader of Gaul,