Chapter 39

CHAPTER XXXIX.

FOREST SCENERY ILLUMINATED BY ELETRICITY

For another half hour we trod upon a pavement of bones. We pushed on,impelled by our burning curiosity. What other marvels did this caverncontain? What new treasures lay here for science to unfold? I wasprepared for any surprise, my imagination was ready for anyastonishment however astounding.

We had long lost sight of the sea shore behind the hills of bones.The rash Professor, careless of losing his way, hurried me forward.We advanced in silence, bathed in luminous electric fluid. By somephenomenon which I am unable to explain, it lighted up all sides ofevery object equally. Such was its diffusiveness, there being nocentral point from which the light emanated, that shadows no longerexisted. You might have thought yourself under the rays of a verticalsun in a tropical region at noonday and the height of summer. Novapour was visible. The rocks, the distant mountains, a few isolatedclumps of forest trees in the distance, presented a weird andwonderful aspect under these totally new conditions of a universaldiffusion of light. We were like Hoffmann's shadowless man.

After walking a mile we reached the outskirts of a vast forest, butnot one of those forests of fungi which bordered Port Gräuben.

Here was the vegetation of the tertiary period in its fullest blazeof magnificence. Tall palms, belonging to species no longer living,splendid palmacites, firs, yews, cypress trees, thujas,representatives of the conifers. were linked together by a tanglednetwork of long climbing plants. A soft carpet of moss and hepaticasluxuriously clothed the soil. A few sparkling streams ran almost insilence under what would have been the shade of the trees, but thatthere was no shadow. On their banks grew tree-ferns similar to thosewe grow in hothouses. But a remarkable feature was the total absenceof colour in all those trees, shrubs, and plants, growing without thelife-giving heat and light of the sun. Everything seemed mixed-up andconfounded in one uniform silver grey or light brown tint like thatof fading and faded leaves. Not a green leaf anywhere, and theflowers - which were abundant enough in the tertiary period, whichfirst gave birth to flowers - looked like brown-paper flowers,without colour or scent.

My uncle Liedenbrock ventured to penetrate under this colossal grove.I followed him, not without fear. Since nature had here providedvegetable nourishment, why should not the terrible mammals be theretoo? I perceived in the broad clearings left by fallen trees, decayedwith age, leguminose plants, acerineæ, rubiceæ and many other eatableshrubs, dear to ruminant animals at every period. Then I observed,mingled together in confusion, trees of countries far apart on thesurface of the globe. The oak and the palm were growing side by side,the Australian eucalyptus leaned against the Norwegian pine, thebirch-tree of the north mingled