A Journey in Other Worlds [64]
rapidly that they would probably disappear before the next
Glacial period, were we not engaged in preventing its recurrence.
These detached islands and sand-bars once formed one large
island, which at a still earlier time undoubtedly was joined to
the mainland. The sands forming the detached masses are in a
great processional march towards the equator, but it is the
result simply of winds and waves, there being no indication of
subsidence. Along the coast of New Jersey we see denudation and
sinking going on together, the well-known SUNKEN FOREST being an
instance of the latter. The border of the continent proper also
extends many miles under the ocean before reaching the edge of
the Atlantic basin. Volcanic eruptions sometimes demolish parts
of headlands and islands, though these recompense us in the
amount of material brought to the surface, and in the increased
distance they enable water to penetrate by relieving the interior
of part of its heat, for any land they may destroy."
CHAPTER XI.
A JOVIAN NIAGARA.
Four days later, after crossing a ridge of mountains that the
pressure on the aneroid barometer showed to be about thirty-two
thousand feet high, and a stretch of flat country a few miles in
width, they came to a great arm of the sea. It was about thirty
miles wide at its mouth, which was narrowed like the neck of a
bottle, and farther inland was over one hundred miles across, and
though their glasses, the clear air, and the planet's size
enabled them to see nearly five hundred miles, they could not
find its end. In the shallow water along its shores, and on
the islands rising but a few feet above the waves, they saw
all kinds of amphibians and sea-monsters. Many of these were
almost the exact reproduction in life of the giant plesiosaurs,
dinosaurs, and elasmosaurs, whose remains are preserved in the
museums on earth. The reptilian bodies of the elasmosaurs,
seventy-five feet in length, with the forked tongues, distended
jaws and fangs of a snake, were easily taken for the often
described but probably mythical sea- serpent, as partially coiled
they occasionally raised their heads twelve or fifteen feet.
"Man in his natural state," said Cortlandt, "would have but small
chance of surviving long among such neighbours. Buckland, I
think, once indulged in the jeu d'esprit of supposing an
ichthyosaur lecturing on the human skull. 'You will at once
perceive,' said the lecturer, 'that the skull before us belonged
to one of the lower order of animals. The teeth are very
insignificant, the power of the jaws trifling, and altogether it
seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food.'
Armed with modern weapons, and in this machine, we are, of
course, superior to the most powerful monster; but it is not
likely that, had man been so surrounded during the whole of his
evolution, he could have reached his present plane."
Notwithstanding the striking similarity of these creatures to
their terrestrial counterparts that existed on earth during its
corresponding period, there were some interesting modifications.
The organs of locomotion in the amphibians were more developed,
while the eyes of all were larger, the former being of course
necessitated by the power of gravity, and the latter by the
greater distance from the sun.
"The adaptability and economy of Nature," said Cortlandt, "have
always amazed me. In the total blackness of the Kentucky Mammoth
Cave, where eyes would be of no use to the fishes, our common
mother has given them none; while if there is any light, though
not as much as we are accustomed to, she may be depended upon to
rise to the occasion by increasing the size of the pupil and the
power of the eye. In the development of the ambulatory muscles
we again see her handiwork, probably brought about through the
'survival of the fittest.' The fishes and those wholly immersed
need no increase in power, for, though they weigh more than they
would on earth,