magnitude, cast only faint and somewhat uncertain shadows; but at night
the stars shone with surpassing brilliancy. Of the planets, some, it was
observed, seemed to be fading away in remote distance. This was the case
with Mars, Venus, and that unknown orb which was moving in the orbit of
the minor planets; but Jupiter, on the other hand, had assumed splendid
proportions; Saturn was superb in its luster, and Uranus, which hitherto
had been imperceptible without a telescope was pointed out by
Lieutenant Procope, plainly visible to the naked eye. The inference was
irresistible that Gallia was receding from the sun, and traveling far
away across the planetary regions.

On the 24th of February, after following the sinuous course of what
before the date of the convulsion had been the coast line of the
department of Var, and after a fruitless search for Hyeres, the
peninsula of St. Tropez, the Lerius Islands, and the gulfs of Cannes and
Jouar, the _Dobryna_ arrived upon the site of the Cape of Antibes.

Here, quite unexpectedly, the explorers made the discovery that the
massive wall of cliff had been rent from the top to the bottom by a
narrow rift, like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and at the base of
the opening, level with the sea, was a little strand upon which there
was just space enough for their boat to be hauled up.

"Joy! joy!" shouted Servadac, half beside himself with ecstasy; "we can
land at last!"

Count Timascheff and the lieutenant were scarcely less impatient than
the captain, and little needed his urgent and repeated solicitations:
"Come on! Quick! Come on! no time to lose!"

It was half-past seven in the morning, when they set their foot upon
this untried land. The bit of strand was only a few square yards in
area, quite a narrow strip. Upon it might have been recognized
some fragments of that agglutination of yellow limestone which is
characteristic of the coast of Provence. But the whole party was far
too eager to wait and examine these remnants of the ancient shore; they
hurried on to scale the heights.

The narrow ravine was not only perfectly dry, but manifestly had never
been the bed of any mountain torrent. The rocks that rested at the
bottom--just as those which formed its sides--were of the same lamellous
formation as the entire coast, and had not hitherto been subject to the
disaggregation which the lapse of time never fails to work. A skilled
geologist would probably have been able to