Francis Rolt-Wheeler

“ Even the attraction of the moon, which causes the tides, would rip the crust across, the molten rock would well up through the fissures, and the whole world was a glare with fire shining red and reflected on the low-hung clouds of swirling steam. Every century the skin of land grew slightly thicker, though wrinkled and crumpled by the constant wrench and cleavage, first by the daily tides, then by the spring tides, and at last it remained steadfast, save when the frequent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes cracked the crust across. ”

“ The bones of the huge Brontosaurus and Camarasaurus lay beneath that hillock of the great army of Amphibious Dinosaurs, those monsters with blunt pointed teeth and blunt claw, with limbs and feet like elephants, unarmored five toed, with long neck and small head; only the most tremendous of them, the Brachiosaurus, was missing. These Amphibious Dinosaurs were the largest creatures that ever trod the world, Perry, and their bulk was too great for them to have lived any other than a marsh life, when the buoyancy of the water in part sustained the weight of their enormous bodies. ”

“ There is no sign of a life, except perhaps, a lizard darting to his hole from his basking-place on a hot rock, or the black speck of a buzzard in the sky.
“It is in a world so new and strange as this that I am searching for a world still more new and still more strange. And then, Perry, when, in the evening, the shadows turn all those glowing rocks to a deep purple and I ride home to [Pg 308] camp, the gleam of the white tents is a great discovery that other people, too, are living in this unfamiliar world. ”

“ In the glare of eruptions that never stopped, amid the thunder of vast explosions, the hissing of great geysers and the unceasing growl of earthquakes, the land grew higher and higher above the sea, and the world grew colder and colder. It was the end of the Empire of Reptiles.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Perry, remembering his dream.
“As the world grew colder,” Antoine continued, “the soft vegetation died away and harder grasses and trees and shrubs took its place, needing creatures with better teeth to chew the stronger fibers. And still the grip of the cold increased. ”

“ Antoine answered, “and when Africa is settled, lions and tigers, rhinoceroses and hippopotami will all go. Man has created a new age, Perry, the age of usefulness, and the only chance of survival an animal has to-day is to become a slave to Man. In order to do that, an animal has to have a good enough brain to learn. The primitive types are small-brained and will die.
“Think, Perry, if a rhinoceros could be taught to carry a load, how valuable he would be in the African jungle! But he fights Man instead, and so he must be killed. ”

“ Books of travel will give you pictures, Perry, of things that there are in this world only a few hours’ or a few days’ journey away, but the books of travel that you and I are reading, my boy, will give pictures of scenes that no railway train can reach, and will reveal oceans that no steamship or sailing craft can cross. ”

“ Although Perry was more or less familiar with the three-horned Triceratops, the twenty-ton Brontosaurus and the gaunt-winged Pterodactyl, the still stranger creatures in the faded green book were unknown to him. The Roc, the Griffin, the Chimæra, the Phœnix, the Basilisk—they were like characters in a fairy tale. Still, as he looked at the pictures of them limned by the boy of forty years ago, a strange feeling came over Perry that perhaps—in some remote corner of the world—these creatures might be living still. ”

“ The boy urged him to come to the hotel for breakfast, an invitation warmly seconded by Dr. Hunt, for the professor, as fully as any one, had realized the wonder of that canvas, painted in an ecstasy during the first flush of an Egyptian sunrise.
But Quinward, never again to be called “Mad” Quinward, strapped up his little easel, took the canvas—which had been blank for twenty years, and now had blossomed into so marvelous a work, and with a word here and there, turned to the lebbek-bordered road and trudged back to Cairo. ”

“ On the long prairie stretches how many bands of hostile Indians had been fought; over the Bad Lands in which he was riding, how many emigrants had died, the men gaunt and footsore, the women weak and starved. “The Overland Trail!” No three words in all the language tell a grimmer story of American History, no three words hold more gallantry or more adventure.
It was with a jerk that Perry pulled himself back to reality again and turned to the left from the old trail, towards the low slopes of that butte which is dignified by the name of Haystack Mountain. ”

“ Then, when they find them, the gold is just like all the rest of the gold in the world. But when we find something new, it’s something that no human eye has ever seen before, it’s the gateway into a new world. Any day, if we were on an expedition among Triassic rocks, we might find the bird that lived before the Archæopteryx and learn for the first time exactly how the birds first came to be.”
“There aren’t any birds living to-day that are like those old primitive ones, are there, Antoine?” ”

“ I suppose that every man thinks his own line is the best, but I tell you, my boy, I’ve never found anything one-half so interesting as the piecing together, bit by bit, bone by bone, of a life that was lived a million years ago, on a world on which no human eye has ever looked. ”

“ The trip through the Puerco and Torrejon regions of New Mexico was also a delight to the boy, but as their researches took them further and further down the rock levels and they grew nearer and nearer to the level where the giant reptiles could be found, all the great wonder revived, and at night, in his tent, Perry dreamed again and again that he was on the back of the unicorn, speeding through that Jurassic world of giant dinosaurs. ”

“ There is, perhaps, no well-trodden road in the world more picturesque than the road between Cairo and Ghizeh. From all the deserts to the west come the caravans to Cairo, the old capital of Egypt throughout the centuries of Mohammedan rule. This was the first time that Perry had been alone since his arrival on the shores of Africa, and the spirit of adventure was strong upon him.
There came towards him a long train of camels, [Pg 134] heavily laden, bringing loads of dates from some oasis far beyond the horizon. ”

“ If he lived on the plains, I would know that he must have been able to run fast; if he was in the forest, that he would be heavy; if in the swamp that he must have been able to swim. You see, if I found a jaw alone, I could give you a good idea of the animal.”
The cowboy stared at him in blank astonishment.
“And in this case,” Antoine continued, “I can see the feet as well. And the foot tells all about the animal’s habits. If I find teeth made to crop grass, and light feet made to run quickly over the grass, I do not have to be very clever to see that such an animal lives on a grassy plain. ”

“ The Anchisaurus, more terrified even than the boy by this strange creature clinging to its neck, and driven on by the gleaming horn behind, leaped into full stride, covering ten feet at every step. If the gallop of the unicorn had been hard to bear, this swaying run was worse, for, as the Anchisaurus swung first one foot then the other, the neck and tail rolled to the opposite [Pg 50] side to maintain the creature’s balance. No cockle shell on a stormy sea ever tossed as did Perry on the Anchisaurus’ neck. ”

“ Every day is a new day and is full of promise. And when, each day, I ride out from the camp to a point in the Bad Lands where few people have been, and where no white man has ever walked, picket my horse and start out on foot, all the spell of the explorer comes to me. ”

“ Out to the waste and desert corners of the earth, men go to read these stories. They find the bones of the colossal gladiators still locked in their Titanic struggle, though that struggle ended in death ten million years ago; they find a ruthless war of tooth and claw made tenfold more ferocious than any combat of living beasts of prey by the huge bulk, and the terrible offensive and defensive weapons of those vast animals that the Earth could no longer tolerate. ”

“ Up through the Fayum hollow, again, the camels climbed and out on the desert beyond. Not skirting the edge of the Nile this time, but striking boldly over the waste, Michawi led the caravan, and the noon halt came in the open blaze of the [Pg 234] sun, the pyramids of Ghizeh showing faintly in the distance.
The party had hardly traveled more than an hour’s journey after the halt, when a queer hot whiff of air reached Perry’s nostrils. He remembered the smoking sands that he had seen from the crest of the cliff above the camp, when looking over the Libyan desert, and glanced over his shoulder. ”

“ Perry went on, “the real thing was a good deal that way. When Nature first started to make a horse, it came out like a four-toed creature not much bigger than a fox. The rocks that Nature was making at that time, which we call Lower Eocene, we can liken to the pine shavings. So you see, wherever you find Lower Eocene rocks you’re likely to find skeletons of that little four-toed horse, just the same way as any place in that layer of pine shavings you’d be apt to find the horses whittled out of pine. We call that horse an Eohippus.” ”

“ No museum had ever before attempted to mount so large a fossil skeleton, and you see, Perry, the bones were so fragile that they could not even bear their own weight, much less the weight of the skeleton. ”

“ So you see, Perry, lots of things are possible that one would never expect.”
“But a dragon, Father! It’s such a made-up sort of beast—wings, teeth, snake’s tail and all that sort of thing!”
“Don’t trouble yourself about that,” his father answered, “there are plenty of dragons with wings, teeth and a snake’s tail, and, what’s more, Science calls them dragons. Draco volans, the flying dragon, that’s their real name, my boy. But they are all small, none of them more than ten inches in length, including the tail.” ”

“ As though impelled by the terror in the boy’s voice, or by the still greater terror of sound in that silent world, the light-limbed Anchisaurus rose to its kangaroo-like attitude and began clumsily to run. Some twenty feet of start was gained before the unicorn caught sight of him and then the chase began. ”

“ At the end of the day the cormorant gets all the fish he has caught that are not good for the market, and he keeps on catching all the day long because he is always hungry.”
“Somebody ought to start a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Birds,” put in Perry with a grin.
“Why? It does not hurt the cormorant. He gets plenty to eat. It is not cruelty to make a bird work, any more than to make a horse work. But if you want to see something in Nature that is like a bully, look there!” ”

“ Yet it was the evening of the third day before they reached it, fifty-eight hours since they had left the camp, of which thirty hours had actually been spent on camel-back.
“You’re a seasoned traveler now, Perry,” his uncle said, as the camel sank to its knees and the boy clambered painfully out of the saddle, “seventy-five miles in fifty-eight hours is quite a feat.”
“It was great,” said Perry, “and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. What’s a little ache in one’s bones compared to doing a stunt like that!”
“After the work comes the fun,” put in Antoine. ”

“ So startling, so madly strange seem the conditions that we scarcely dare to believe the adventure true, and then, the slow processes of Time turn one by one the pages of that age-old book, and the most extravagant flight of the imagination is outdistanced by facts. ”

“ They’re too light to sink in much, and as the chalk shells steadily rained down, they covered the old monarch of the air like a sheet. Then the bottom of the sea rose and became dry land. When, millions of years later, and probably not long ago, rain and wind and all the rest of the things that make erosion, washed away the chalk that had accumulated on top of the Pteranodon, he lay there just as flat as ever, flatter, because his hollow bones were crushed by the chalk that once had lain on top of him. ”