Dawn was near when we finally reached the arid and sinister Blue Hills, made of granite as hard as diamond. Even the lichens had renounced their conquest.
“Here we are at last!” said my companion triumphantly.
I looked at him, full of suspicion. After three days in the desert, that seemed to me a maddening deception.
“Life is beyond them,” he affirmed.
“Beyond them!” I said, bitterly. “And how are we to climb them? They’re veritable walls.”
He nodded his head with an enigmatic smile. “Man of little faith, haven’t I told you that there’s a path?”
He started walking to the right. After ten minutes, he showed me an irregular fissure that extended into the shadows.
“There!”
He had already gone into the narrow cavern, armed with his electric lantern. Its violet gleam spread out into silent darkness. The path was narrow, we had difficulty walking—and it lasted for a long time! Fatigued by the tedium and the trials of our journey, I had become incredulous.
Finally, the fissure broadened out; we found ourselves in a spacious cave where a new gleam was gradually mingled with our electric beams. That gleam increased; it became sufficient to guide us.
“We’re getting close!” Daniel pronounced, almost solemnly.
The light became bright, then softened again; it was that orange light which precedes the Sun’s departure. I could not see anything, however. Involuntarily, I cursed. Then we went around an outcrop, and I uttered an exclamation. The Promised Land was there!
How beautiful it was! An immense Sun, a round copper-colored furnace was mirrored in the waters of the lake. Exceedingly tall trees and enormous reeds were swaying gently in the evening breeze—and I knew immediately that I had been initiated into a great mystery. Strange wild pigs with violet tongues and an odd gait were running toward the shore; hippopotamuses were displaying their enormous muzzles at the surface of the lake or climbing up the bank. They revealed golden-colored torsos and convex eyes.
“Choerotheria…and sivalensis!” said my companion.13
There was a rumbling sound in the distance, however. In the vague horses that were moving alongside a willow-grove, I recognized the characteristics of Hipparion. Other animals came running, all galloping in the same direction; turning round, I saw an immense herd advancing, irresistibly.
Far away, in the African wilderness, on the banks of the Niger, or near the sacred Ganges, I had seen comparable herds. I was not mistaken in this instance, though. By their double set of tusks, the lower ones almost straight and the upper ones slightly curved back, and an unspecifiable general aspect, and also guided by intuition, the environment and the presence of other animals, I recognized the mighty mastodons.
They came on like living mountains; their feet were columns, their heads blocks of granite. They came slowly and majestically, in their placid strength.
“That’s magnificent!” I cried, gripped by a mystical enthusiasm.
“Yes,” Daniel agreed, relaxing. “We’ve crossed 2000 centuries in the depths of time.”
I savored the joy of the world’s recommencement. The great love of the past that is within the hearts of men was confused here with an inconceivable resurrection.
A new episode caused me to shiver. Two creatures had just appeared: two upright creatures, palpitating with youth. They were playing. Long dark hair was scattered over their shoulders; their limbs and torsos were covered with brown silky fur, and if their jaws seemed a trifle thick, their exceedingly large, soft and luminous eyes were as beautiful as the eyes of the most beautiful woman.
I contemplated them with a sort of dread, and murmured: “Daniel, are they…?”
“They’re children,” he affirmed. “Human children…exactly like the children of our ancestors of the Tertiary Ages, contemporaries of those mastodons that are drinking from the lake. And you can see how charming they are!”
A roaring sound made us raise our heads. A predatory beast had arrived: a thickset animal with saber-like teeth and an orange hide spotted with mauve patches. It bounded forward. The “human children” stood still, magnetized and paralyzed. Another few bounds and the beast would reach them.
With the same gesture, Daniel and I raised our rifles to our shoulders; a double gunshot resounded over the lacustrian waters and made the mastodons raise their heads. Struck in the head and the gap between its shoulder-blade and collar-bone, the beast spun around.
Fearful that, in its death-throes, it might succeed in avenging its death on the children, we fired again. Then, running forward, I plunged my knife into the beast’s side. It released a raucous sigh and collapsed on to the ground. Then I turned toward the “human children” and spoke to them, smiling.
It is the privilege of young creatures to pass without transition from fear to delight. They were laughing, full of boundless confidence, as if they had always known us. The children were already beside me, studying me curiously. I took the younger one in my arms; he allowed me to do so, showing his sparkling teeth in the ruddy light. The Sun set and, simultaneously, an immense Moon rose in the east. The mastodons had ceased drinking; they set off again, and the Earth trembled.
Then a voice was raised, deep at first and then shrill. We turned round. It was the upright animal again, but adult: a fawn-colored human with hair like a mane, his face dull but illuminated and humanized by the same eyes as the children. In his hand he held a heavy staff—or, rather, a pike. Shortly afterwards, a second creature arrived, not so tall and rather thin, carrying an infant on her shoulder.
“Our ancestors!” said Daniel, solemnly.
Perhaps they had been frightened at first, but on seeing that their children were safe, they were reassured and broke into laughter, full of confidence.
How can I depict the religious poetry of that scene? It awoke all the profound dreams of adolescence, all the aspirations that were stirring in my soul, beneath the roots of our native forests, satisfying the fervent need I had always had to go back in time, to relive a little of that primitive existence of which we retain a passionate memory in the depths of our instinct.
Night fell after a brief twilight; the Cross of Cygnus shone in the background of the prehistoric landscape, while a silvery and nacreous Moon moved slowly amid the stars and traced a broad radiant causeway over the lake.
We had lit our nocturnal fire; together, we ate the dried meat that we had brought with us. Our guests were as tranquil as if they had lived with us for a long time. They were innocent beings, even though the man had the strength of the great anthropoid apes and had the stature to measure himself against a Machairodus.
I thought at first that they had no language. I was mistaken. Speech had already elevated them above other living creatures. They exchanged signs and a few interjections, adapted to the simplicity of their actions and impressions.
In the beautiful night, in which the ruddy light of the fire mingled with the silvery light of the Moon, they were intensely joyful, like children, full of that delightful confidence that makes it easy to forget the future. I too was full of a supreme bliss. I had the sensation of having been rejuvenated in an inconceivable manner, for myself and for all my ancestors; I reunited the present and the entire past in my bosom.
I remember that one of the children went to sleep in my arms; the slight sound of his breath mingled with the enchanted voice of the breeze and the faint rustle of a distant spring. Wild beasts passed by in the darkness; nocturnal birds were flying in the treetops; the intoxicating odor of the vegetation reached us in gusts—and I held that child against my breast with an infinite tenderness…
Such was the most beautiful and exciting adventure of my life—and the one I most regret. I wanted to relive it. I went back to the Blue Hills, and found the cavern again—but the prehistoric land was no longer there! It had only required one quake, one feeble quiver of the terrestrial surface to swallow up the remains of a world more than 200,000 years old!