A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future

by John Jacob Astor

  CHAPTER X.

  CHANGING LANDSCAPES.

  On reaching the Callisto, Ayrault worked the lock he had hadplaced on the lower door, which, to avoid carrying a key, wasopened by a combination. The car's interior was exactly as theyhad left it, and they were glad to be in it again.

  "Now," said Bearwarden, "we can have a sound andundisturbed sleep, which is what I want more thananything else. No prowlers can trouble us here, and weshall not need the protection-wires."

  They then opened a window in each side--for the large glassplates, admitting the sun when closed, made the Callisto ratherwarm--and placed a stout wire netting within them to keep outbirds and bats, and then, though it was but little past noon, gotinto their comfortable beds and slept nine hours at a stretch.Their strong metal house was securely at rest, receiving thesunlight and shedding the rain and dew as it might have done onearth. No winds or storms, lightnings or floods, could troubleit, while the multiformed monsters of antiquity and mythologyrestored in life, with which the terrestrials had been throwninto such close contact, roamed about its polished walls. Noteven the fiercest could affect them, and they would but seethemselves reflected in any vain assaults. The domed symmetricalcylinder stood there as a monument to human ingenuity and skill,and the travellers' last thought as they fell asleep was, "Man isreally lord of creation."

  The following day at about noon they awoke, and had a bath in thewarm pool. They saw the armoured mass of the great ant evidentlyundisturbed, while the bodies of its victims were already shiningskeletons, and raised a small cairn of stones in memory of thestruggle they had had there.

  "We should name this place Kentucky," said Bearwarden, "for it isindeed a dark and bloody ground," and, seeing the aptness of theappellation, they entered it so on their charts. While Ayraultgot the batteries in shape for resuming work. Bearwardenprepared a substantial breakfast. This consisted of oatmeal andcream kept hermetically sealed in glass, a dish of roast grouse,coffee, pilot bread, a bottle of Sauterne, and another of Rhinewine.

  "This is the last meal we shall take hereabouts," said theircook, as they plied their knives and forks beneath the trees, "sohere is a toast to our adventures, and to all the game we havekilled." They drained their glasses in drinking this, afterwhich Bearwarden regaled them with the latest concert-hall songwhich he had at his tongue's end.

  About an hour before dark they re-entered their projectile, and,as a mark of respect to their little ship, named the great branchof the continent on which they had alighted Callisto Point. Theythen got under way. The batteries had to develop almost theirmaximum power to overcome Jupiter's attraction; but they wereequal to the task, and the Callisto was soon in the air.Directing their apergy to the mountains towards the interior ofthe continent, and applying repulsion to any ridge or hill overwhich they passed, thereby easing the work of the batteriesengaged in supporting the Callisto, they were soon sweeping alongat seventy-five to one hundred miles an hour. By keeping theprojectile just strongly enough charged to neutralizegravitation, they remained for the most part within two hundredfeet of the ground, seldom rising to an altitude of more than amile, and were therefore able to keep the windows at the sidesopen and so obtain an unobstructed view. If, however, at anytime they felt oppressed by Jupiter's high barometric pressure,and preferred the terrestrial conditions, they had but to risetill the barometer fell to thirty. Then, if an object ofinterest recalled them to sea-level, they could keep theCallisto's inside pressure at what they found on the Jovianmountains, by screwing up the windows. On account of thedistance of sixty-four thousand miles from Jupiter's equator tothe pole, they calculated that going at the speed of a hundredmiles an hour, night and day, it would take them twenty-fiveterrestrial days to reach the pole even from latitude two degreesat which they started. But they knew that, if pressed for time,they could rise above the limits of the atmosphere, and move withplanetary speed; while, if they wished a still easier method ofpursuing their observation, they had but to remain poised betweenthe sun and Jupiter, beyond the latter's upper air, andphotograph or map it as it revolved before them.

  By sunset they had gone a hundred miles. Wishing to push along,they closed the windows, rose higher to avoid any mountain-topsthat might be invisible in the moonlight, and increased theirspeed. The air made a gentle humming sound as they shot throughit, and towards morning they saw several bright points of lightin which they recognized, by the aid of their glasses, sheets offlame and torrents of molten glowing lava, bursting at intervalsor pouring steadily from several volcanoes. From this theyconcluded they were again near an ocean, since volcanoes need thepresence of a large body of water to provide steam for theireruptions.

  With the rising sun they found the scene of the day beforeentirely changed. They were over the shore of a vast ocean thatextended to the left as far as they could see, for the range ofvision often exceeded the power of sight. The coast-line ranalmost due north and south, while the volcanoes that dotted it,and that had been luminous during the night, now revealed theirnature only by lines of smoke and vapours. They were struck bythe boldness and abruptness of the scenery. The mountains andcliffs had been but little cut down by water and frost action,and seemed in the full vigour of their youth, which was what thetravellers had a right to expect on a globe that was stillcooling and shrinking, and consequently throwing up ridges in theshape of mountains far more rapidly than a planet as matured andquiescent as the earth. The absence of lakes also showed themthat there had been no Glacial period, in the latitudes they werecrossing, for a very long time.

  "We can account for the absence of ice-action and scratches,"said Cortlandt, "in one of two ways. Either the proximity of theinternal heat to the surface prevents water from freezing in alllatitudes, or Jupiter's axis has always been very nearlyperpendicular to its orbit, and consequently the thermometer hasnever been much below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit; for, at theconsiderable distance we are now from the sun, it is easy toconceive that, with the axis much inclined, there might be coldweather, during the Northern hemisphere's winter, that would lastfor about six of our years, even as near the equator as this.The substantiation of an ice-cap at the pole will disprove thefirst hypothesis; for what we took for ice before alighting mayhave been but banks of cloud, since, having been in the plane ofthe planet's equator at the time, we had naturally but a veryoblique view of the poles; while the absence of glacial scratchesshows, I take it, that though the axis may have been a good dealmore inclined than at present, it has not, at all events sinceJupiter's Palaeozoic period, been as much so as that of Uranus orVenus. The land on Jupiter, corresponding to the LaurentianHills on earth, must even here have appeared at so remote aperiod that the first surface it showed must long since have beenworn away, and therefore any impressions it received have alsobeen erased.

  "Comparing this land with the photographs we took from space, Ishould say it is the eastern of the two crescent-shapedcontinents we found apparently facing each other. Their presentform I take to be only the skeleton outline of what they will beat the next period of Jupiter's development. They will, Ipredict, become more like half moons than crescents, though theprofile may be much indented by gulfs and bays, their superficialarea being greatly increased, and the intervening oceancorrespondingly narrowed. We know that North America had a verydifferent shape during the Cretaceous or even the Middle Tertiaryperiod from what it has now, and that the Gulf of Mexico extendedup the valley of the Mississippi as far as the Ohio, by thepresence of a great coral reef in the Ohio River near Cincinnati.We know also that Florida and the Southeastern Atlantic Statesare a very recent addition to the continent, while the pampas ofthe Argentine Republic have, in a geological sense, but just beenupheaved from the sea, by the fact that the rivers are all on thesurface, not having had time to cut down their channels below thesurrounding country. By similar reasoning, we know that thecanon of the Colorado is a very old region, though theprecipitateness of its b
anks is due to the absence of rain, for alocal water-supply would cut back the banks, having most effectwhere they were steepest, since at those points it would movewith the greatest speed. Thus the majestic canon owes itsexistence to two things: the length of time the river has been atwork, and the fact that the water flowing through it comes fromanother region where, of course, there is rain, and that it ismerely in transit, and so affects only the bed on which it moves.Granting that this is the eastern of the two continents weobserved, it evidently corresponds more in shape to the Easternhemisphere on earth than to the New World, both of which are setfacing one another, since both drain towards the Atlantic Ocean.But the analogy here holds also, for the past outlines of theEastern hemisphere differed radically from what they are now.The Mediterranean Sea was formerly of far greater extent than wesee it to-day, and covered nearly the whole of northern Africaand the old upheaved sea-bottom that we see in the Desert ofSahara. Much of this great desert, as we know, has aconsiderable elevation, though part of it is still below thelevel of the Mediterranean.

  "Perhaps a more striking proof of this than are the remains offishes and marine life that are found there, is the dearth ofnatural harbours and indentations in Africa's northern coast,while just opposite, in southern Europe, there are any number;which shows that not enough time has elapsed since Africa'supheaval for liquid or congealed water to produce them. Many ofEurope's best harbours, and Boston's, in our country, have beendug out by slow ice-action in the oft-recurring Glacial periods.The Black and Caspian Seas were larger than we now find them;while the Adriatic extended much farther into the continent,covering most of the country now in the valley of the Po. InEurope the land has, of course, risen also, but so slowly thatthe rivers have been able to keep their channels cut down; proofof their ability to perform which feat we see when an ancientriver passes through a ridge of hills or mountains. The riverhad doubtless been there long before the mountains began to rise,but their elevation was so gradual that the rate of the river'scutting down equalled or exceeded their coming up; proof of whichwe have in the patent fact that the ancient river's courseremains unchanged, and is at right angles to the mountain chain.From all of which we see that the Eastern hemisphere's crescenthollow--of which, I take it, the Mediterranean, Black, andCaspian Sea depressions are the remains--has been graduallyfilled in, by the elevation of the sea's bottom, and theextension of deltas from the detrital matter brought from thehigh interior of the continents by the rivers, or by the combinedaction of the two. Now, since the Gulf of Mexico has beenconstantly growing smaller, and the Mediterranean is beinginvaded by the land, I reason that similar causes will producelike effects here, and give to each continent an area far greaterthan our entire globe. The stormy ocean we behold in the west,which corresponds to our Atlantic, though it is far more of amare clausum in the geographical sense, is also destined tobecome a calm and placid inland sea. There are, of course,modifications of and checks to the laws tending to increase theland area. England was formerly joined to the continent, theland connecting the two having been rather washed away by thewaves and great tides than by any sinking of the EnglishChannel's bottom, the whole of which is comparatively shallow.Another case of this kind is seen in Cape Cod and the islands ofMartha's Vineyard and Nantucket, all of which are washing away sorapidly that they would probably disappear before the nextGlacial period, were we not engaged in preventing its recurrence.These detached islands and sand-bars once formed one largeisland, which at a still earlier time undoubtedly was joined tothe mainland. The sands forming the detached masses are in agreat processional march towards the equator, but it is theresult simply of winds and waves, there being no indication ofsubsidence. Along the coast of New Jersey we see denudation andsinking going on together, the well-known SUNKEN FOREST being aninstance of the latter. The border of the continent proper alsoextends many miles under the ocean before reaching the edge ofthe Atlantic basin. Volcanic eruptions sometimes demolish partsof headlands and islands, though these recompense us in theamount of material brought to the surface, and in the increaseddistance they enable water to penetrate by relieving the interiorof part of its heat, for any land they may destroy."