The Eternal Adam and other stories

by Jules Vernes

  How long is it since we landed on this coast? I no longer know. I asked Dr Moreno, who keeps a calendar of the days as they flow by. He told me: ‘Six months... " Then he added, ‘Within a few days,’ for fear of being mistaken.

  So there we are already! It’s only needed six months for us not to be sure of keeping an exact count of time. That promises well!

  But on the whole there is nothing surprising in our negligence. It takes all our attention, all our efforts, to keep ourselves alive. To feed ourselves is a problem whose solution takes the whole day. What do we eat? Fish, when we can find any, and every day that gets harder, for our ceaseless hunt is scaring them. We also eat turtles’ eggs and a few edible seaweeds. By evening we have fed, but we are exhausted, and all we think about is sleep.

  We have improvised some tents out of the Virginia’s sails. I expect that soon we’ll have to build some better shelter.

  Sometimes we shoot a bird; the air is not so completely deserted as we had thought, and a dozen known species are represented on his new continent. They are one and all migratory birds: the swallow, albatross, and so forth. Presumably they can find no food on this land, devoid of vegetation as it is, for they never stop flying round our camp, and this helps to eke out our wretched meals. Sometimes we are able to pick up one that has died of hunger, which saves our powder and shot.

  Fortunately, however, there is a possibility that our situation will become less wretched. We have found a sack of wheat in the Virginia’s hold, and we sowed half of it. That will help us greatly when the wheat grows. But will it sprout? The ground is covered with a thick sheet of alluvium, a sandy mud enriched by the decomposition of the seaweeds; poor though its quality may be, it is soil all the same. When we landed it was impregnated with salt; but since then torrential rains have washed copiously over the surface, and all the depressions are now full of fresh water.

  Yet the alluvial layer has been freed from its salt only on its surface; the streams and the very rivers which are beginning to form are all strongly brackish, and this shows that its depths are still saturated.

  To sow the corn and keep the other half of it in reserve, we almost had to fight. Some of the Virginia’s crew wanted to make all of it into bread at once. We have had to...

  ... that we had on board the Virginia. The two pairs of rabbits have run off into the interior and we haven’t seen them since. I suppose they’ve found something to live on. Then does the land, unknown to us. produce...

  ... two years, at least, that we’ve been here!... The wheat has grown splendidly. We have almost as much bread as we want, and our fields are alwaysgetting wider. But what a struggle against the birds! They have multiplied amazingly, and all around our crops...

  In spite of the deaths I mentioned, our little tribe is no smaller. On the contrary. My son and my ward have three children, and each of the three other households likewise. All these kids are in radiant health. Presumably the human species has a greater vigour, a more intense vitality, now that it is so much less numerous. But what causes...

  ... here for ten years, and we knew nothing about this continent. All we had seen of it was a distance of several miles round our camp. It was Dr Bathurst who made us ashamed of our weakness: at his suggestion we got the Virginia into service, which took nearly six months, and made a voyage of exploration.

  We got back the day before yesterday. The voyage lasted longer than we thought, because we wanted to carry it out thoroughly.

  We went all round this continent which, everything makes us think, must be, with our islet, the only stretch of solid land that now exists on the earth’s surface. Its shores seemed much the same everywhere, very craggy and very wild.

  Our voyage was interrupted by several excursions into the interior; we especially hoped to find traces of the Azores and Madeira – situated, before the cataclysm, in the Atlantic Ocean, which certainly ought to make them a part of the new continent. – We could not recognise even the smallest vestige of them. All that we could find is that everywhere round their position the ground is upheaved and covered with a thick layer of lava; no doubt they were the centre of some great volcanic eruption.

  Yet, if we failed to find what we were looking for, we found something we were not looking for at all! Half buried in the lava, in the latitude of the Azores, some evidences of human handiwork caught our eye – but not the handiwork of the inhabitants of these islands, our contemporaries of yesteryear. These were the remains of some columns and pottery, such as none of us had ever seen before. After studying them, Dr Moreno put forward the theory that these remains must have come from ancient Atlantis, and that it was the volcanic flow that restored them to the light of day.

  Dr Moreno may be right. If it ever existed, the legendary Atlantis must certainly have been somewhere near the new continent. If so it is certainly very strange that three different races of man have followed one another in the same region.

  However this may be, I declare that the problem leaves me cold: we have plenty to keep us busy in the present, without worrying about the past.

  As soon as we got back to our camp, it struck us that, compared with the rest of the country, the region we occupied seems much favoured. This is due solely to the fact that the colour green, formerly so abundant in nature, is not completely unknown here, while it seems to have been radically suppressed elsewhere in the continent. We had not noticed this before, but it cannot be denied. Some blades of grass, which never existed at all before we landed, are now growing around us in fairly large numbers. They belong only to a few of the most common species, whose seeds were doubtless brought here by the birds.

  It must not be inferred, however, that except for these familiar species there is no vegetation. Through the strangest work of adaptation, on the other hand, a vegetation in at least a rudimentary and promising state exists all over the continent.

  The marine plants which covered it when it emerged from the waves have mostly died in the sunlight. A few, however, persisted in the lakes, the ponds, and the puddles of water which the heat has gradually dried up. But at that time rivers and rivulets began to flow, and these were the more suited for the existence of wracks and seaweeds in that their waters were salt. When the surface, and then the depths, of the soil were deprived of their salt, and the water became fresh, most of these plants were destroyed.

  A few, however, able to adapt themselves to the new living conditions, flourished in the fresh water just as they had in the salt. But the process did not stop there: a few of these plants, gifted with an even greater power of accommodation, adapted themselves first to fresh water and then to the open air. At first along the banks and then further and further away from them they have spread into the interior.

  We surprised this transformation in the very act, and we can see how their structures are getting modified along with their physiological functions. Already a few stems are rising timidly towards the sky. We can foresee that one day a flora of great variety will thus be created and that a fierce struggle will begin between these new species and those surviving from the ancient order of things.

  What is true of the flora is true also of the fauna. Along the watercourses we can see the former marine animals, mostly molluscs and crustaceans, in process of becoming terrestrial. The air is furrowed by flying fish, birds rather than fish, their wings having enlarged beyond all reason and their incurved tails allowing them to...

  The last of the fragments contained, intact, the end of the manuscript:

  ... all old. Captain Morris is dead. Dr Bathurst is sixty-five; Dr Moreno sixty; myself, sixty-eight. We shall all soon have done with life. First, however, we mean to finish the task we resolved on, and, so far as is in our power, we shall come to the aid of future generations in the struggle that awaits them.

  But will they see the day. these future generations?

  I should be tempted to say yes, if I considered only how my fellows are multiplying: the children are swarming, and, for the rest, in this he
althy climate, in this country where wild animals are unknown, life is long. Our colony has tripled in size.

  On the other hand I am tempted to say no, if I consider the deep intellectual decadence of my companions in distress.

  Yet our little group of survivors was in a favourable position to share in human knowledge: it included one exceptionally energetic man – Captain Morris, who died today – two men more cultivated than is usual – my son and myself – and two real savants – Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno. With such components we ought to have been able to accomplish something. We have done nothing. Right from the outset the maintenance of our material life has always been, and is still, our sole care. As at first we spend all our time looking for food, and in the evening we fall exhausted into a heavy sleep.

  It is, alas! only too certain that mankind, of which we are the only representatives, is in a state of rapid retrogression and is tending to revert to the animal. Among the sailors of the Virginia, men originally uncultivated, the brutal characteristics have become more marked; my son and I, we have forgotten what we knew; Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno have put their brains on the shelf. One might say that our cerebral life is abolished.

  How lucky it is that, so many years ago, we made a survey of this continent! Today we shouldn’t have the courage... And besides, Captain Morris, who led the expedition, is dead – and dead also, or rather decayed, is the Virginia which carried us.

  At the beginning of our stay a few of us decided to build some houses. They were never finished and now they are falling in ruins. We sleep, as before, on the ground, whatever the season.

  For a long time not a vestige has been left of the garments which covered us. For several years we contrived to replace them by seaweeds woven together in a style that was at first ingenious but soon became coarser. At last we got tired of making the effort, which the mild climate renders needless: we go naked, like those whom we used to call savages.

  Eating, eating, that is our perpetual aim. our sole preoccupation.

  Yet there still remains some remnants of our former ideas, our former feelings. My son Jean, now a grown man and a grandfather, has not lost all his affection, and my ex-chauffeur, Modeste Simonat, keeps a vague memory that I used to be his master.

  But for them, for us, these faint traces of the men we once were – for in very sooth we are no longer men – will vanish for ever. The people of the future, who were born here, have never known any other existence. Mankind will be reduced to these adults – even as I write I have them before my very eyes – who do not know how to write or to count, who hardly know how to speak; and to these sharp-toothed youngsters who seem to be nothing but an insatiable stomach. And after them there will be other adults and other children, and then still more adults and still more children, ever nearer to the animal, ever further away from their thinking ancestors.

  I can almost see them, these future men. forgetting all articulate language, their intelligence extinct, their bodies covered with coarse fur, wandering about this sad wilderness...

  Well, we want to try to avoid this. We want to do everything in our power to ensure that the achievements of the men among whom we once were shall not be completely lost.

  Dr Moreno, Dr Bathurst and I, we are going to revive our stupefied minds, we are going to make ourselves recall what we once knew. We are going to share the task, and on this paper and with this ink which came from the Virginia we are going to set out all that we remember of the various branches of science, so that, later men, if they still exist, and if, after a more or less long period of savagery, they feel a revival of their thirst for light, will find a summary of what their predecessors have done. May they then bless the memory of those who strove, at all costs, to shorten the sorrowful road to be trodden by the brothers whom they will never see!

  At death’s door

  It is now nearly fifteen years since the above lines were written. Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno are no more. Of all those who landed here, I, one of the oldest, I am almost the only one left. But death will soon take me in my turn. I can feel it rising from my frozen feet to my heart, which is about to stop.

  Our work is done. I have entrusted the manuscripts which contain this summary of human knowledge into an iron chest landed from the Virginia, and which I have buried deeply in the earth. At its side I am going to bury these few pages rolled up in an aluminium container.

  Will anyone ever find this material committed to the earth? Will anyone ever so much as look for it?...

  That is for fate to decide. A Dieu vat!...

  Post-script

  As Zartog Sofr translated this strange document, a sort of terror seized upon his soul.

  What! So the Andart’-Iten-Schu people were descended from these men who, after having wandered for long months across the desert of the ocean, had at last been washed up on this point on the shore where Basidra now stood? So these wretched creatures had formed part of a glorious race of men, compared with which modern man could scarcely babble! Yet for the knowledge and even the memory of these peoples to be destroyed, what was needed? Less than nothing; an imperceptible shudder had run through the earth’s crust.

  What an irreparable misfortune that the manuscripts the document spoke of had been destroyed, along with the iron chest that contained them! But great though that misfortune was, it was impossible to cherish the slightest hope: while digging the foundations the workmen had turned up the earth in every direction. There could be no doubt that the iron had been corroded away by time, which the aluminium container had triumphantly resisted.

  For the rest, it needed no more than this for Sofr’s optimism to be irretrievably overthrown. Although the manuscript gave no technical details, it was full of general indications and showed quite unmistakably that mankind had at one time advanced further in the quest for truth than it had done since. Everything was there in this narrative, the notions that Sofr had cherished, and others that he had not dared to imagine – even to the explanation of the name of Hedom, over which so many vain quarrels had broken out!... Hedom, it was a corrupt form of Edem – itself a corrupt form of Adam – the said Adam being perhaps nothing more than the corrupt form of some other word more ancient still.

  Hedom, Edem, Adam – that was the perpetual symbol of the first man, and it was also an explanation of his appearance on earth. Then Sofr had been wrong to deny that ancestor, whose reality the manuscript had proved once and for all, and it was the people who had been right in giving themselves such an ancestry. But, not only in that but in everything else, the Andart’-Iten-Schu had invented nothing. They had been content to repeat what had been said before.

  And perhaps, after all, the contemporaries of the author of the narrative had likewise invented nothing. Perhaps they too had done nothing but to retrace the road traversed by other races of man who had preceded them on earth. Did not the document speak of a people whom it called the Atlanteans? It was these Atlanteans, no doubt, of whom Sofr’s excavations had disclosed a few impalpable traces below the marine silt. What knowledge of the truth had that age-old nation attained when the invasion of the sea had swept them from the earth?

  However that might be, none of their work had remained after the catastrophe, and mankind had again to start at the foot of the hill in climbing towards the light.

  Perhaps it would be the same for the Andart’-Iten-Schu. Perhaps it would again be the same after them, until the day...

  But would the day ever come when the insatiable desire of mankind would be satisfied? Would the day ever come when they, having succeeded in climbing the slope, would be content to rest upon the summit they had at last conquered?...

  Such were the meditations of Zartog Sofr, as he bent over this venerable manuscript.

  This narrative from beyond the tomb enabled him to imagine the terrible drama which is forever played throughout the universe, and his heart overflowed with pity. Bleeding from the countless wounds from which those who had ever lived had suffered before him, bending benea
th the weight of these vain efforts accumulated throughout the infinity of time, Zartog Sofr’-Ai-Sr gained, slowly and painfully, an intimate conviction of the eternal recurrence of events.

  Sources

  Recollections of Childhood and Youth

  First published as ‘The Story of My Boyhood’ in The Youth’s Companion (Boston), vol. 64, 9 April 1891, p. 221. This was an edited translation of ‘Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse’, first published from the manuscript in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana (Fondation Martin Bodmer), Cologny-Genevè, Switzerland, in Jules Verne, ed. Pierre-André Touttain (Paris: L’Herne, 1974), pp. 57-62. In the present version some passages cut by the American editor have been restored and a few changes made in the translation.

  The First Ships of the Mexican Navy

  First published as ‘L’Amérique du Nord, études historiques: Les Premiers Navires de la marine mexicaine’ in Musée des families, tome 18, no. de juillet 1851, pp. 304-12; volume publication as ‘Un drame au Mexique’ in 1876 with Michel Stroggoff, English translation by W. H. G. Kingston and Julius Chambers (London, 1876). This translation by I. O. Evans.

  A Drama in the Air

  First published as ‘Un voyage en ballon’ in Musée des families, tome 18, no. d’août 1851, pp. 329-36; published as ‘Un drame dans les airs’ with Dr Ox in 1874. In English with Dr Ox (London, 1874), translated by George M. Towle.

  Master Zacharius

  First published as ‘Maître Zacharius, or L’Horloger qui avait perdu son âme, tradition genevoise’ in Musée des families, tome 21, no, d’avril 1854, pp. 193-200, and no. de mai pp. 225-32; published with Dr Ox in 1874. In English with Dr Ox (London, 1874), translated by George M. Towle.

  The Humbug

  First published as ‘Le Humbug’ (written 1868-70, though dated 1863 by Michel Verne), from a manuscript edited by Michel Verne, in Hier et demain (Paris, 1910); translated by Edward Baxter (1990). This story was excluded by I O. Evans from the English edition of Yesterday and Tomorrow (London, 1965).