Chapter 22
This time the descent commenced by the new gallery. Hans walked first as was his custom.
We had not gone a hundred yards when the Professor, moving his lantern along the walls, cried:
“Here are primitive rocks. Now we are in the right way. Forward!”
When in its early stages the earth was slowly cooling, its contraction gave rise in its crust to disruptions, distortions, fissures, and chasms. The passage through which we were moving was such a fissure, through which at one time granite poured out in a molten state. Its thousands of windings formed an inextricable labyrinth through the primeval mass.
As fast as we descended, the succession of beds forming the primitive foundation came out with increasing distinctness. Geologists consider this primitive matter to be the base o
