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36 - What is it? - Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty six. What is it? For a long and
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  Speaker 1: weary hour we tramped over this great bed of bones?
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  Speaker 1: We advanced, regardless of everything, drawn on by ardent curiosity.
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  Speaker 1: What other marbles did this great cavern contain? What other
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  Speaker 1: wondrous treasures for the scientific man? My eyes were quite
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  Speaker 1: prepared for any number of surprises. My imagination lived in
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  Speaker 1: expectation of something new and wonderful. The borders of the
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  Speaker 1: great Central Ocean had for some time disappeared behind the
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  Speaker 1: hills that were scattered over the ground occupied by the
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  Speaker 1: plain of bones. The imprudent and enthusiastic professor, who did
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  Speaker 1: not care whether he lost himself or not, hurried me forward.
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  Speaker 1: We advanced silently, bathed in waves of electric fluid. By
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  Speaker 1: reason of a phenomenon which I cannot explain, and thanks
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  Speaker 1: to its extreme diffusion, now complete, the light illumined equally
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  Speaker 1: the sides of every hill and rock. Its seat appeared
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  Speaker 1: to be nowhere in no determined force, and produced no shade. Whatever.
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  Speaker 1: The appearance presented was that of a tropical country at
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  Speaker 1: midday in summer, in the midst of the equatorial regions,
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  Speaker 1: and under the vertical rays of the sun. All signs
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  Speaker 1: of vapor had disappeared. The rocks, the distant mountains, some
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  Speaker 1: confused masses of far off forests assumed a weird and
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  Speaker 1: mysterious aspect. Under this equal distribution of the luminous fluid,
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  Speaker 1: we resembled, to a certain extent the mysterious personage in
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  Speaker 1: one of Hoffmann's fantastic tales, the Man who Lost his shadow.
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  Speaker 1: After we had walked about a mile farther, we came
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  Speaker 1: to the edge of a vast forest, not, however, one
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  Speaker 1: of the vast mushroom forests we had discovered near Port Gretchen.
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  Speaker 1: It was the glorious and wild vegetation of the Tertia period,
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  Speaker 1: in all its superb magnificence. Huge palms of a species
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  Speaker 1: now unknown superb permicites, a genus of fossil palms from
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  Speaker 1: the coal formation pines Us suppress and conifers or cone
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  Speaker 1: bearing trees, the whole bound together by an inextricable and
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  Speaker 1: complicated mass of creeping plants. A beautiful carpet of mosses
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  Speaker 1: and ferns grew beneath the trees. Pleasant brooks murmured beneath
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  Speaker 1: umbrugious boughs. Little worthy of this name, for no shade
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  Speaker 1: did they give. Upon their borders grew small tree like shrubs,
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  Speaker 1: such as are seen in the hot countries on our
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  Speaker 1: own inhabited globe. The one thing wanting in these plants,
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  Speaker 1: these shrubs, these trees, was color. For ever depreed of
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  Speaker 1: the vivifying warmth of the sun, they were vapid and colorless.
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  Speaker 1: All shade was lost in one uniform tin of a
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  Speaker 1: brown and faded character. The leaves were folly, devoid of verdure,
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  Speaker 1: and the flowers so numerous during the tersary period which
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  Speaker 1: gave them birth, were without color and without perfume, something
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  Speaker 1: like paper discolored by long exposure to the atmosphere. My
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  Speaker 1: uncle ventured beneath the gigantic grooves. I followed him, though
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  Speaker 1: not without a certain amount of apprehension. Since nature had
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  Speaker 1: shown herself capable of producing such stupendous vegetable supplies, why
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  Speaker 1: might we not meet with mammals just as large and
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  Speaker 1: therefore dangerous. I particularly remarked in the clearing left by
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  Speaker 1: trees that had fallen and been partially consumed by time.
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  Speaker 1: Many leguminous beam like shrubs, such as the maple and
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  Speaker 1: other eatable trees, dear to ruminating animals. Then the repair
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  Speaker 1: confounded together and intermixed the trees of such varied lands,
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  Speaker 1: specimens of the vegetation of every part of the globe.
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  Speaker 1: There was the oak near the palm tree, the Australian eucalyptus,
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  Speaker 1: and interesting class of the order mirtassir, leaning against the
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  Speaker 1: tall Norwegian pine, the poplar of the north, mixing its
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  Speaker 1: branches with those of the New Zealand cowris. It was
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  Speaker 1: enough to drive the most ingenious classifier of the upper
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  Speaker 1: regions out of his mind, and to upcept all his
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  Speaker 1: received ideas about botany. Suddenly I stopped short and restrained
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  Speaker 1: my uncle. The ext dreamed diffuseness of the light enabled
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  Speaker 1: me to see the smallest objects in the distant corpses
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  Speaker 1: I thought I saw, No, I really did see with
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  Speaker 1: my own eyes immense gigantic animals moving about under the
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  Speaker 1: mighty trees. Yes, they were truly gigantic animals, a whole
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  Speaker 1: herd of mastodons, not fossils, but living and exactly like
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  Speaker 1: those discovered in eighteen o one on the marshy banks
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  Speaker 1: of the Great Ohio in North America. Yes, I could
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  Speaker 1: see these enormous elephants whose trunks were tearing down large
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  Speaker 1: bows and working in and out the trees like a
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  Speaker 1: legion of serpents. I could hear the sounds of the
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  Speaker 1: mighty tusks uprooting huge tree. The bows crackled, and the
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  Speaker 1: whole masses of leaves and green branches went down the
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  Speaker 1: capacious throats of these terrible monsters. That wondrous dream, when
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  Speaker 1: I saw the antihistorical times revivified, when the Terrisary and
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  Speaker 1: Quaternary periods passed before me, was now realized. And there
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  Speaker 1: we were, alone, far down in the bowels of the earth,
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  Speaker 1: at the mercy of its ferocious inhabitants. My uncle paused,
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  Speaker 1: full of wonder and astonishment. Come, he said at last,
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  Speaker 1: when his first surprise was over Come along, my boy,
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  Speaker 1: and let us see them nearer. No, replied I, restraining
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  Speaker 1: his efforts to drag me forward. We are fully without arms.
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  Speaker 1: What should we do in the midst of that flock
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  Speaker 1: of gigantic quadrupeds. Come away, uncle, I implore you, No
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  Speaker 1: human creature can, with impunity brave the ferocious anger of
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  Speaker 1: these monsters. No human creature, said my uncle, suddenly, lowering
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  Speaker 1: his voice to a mysterious whisper. You are mistaken, my
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  Speaker 1: dear Henry, look look yonder. It seems to me that
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  Speaker 1: I behold a human being, a being like ourselves, A man.
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  Speaker 1: I looked, shrugging my shoulders, decided to push incredulity to
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  Speaker 1: its very last limits. But whatever might have been my wish,
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  Speaker 1: I was compelled to yield to the weight of ocular demonstration. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: not more than a quarter of a mile off, leaning
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  Speaker 1: against the trunk of an enormous tree, was a human being,
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  Speaker 1: a protifs of these Subterresian regions, a new son of Neptun,
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  Speaker 1: keeping this innumerable herd of mastodons, immanis pcoris coustus imanior ipsen,
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  Speaker 1: the keeper of gigantic cattle, himself still more gigantic. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: it was no longer a fossil whose corpse we had
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  Speaker 1: raised from the ground in the Great Cemetery, but a
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  Speaker 1: giant capable of guiding and driving these prodigious monsters. His
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  Speaker 1: height was about twelve feet, his head as big as
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  Speaker 1: the head of a buffalo, was lost in a mane
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  Speaker 1: of matted hair. It was indeed a jewe man that
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  Speaker 1: those which belonged to the elephants of the earlier ages
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  Speaker 1: of the world. In his hand was a branch of
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  Speaker 1: a tree, which served as a crook for this antediluvian shepherd.
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  Speaker 1: We remained profoundly, still speechless with surprise, but we might
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  Speaker 1: at any moment be seen by him. Nothing remained for
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  Speaker 1: us but instant flight. Come, Come, I cried, dragging my
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  Speaker 1: uncle along, and for the first time he made no
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  Speaker 1: resistance to my wishes. A quarter of an hour later
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  Speaker 1: we were far away from that terrible monster. Now that
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  Speaker 1: I think of the matter calmly, and that I'd reflect
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  Speaker 1: upon it dispassionately. Now that months years have passed since
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  Speaker 1: this strange and unnatural adventure befell us, what am I
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  Speaker 1: to think? What am I to believe? No, it is
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  Speaker 1: utterly impossible. Our ears must have deceived us, and our
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  Speaker 1: eyes have cheated us. We have not seen what we
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  Speaker 1: believed we had seen. No human being could, by any possibility,
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  Speaker 1: have existed in that subterranean world. No generation of men
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  Speaker 1: could inhabit the lower caverns of the globe without taking
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  Speaker 1: note of those who peopled the surface, without communication with them.
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  Speaker 1: It was fully, fully folly nothing else. I am rather
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  Speaker 1: inclined to admit the existence of some animal resembling in structure,
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  Speaker 1: the human race of some monkey of the first geological epochs,
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  Speaker 1: like that discovered by Monsieur l'arte in the ossiferious deposit
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  Speaker 1: of San San. But this animal, or being, which soever
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  Speaker 1: it was, surpassed in height all things known to modern science.
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  Speaker 1: Never Mind, however unlikely it may be. It might have
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  Speaker 1: been a monkey, but a man, a living man, and
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  Speaker 1: with him a whole generation of gigantic animals buried in
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  Speaker 1: the entrails of the earth. It was too monstrous to
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  Speaker 1: be believed. End of Chapter thirty six.