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Well, I suppose you'll 'bout ship an' run along the coast till we find a channel." This was precisely what Antoine meant to do, and did, but it was not until more than an hour had been lost that a safe bridge was found. When they had crossed, the configuration of the ice forced them to adopt a route which they would willingly have avoided.
Had we only the evidence of the deposits of rock heaped above each other in regular strata by the slow accumulation of materials, they alone would convince us of the long and slow maturing of God's work on the earth but when we add to these the successive populations of whose life this world has been the theatre, and whose remains are hidden in the rocks into which the mud or sand or soil of whatever kind on which they lived has hardened in the course of time, or the enormous chains of mountains whose upheaval divided these periods of quiet accumulation by great convulsions, or the changes of a different nature in the configuration of our globe, as the sinking of lands beneath the ocean, or the gradual rising of continents and islands above it, or the wearing of great river-beds, or the filling of extensive water-basins, till marshes first and then dry land succeeded to inland seas, or the slow growth of coral reefs, those wonderful sea-walls raised by the little ocean-architects whose own bodies furnish both the building-stones and the cement that binds them together, and who have worked so busily during the long centuries, that there are extensive countries, mountain-chains, islands, and long lines of coast consisting solely of their remains, or the countless forests that must have grown up, flourished, died, and decayed, to fill the storehouses of coal that feed the fires of the human race to-day, if we consider all these records of the past, the intellect fails to grasp a chronology for which our experience furnishes no data, and the time that lies behind us seems as much an eternity to our conception as the future that stretches indefinitely before us.
Now the change of the configuration of the system of nature at this moment must be an effect of the preceding configuration, for a change of configuration cannot exist without a previous configuration; and the proximate cause of every effect must immediately precede that effect.
In this manner some English officer has probably been the undesigning medium of giving these Afghans a peep into the configuration of the earth they live on, and their first lesson in geography. I reward the young man by asking him whether he too is a "kiftan." He acknowledges the compliment by a broad grin and two salaams made in rapid succession.
Every step we took unfolded a fresh succession of these jagged spikes and break-neck acclivities, in an unending variety of quaint configuration.
Twenty-seven minutes past two, and Gallia is only 72,000 miles from the terrestrial sphere; quicker and quicker is the velocity; ten minutes later, and they are only 36,000 miles apart! The whole configuration of the earth is clear. "Europe! Russia! France!" shout Procope, the count, and Servadac, almost in a breath. And they are not mistaken.
Engineers surveying for a railway lay down the line level, or as nearly level as the configuration of the surface will permit; but an engineer's level is not a straight line; it is the segment of a circle, that circle being the circumference of the globe.
They decide presumptuously and in a lump, This man is a murderer, a hero, a coward, the slave of avarice, or the votary of philanthropy; and then, surveying the outside of his head, undertake to find in him the configuration that should indicate these dispositions, and must be found in all persons of a similar character, or rather whose acts bear the same outward form, and seem analogous to his.
The major was more than ever elated that the affair should have taken such a pleasant turn, and bid them fill their glasses, which they were glad enough to do, with renewals at such short intervals that the major, who was not to be outdone in number of glasses, providing his patriotism was pledged in them, found himself in a state of mental configuration, for he saw ghosts and dead warriors by the dozen, all of which he would have sworn, in a court of law, were real flesh and blood.
At last, however, in the eastern Mediterranean was learnt the lesson of the profits attending the sea-going life, and there began the true Mediterranean phase, which is essentially an era of sea-borne commerce. Then was the chance for the northern shore with its peninsular configuration. Carthage on the south shore must be regarded as a bold experiment that did not answer.
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