I particularly remarked, in the clearings left by trees that had fallen and been partially consumed by time, many leguminous (beanlike) shrubs, such as the maple and other eatable trees, dear to ruminating animals. Then there appeared confounded together and intermixed, the trees of such varied lands, specimens of the vegetation of every part of the globe; there was the oak near the palm tree, the Australian eucalyptus, an interesting class of the order Myrtaceae--leaning against the tall Norwegian pine, the poplar of the north, mixing its branches with those of the New Zealand kauris. It was enough to drive the most ingenious classifier of the upper regions out of his mind, and to upset all his received ideas about botany. Suddenly I stopped short and restrained my uncle. The extreme diffuseness of the light enabled me to see the smallest objects in the distant copses. I thought I saw--no, I really did see with my own eyes--immense, gigantic animals moving about under the mighty trees. Yes, they were truly gigantic animals, a whole herd of mastodons, not fossils, but living, and exactly like those discovered in 1801, on the marshy banks of the great Ohio, in North America. Yes, I could see these enormous elephants, whose trunks were tearing down large boughs, and working in and out the trees like a legion of serpents. I could hear the sounds of the mighty tusks uprooting huge trees! The boughs crackled, and the whole masses of leaves and green branches went down the capacious throats of these terrible monsters! That wondrous dream, when I saw the antehistorical times revivified, when the Tertiary and Quaternary periods passed before me, was now realized! And there we were alone, far down in the bowels of the earth, at the mercy of its ferocious inhabitants! My uncle paused, full of wonder and astonishment. "Come!" he said at last, when his first surprise was over, "Come along, my boy, and let us see them nearer." "No," replied I, restraining his efforts to drag me forward, "we are wholly without arms. What should we do in the midst of that flock of gigantic quadrupeds? Come away, Uncle, I implore you. No human creature can with impunity brave the ferocious anger of these monsters." "No human creature," said my uncle, suddenly lowering his voice to a mysterious whisper, "you are mistaken, my dear Henry. Look! look yonder! It seems to me that I behold a human being--a being like ourselves--a man!" I looked, shrugging my shoulders, decided to push incredulity to its very last limits. But whatever might have been my wish, I was compelled to yield to the weight of ocular demonstration. Yes--not more than a quarter of a mile off, leaning against the trunk of an enormous tree, was a human being--a Proteus of these subterranean regions, a new son of Neptune keeping this innumerable herd of mastodons. Immanis pecoris custos, immanior ipse![5] [5] The keeper of gigantic cattle, himself still more gigantic!