“Vainly their eyes looked for the great city.“
The first effect of the outer air was to produce an impression as of waking from a dream. But a glance over the landscape dispelled this impression in a moment. What they saw must be reality, though awful beyond conception. Vainly their eyes looked for the great city. No city, not even a ruin was there. They longed in vain for human help; not an animated being was in sight. Every vestige of man and his works–it might even be said every vestige of the work of Nature was gone. On three sides were what seemed great rivers of slime, while, toward the North, the region which had swarmed with the life and activity of the great world-center was a flat surface of dried clay, black sand, or steaming mud, in which not even an insect crawled. In the thick and vaporous air not a bird warbled its note. To return to their dungeons was like a prisoner returning to his cell. Farther they must go in a search for some familiar object or some sign of humanity. Is there no telegraph to send a word of news? No railway on which a train may run? No plow with which the furrow may be turned? No field in which wheat can be sown? These questions were asked in silence; had they been asked aloud not even an echo would have answered. When the Professor had stored seeds and provisions in his vaults it was with the thought that, if the worst should happen, he and his companions might repopulate the earth. But now every such prospect dissolved away.
As their strength ebbed, a holy calm spread over the souls of all. The Professor found words:
“Such is the course of evolution. The sun, which for millions of years gave light and heat to our system and supported life on the earth, was about to sink into exhaustion and become a cold and inert mass. Its energy could not be revived, except by such a catastrophe as has occurred. The sun is restored to what it was before there was any earth upon which it could shed its rays, and will in time be ready to run its course anew. In order that a race may be renewed it must die like an individual. Untold ages must once more elapse while life is reappearing on earth and developing in higher forms. But to the Power which directs and controls the whole process the ages of humanity are but as days, and it will await in sublime patience the evolution of a new earth and a new order of animated nature, perhaps as far superior to that we have witnessed as ours was to that which preceded it.”