des? Thereupon there was much commotion among geologists,
who were not so wise as a Frenchman, M. Elie de Beaumont, has been
since. He showed that these animals used to live in rather high
latitudes, and that the streams and rivers simply carried their bodies
to the places where they were found. But do you know the explanation
which scientific men gave before this one?"

"Scientific men are capable of anything," said Altamont.

"Yes, in explanation of a fact; well, they imagined that the Pole used
to be at the equator and the equator at the Pole."

"Bah!"

"It was exactly what I tell you. Now, if it had been so, since the
earth is flattened more than five leagues at the pole, the seas,
carried to the equator by centrifugal force, would have covered
mountains twice as high as the Himalayas; all the countries near the
polar circle, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Siberia, Greenland, and New
Britain, would have been buried in five leagues of water, while the
regions at the equator, having become the pole, would have formed
plateaus fifteen leagues high!"

"What a change!" said Johnson.

"O, that made no difference to scientific men!"

"And how did they explain the alteration?" asked Altamont.

"They said it was due to the shock of collision with a comet. The
comet is the _deus ex machina_; whenever one comes to a difficult
question in cosmography, a comet is lugged in. It is the most obliging
of the heavenly bodies, and at the least sign from a scientific man it
disarranges itself to arrange everything."

"Then," said Johnson, "according to you, Doctor, this change is
impossible?"

"Impossible!"

"And if it should take place?"

"If it did, the equator would be frozen in twenty-four hours!"

"Good! if it were to take place now," said Bell, "people would as
likely as not say we had never gone to the Pole."

"Calm yourself, Bell. To return to the immobility of the terrestrial
axis, the following is the result: if we were to spend a winter here,
we should see the stars describing a circle about us. As for the sun,
the day of the vernal equinox, March 23d, it would appear to us (I
take no account of refraction) exactly cut in two by the horizon, and
would rise gradually in longer and longer curves; but here it is
remarkable that when it has once risen it sets no more; it is visible
for six months. Then its disk touches the horizon again at the
autumnal equinox, September 22d, and as soon as it is set, it is seen
no m