I could observe these strange walls quite closely: our sounding lines
indicated that they dropped perpendicularly for more than 300 meters,
and our electric beams made the bright limestone positively sparkle.
In reply to a question Conseil asked me about the growth rate
of these colossal barriers, I thoroughly amazed him by saying
that scientists put it at an eighth of an inch per biennium.
"Therefore," he said to me, "to build these walls, it took . . . ?"
"192,000 years, my gallant Conseil, which significantly extends
the biblical Days of Creation. What's more, the formation of coal--
in other words, the petrification of forests swallowed by floods--
and the cooling of basaltic rocks likewise call for a much longer
period of time. I might add that those 'days' in the Bible
must represent whole epochs and not literally the lapse of time
between two sunrises, because according to the Bible itself,
the sun doesn't date from the first day of Creation."
When the Nautilus returned to the surface of the ocean, I could take
in Reao Island over its whole flat, wooded expanse. Obviously its
madreporic rocks had been made fertile by tornadoes and thunderstorms.
One day, carried off by a hurricane from neighboring shores,
some seed fell onto these limestone beds, mixing with decomposed
particles of fish and marine plants to form vegetable humus.
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