The
descent into the rocky bottom of the Chamouin, more than
fifteen hundred feet below the line of flight, had of
course been rapid,--slow at first, but in the end rapid.
In the first second, the lost palace had fallen sixteen
feet; in the second, sixty-four; in the third, one
hundred and forty-four; in the fourth, two hundred and
fifty-six; in the fifth, four hundred feet; so that
it must have been near the end of the sixth second of its
fall, that, with a velocity now of more than six hundred
feet in a second, the falling palace, with its
unconscious passengers, fell upon the rocks at the bottom
of the Chamoguin ravine. In the dead of night, wholly
without jar or parting, those passengers must have been
sleeping soundly; and it is impossible, therefore, on any
calculation of human probability, that any one of them
can have been waked an instant before the complete
destruction of the palace, by the sudden shock of its
fall upon the bed of the stream. To them the accident,
if it is fair to call it so, must have been wholly free
from pain.
The tangles of that ravine, and the swamp below it,
are such that I suppose that even the most adventurous
huntsman never finds his way there. On the only occasion
when I ever met Mr. Jules Verne he expressed a desire to
descend there from one of his balloons, to learn whether
the inhabitants of "The Lost Palace" might not still
survive, and be living in a happy republican colony
there,--a place without railroads, without telegrams,
without mails, and certainly without palaces.
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