were so irregular that it was much more nearly a triangle,
the comparison of the sides exhibiting these proportions:
The section of the right bank of the Shelif, seventy-two miles;
the southern boundary from the Shelif to the chain of the Little Atlas,
twenty-one miles; from the Little Atlas to the Mediterranean,
eighteen miles; and sixty miles of the shore of the Mediterranean itself,
making in all an entire circumference of about 171 miles.

"What does it all mean?" exclaimed the captain, every hour growing
more and more bewildered.

"The will of Providence, and we must submit," replied Ben Zoof,
calm and undisturbed. With this reflection, the two men
silently descended the mountain and remounted their horses.
Before evening they had reached the Mediterranean. On their road
they failed to discern a vestige of the little town of Montenotte;
like Tenes, of which not so much as a ruined cottage was visible
on the horizon, it seemed to be annihilated.

On the following day, the 6th of January, the two men made
a forced march along the coast of the Mediterranean, which they
found less altered than the captain had at first supposed;
but four villages had entirely disappeared, and the headlands,
unable to resist the shock of the convulsion, had been detached
from the mainland.

The circuit of the island had been now completed, and the explorers,
after a period of sixty hours, found themselves once more beside
the ruins of their gourbi. Five days, or what, according to the
established order of things, would have been two days and a half,