A CRYSTAL AGE


Chapter 1

I do not quite know how it happened, my recollection of the whole matter
ebbing in a somewhat clouded condition. I fancy I had gone somewhere on
a botanizing expedition, but whether at home or abroad I don't know. At
all events, I remember that I had taken up the study of plants with a
good deal of enthusiasm, and that while hunting for some variety in the
mountains I sat down to rest on the edge of a ravine. Perhaps it was on
the ledge of an overhanging rock; anyhow, if I remember rightly, the
ground gave way all about me, precipitating me below. The fall was a
very considerable one--probably thirty or forty feet, or more, and I was
rendered unconscious. How long I lay there under the heap of earth and
stones carried down in my fall it is impossible to say: perhaps a long
time; but at last I came to myself and struggled up from the
_debris_, like a mole coming to the surface of the earth to feel
the genial sunshine on his dim eyeballs. I found myself standing (oddly
enough, on all fours) in an immense pit created by the overthrow of a
gigantic dead tree with a girth of about thirty or forty feet. The tree
itself had rolled down to the bottom of the ravine; but the pit in which
it had left the huge stumps of severed roots was, I found, situated in a
gentle slope at the top of the bank! How, then, I could have fallen