Fern, which is now a pigmy plant, nowhere higher than a few feet, grew
tall and overshadowing like great oaks, while oaks, it is fair to
presume, towered thousands of feet towards the sky. These stupendous
forests stood alone upon the surface of the earth; no animals wandered
through their fastnesses; no birds sported amidst their mighty
branches; noxious exhalations came steaming up from their tangled
recesses, and their gloomy shadows lay a mantle of darkness over
dreary and lifeless solitudes. The storms raged, and the winds howled;
the sun travelled its daily rounds, with its light dimmed and clouded
by the pestilential vapors it exhaled, and silence, so far as the
sounds of animal life were concerned, reigned supreme--the stillness
of the grave, the quiet of utter desolation, save the voice of the
wind or the storm, was unbroken all over the face of the earth.
Onward, and onward, rolled this mighty orb on its pathway through the
heavens, bearing with it no animal existences, freighted with no human
hopes--carrying with it nothing of human destiny. Man, with all his
lofty aspirations, his mighty schemes, his glory, and his pride, was a
thing of the future. He had not yet emerged from the eternity of the
past, to grapple with the present, or encounter the retributions of
the eternity which is to come.
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