The Central Sea
Harry is amazed to find himself standing on the shore of a vast lake, if not an ocean, its end lost in the distance. On all sides there are capes and promontories and enormous cliffs. The rock above his head reaches to an inconceivable height. The light is produced by the clouds above the water, something in the nature of the aurora borealis, although this melancholy light is constant. After forty-seven days in a dark and miserable tunnel, Harry is overwhelmed.
| "Not to admire is all the art I know, |
| To make man happy and to keep him so." |
| Horace |
Harry and the Professor take a walk along the beach. Rounding a titanic pile of fallen rocks, Harry is surprised to enter a lofty forest. He cannot name the tall straight trees with tufted tops like parasols, but his uncle can. The "trees" are really lycoperdon giganteum - giant mushrooms!
For the next few days, while Hans is busy building a raft to carry them across the sea, Harry explores the forest further. He finds many amazing plants including lycopodes a hundred feet high, flowering ferns as tall as pines and gigantic grasses. Amoungst the bones scattered on the forest floor, he finds the jawbone of a mastodon. Did such creatures once roam this place? Are there more and do they still live?
On the fourteenth of August, the little raft is ready. Early the next morning, the three men set sail. As they head out across the Central Sea, Harry names their point of departure Port Gretchen, after the Professor's god-daughter back in Hamburg, so very far away.