They resembled a whale with the head of
an alligator.
I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school--about
all that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations
of restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined
belief that any man with a pig's shank and a vivid imagination
could "restore" most any sort of paleolithic monster he saw fit,
and take rank as a first class paleontologist. But when I saw these
sleek, shiny carcasses shimmering in the sunlight as they emerged
from the ocean, shaking their giant heads; when I saw the waters
roll from their sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided
hither and thither, now upon the surface, now half submerged; as I
saw them meet, open-mouthed, hissing and snorting, in their titanic
and interminable warring I realized how futile is man's poor, weak
imagination by comparison with Nature's incredible genius.
And Perry! He was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself.
"David," he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside
that awful sea. "David, I used to teach geology, and I thought
that I believed what I taught; but now I see that I did not believe
it--that it is impossible for man to believe such things as these
unless he sees them with his own eyes. We take things for granted,
perhaps, because we are told them over and over again, and have no
way of disproving them--like religions, for example; but we don't
believe them, we only think we do.
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