the highest points were quite invisible; not a trace on the horizon
was left of the Jurjura chain, the topmost point of which was known
to have an altitude of more than 7,000 feet.

Unsparing of her fuel, the _Dobryna_ made her way at full steam towards
Cape Blanc. Neither Cape Negro nor Cape Serrat was to be seen.
The town of Bizerta, once charming in its oriental beauty,
had vanished utterly; its marabouts, or temple-tombs, shaded
by magnificent palms that fringed the gulf, which by reason of its
narrow mouth had the semblance of a lake, all had disappeared,
giving place to a vast waste of sea, the transparent waves of which,
as still demonstrated by the sounding-line, had ever the same uniform
and arid bottom.

In the course of the day the schooner rounded the point where,
five weeks previously, Cape Blanc had been so conspicuous an object,
and she was now stemming the waters of what once had been
the Bay of Tunis. But bay there was none, and the town from
which it had derived its name, with the Arsenal, the Goletta,
and the two peaks of Bou-Kournein, had all vanished from the view.
Cape Bon, too, the most northern promontory of Africa and
the point of the continent nearest to the island of Sicily,
had been included in the general devastation.

Before the occurrence of the recent prodigy, the bottom of
the Mediterranean just at this point had formed a sudden ridge
across the Straits of Libya. The sides of the ridge had shelved
to so great an extent that, while the depth of water on the summit
had been little more than eleven fathoms, that on either hand
of the elevation was little short of a hundred fathoms.