When the World Shook

When the World Shook is a novel by H. Rider Haggard written in 1919. It deals with the adventures of Bastin, Bickley, and Arbuthnot as they travel to the south sea island of Orofena.

They search a cave in the side of the volcano and find two crystal coffins with two people in them. First they revive an old man who is the original Oro. Next they revive his daughter Yva.

After being revived, Oro makes astronomical observations to confirm by stellar movements that he and his daughter have been unconscious for 250,000 years. Yva claims they know the position of the stars as they came from a society that was filled with wisdom known as the age of wisdom. To describe what the age of wisdom was like, Yva conjures up scenes from the age of wisdom by showing the men a hallucination of the past.