A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jules Verne
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A Journey into the Interior of the Earth
by Jules Verne
[Redactor's Note: The following version of Jules Verne's "Journey
into the Interior of the Earth" was published by Ward, Lock, &Co.,
Ltd., London, in 1877. This version is believed to be the most
faithful rendition into English of this classic currently in the
public domain. The few notes of the translator are located near the
point where they are referenced. The Runic characters in Chapter III
are visible in the HTML version of the text. The character set is
ISO-8891-1, mainly the Windows character set. The translation is by
Frederick Amadeus Malleson.
While the translation is fairly literal, and Malleson (a clergyman)
has taken pains with the scientific portions of the work and added
the chapter headings, he has made some unfortunate emendations mainly
concerning biblical references, and has added a few 'improvements' of
his own, which are detailed below:
III. "PERTUBATA SEU INORDINATA," as Euclid has it.
XXX. cry, "Thalatta! thalatta!" the sea! the sea! The deeply indented
shore was lined with a breadth of fine shining sand, softly
XXXII. hippopotamus. {as if the creator, pressed for time in the
first hours of the world, had assembled several animals into one.}
The colossal mastodon
XXXII. I return to the scriptural periods or ages of the world,
conventionally called 'days,' long before the appearance of man when
the unfinished world was as yet unfitted for his support. {I return
to the biblical epochs of the creation, well in advance of the birth
of man, when the incomplete earth was not yet sufficient for him.}
XXXVIII. (footnote), and which is illustrated in the negro
countenance and in the lowest savages.
XXXIX. of the geologic period. {antediluvian}
(These corrections have kindly been pointed out by Christian Sanchez
of the Jules Verne Forum.)]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A JOURNEY
INTO THE
INTERIOR OF THE EARTH
by
Jules Verne
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
THE "Voyages Extraordinaires" of M. Jules Verne deserve to be made
widely known in English-speaking countries by means of carefully
prepared translations. Witty and ingenious adaptations of the
researches and discoveries of modern science to the popular taste,
which demands that these should be presented to ordinary readers in
the lighter form of cleverly mingled truth and fiction, these books
will assuredly be read with profit and delight, especially by English
youth. Certainly no writer before M. Jules Verne has been so happy in
weaving together in judicious combination severe scientific truth
with a charming exercise of playful imagination.
Iceland, the starting point of the marvellous underground journey
imagined in this volume, is invested at the present time with. a
painful interest in consequence of the disastrous eruptions last
Easter Day, which covered with lava and ashes the poor and scanty
vegetation upon which four thousand persons were partly dependent for
the means of subsistence. For a long time to come the natives of that
interesting island, who cleave to their desert home with all that
AMOR PATRIAE which is so much more easily understood than
explained, will look, and look not in vain, for the help of those on
whom fall the smiles of a kindlier sun in regions not torn by
earthquakes nor blasted and ravaged by volcanic fires. Will the
readers of this little book, who, are gifted with the means of
indulging in the luxury of extended beneficence, remember the
distress of their brethren in the far north, whom distance has not
barred from the claim of being counted our "neighbours"? And whatever
their humane feelings may prompt them to bestow will be gladly added
to the Mansion-House Iceland Relief Fund.
In his desire to ascertain how far the picture of Iceland, drawn in
the work of Jules Verne is a correct one, the translator hopes in the
course of a mail or two to receive a communication from a leading man
of science in the island, which may furnish matter for additional
information in a future edition.
The scientific portion of the French original is not without a few
errors, which the translator, with the kind assistance of Mr. Cameron
of H. M. Geological Survey, has ventured to point out and correct. It
is scarcely to be expected in a work in which the element of
amusement is intended to enter more largely than that of scientific
instruction, that any great degree of accuracy should be arrived at.
Yet the translator hopes that what trifling deviations from the text
or corrections in foot notes he is responsible for, will have done a
little towards the increased usefulness of the work.
F. A. M.
The Vicarage,
Broughton-in-Furness
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
I THE PROFESSOR AND HIS FAMILY
II A MYSTERY TO BE SOLVED AT ANY PRICE
III THE RUNIC WRITING EXERCISES THE PROFESSOR
IV THE ENEMY TO BE STARVED INTO SUBMISSION
V FAMINE, THEN VICTORY, FOLLOWED BY DISMAY
VI EXCITING DISCUSSIONS ABOUT AN UNPARALLELED EXERCISE
VII A WOMAN'S COURAGE
VIII SERIOUS PREPARATIONS FOR VERTICAL DESCENT
IX ICELAND, BUT WHAT NEXT?
X INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS WITH ICELANDIC SAVANTS
XI A GUIDE FOUND TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
XII A BARREN LAND
XIII HOSPITALITY UNDER THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
XIV BUT ARCTICS CAN BE INHOSPITABLE, TOO
XV SNAEFFEL AT LAST
XVI BOLDLY DOWN THE CRATER
XVII VERTICAL DESCENT
XVIII THE WONDERS OF TERRESTIAL DEPTHS
XIX GEOLOGICAL STUDIES IN SITU
XX THE FIRST SIGNS OF DISTRESS
XXI COMPASSION FUSES THE PROFESSOR'S HEART
XXII TOTAL FAILURE OF WATER
XXIII WATER DISCOVERED
XXIV WELL SAID, OLD MOLE! CANST THOU WORK
IN THE GROUND SO FAST?
XXV DE PROFUNDIS
XXVI THE WORST PERIL OF ALL
XXVII LOST IN THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH
XXVIII THE RESCUE IN THE WHISPERING GALLERY
XXIX THALATTA! THALATTA!
XXX A NEW MARE INTERNUM
XXXI PREPARATIONS FOR A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
XXXII WONDERS OF THE DEEP
XXXIII A BATTLE OF MONSTERS
XXXIV THE GREAT GEYSER
XXXV AN ELECTRIC STORM
XXXVI CALM PHILOSOPHIC DISCUSSIONS
XXXVII THE LIEDENBROCK MUSEUM OF GEOLOGY
XXXVIII THE PROFESSOR IN HIS CHAIR AGAIN
XXXIX FOREST SCENERY ILLUMINATED BY ELECTRICITY
XL PREPARATIONS FOR BLASTING A PASSAGE
TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
XLI THE GREAT EXPLOSION AND THE RUSH DOWN BELOW
XLII HEADLONG SPEED UPWARD THROUGH THE HORRORS OF DARKNESS
XLIII SHOT OUT OF A VOLCANO AT LAST!
XLIV SUNNY LANDS IN THE BLUE MEDITERRANEAN
XLV ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH
CHAPTER I.
THE PROFESSOR AND HIS FAMILY
On the 24th of May, 1863, my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, rushed
into his little house, No. 19 Konigstrasse, one of the oldest streets
in the oldest portion of the city of Hamburg.
Martha must have concluded that she was very much behindhand, for the
dinner had only just been put into the oven.
"Well, now," said I to myself, "if that most impatient of men is
hungry, what a disturbance he will make!"
"M. Liedenbrock so soon!" cried poor Martha in great alarm, half
opening the dining-room door.
"Yes, Martha; but very likely the dinner is not half cooked, for it
is not two yet. Saint Michael's clock has only just struck half-past
one."
"Then why has the master come home so soon?"
"Perhaps he will tell us that himself."
"Here he is, Monsieur Axel; I will run and hide myself while you
argue with him."
And Martha retreated in safety into her own dominions.
I was left alone. But how was it possible for a man of my undecided
turn of mind to argue successfully with so irascible a person as the
Professor? With this persuasion I was hurrying away to my own little
retreat upstairs, when the street door creaked upon its hinges; heavy
feet made the whole flight of stairs to shake; and the master of the
house, passing rapidly through the dining-room, threw himself in
haste into his own sanctum.
But on his rapid way he had found time to fling his hazel stick into
a corner, his rough broadbrim upon the table, and these few emphatic
words at his nephew:
"Axel, follow me!"
I had scarcely had time to move when the Professor was again shouting
after me:
"What! not come yet?"
And I rushed into my redoubtable master's study.
Otto Liedenbrock had no mischief in him, I willingly allow that; but
unless he very considerably changes as he grows older, at the end he
will be a most original character.
He was professor at the Johannaeum, and was delivering a series of
lectures on mineralogy, in the course of every one of which he broke
into a passion once or twice at least. Not at all that he was
over-anxious about the improvement of his class, or about the degree
of attention with which they listened to him, or the success which
might eventually crown his labours. Such little matters of detail
never troubled him much. His teaching was as the German philosophy
calls it, 'subjective'; it was to benefit himself, not others. He was
a learned egotist. He was a well of science, and the pulleys worked
uneasily when you wanted to draw anything out of it. In a word, he
was a learned miser.
Germany has not a few professors of this sort.
To his misfortune, my uncle was not gifted with a sufficiently rapid
utterance; not, to be sure, when he was talking at home, but
certainly in his public delivery; this is a want much to be deplored
in a speaker. The fact is, that during the course of his lectures at
the Johannaeum, the Professor often came to a complete standstill; he
fought with wilful words that refused to pass his struggling lips,
such words as resist and distend the cheeks, and at last break out
into the unasked-for shape of a round and most unscientific oath:
then his fury would gradually abate.
Now in mineralogy there are many half-Greek and half-Latin terms,
very hard to articulate, and which would be most trying to a poet's
measures. I don't wish to say a word against so respectable a
science, far be that from me. True, in the august presence of
rhombohedral crystals, retinasphaltic resins, gehlenites, Fassaites,
molybdenites, tungstates of manganese, and titanite of zirconium,
why, the most facile of tongues may make a slip now and then.
It therefore happened that this venial fault of my uncle's came to be
pretty well understood in time, and an unfair advantage was taken of
it; the students laid wait for him in dangerous places, and when he
began to stumble, loud was the laughter, which is not in good taste,
not even in Germans. And if there was always a full audience to
honour the Liedenbrock courses, I should be sorry to conjecture how
many came to make merry at my uncle's expense.
Nevertheless my good uncle was a man of deep learning--a fact I am
most anxious to assert and reassert. Sometimes he might irretrievably
injure a specimen by his too great ardour in handling it; but still
he united the genius of a true geologist with the keen eye of the
mineralogist. Armed with his hammer, his steel pointer, his magnetic
needles, his blowpipe, and his bottle of nitric acid, he was a
powerful man of science. He would refer any mineral to its proper
place among the six hundred [l] elementary substances now enumerated,
by its fracture, its appearance, its hardness, its fusibility, its
sonorousness, its smell, and its taste.
The name of Liedenbrock was honourably mentioned in colleges and
learned societies. Humphry Davy, [2] Humboldt, Captain Sir John
Franklin, General Sabine, never failed to call upon him on their way
through Hamburg. Becquerel, Ebelman, Brewster, Dumas, Milne-Edwards,
Saint-Claire-Deville frequently consulted him upon the most difficult
problems in chemistry, a science which was indebted to him for
considerable discoveries, for in 1853 there had appeared at Leipzig
an imposing folio by Otto Liedenbrock, entitled, "A Treatise upon
Transcendental Chemistry," with plates; a work, however, which failed
to cover its expenses.
To all these titles to honour let me add that my uncle was the
curator of the museum of mineralogy formed by M. Struve, the Russian
ambassador; a most valuable collection, the fame of which is European.
Such was the gentleman who addressed me in that impetuous manner.
Fancy a tall, spare man, of an iron constitution, and with a fair
complexion which took off a good ten years from the fifty he must own
to. His restless eyes were in incessant motion behind his full-sized
spectacles. His long, thin nose was like a knife blade. Boys have
been heard to remark that that organ was magnetised and attracted
iron filings. But this was merely a mischievous report; it had no
attraction except for snuff, which it seemed to draw to itself in
great quantities.
When I have added, to complete my portrait, that my uncle walked by
mathematical strides of a yard and a half, and that in walking he
kept his fists firmly closed, a sure sign of an irritable
temperament, I think I shall have said enough to disenchant any one
who should by mistake have coveted much of his company.
He lived in his own little house in Konigstrasse, a structure half
brick and half wood, with a gable cut into steps; it looked upon one
of those winding canals which intersect each other in the middle of
the ancient quarter of Hamburg, and which the great fire of 1842 had
fortunately spared.
[1] Sixty-three. (Tr.)
[2] As Sir Humphry Davy died in 1829, the translator must be pardoned
for pointing out here an anachronism, unless we are to assume that
the learned Professor's celebrity dawned in his earliest years. (Tr.)
It is true that the old house stood slightly off the perpendicular,
and bulged out a little towards the street; its roof sloped a little
to one side, like the cap over the left ear of a Tugendbund student;
its lines wanted accuracy; but after all, it stood firm, thanks to an
old elm which buttressed it in front, and which often in spring sent
its young sprays through the window panes.
My uncle was tolerably well off for a German professor. The house was
his own, and everything in it. The living contents were his
god-daughter Grauben, a young Virlandaise of seventeen, Martha, and
myself. As his nephew and an orphan, I became his laboratory
assistant.
I freely confess that I was exceedingly fond of geology and all its
kindred sciences; the blood of a mineralogist was in my veins, and in
the midst of my specimens I was always happy.
In a word, a man might live happily enough in the little old house in
the Konigstrasse, in spite of the restless impatience of its master,
for although he was a little too excitable--he was very fond of me.
But the man had no notion how to wait; nature herself was too slow
for him. In April, after a had planted in the terra-cotta pots
outside his window seedling plants of mignonette and convolvulus, he
would go and give them a little pull by their leaves to make them
grow faster. In dealing with such a strange individual there was
nothing for it but prompt obedience. I therefore rushed after him.
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