jules verne journey to the center of the earth f a malleson

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain This particular ebook is based on a transcription produced for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans available at the Internet Archive The writing and artwork within are believed to be in the U.S public domain, and Standard Ebooks releases this ebook edition under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org I THE PROFESSOR AND HIS FAMILY On the 24th of May, 1863, my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, rushed into his little house, No 19 Königstrasse, 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! Have you 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 Johannæum, 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 overanxious 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 Johannæum, 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 hundred1 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, SaintClaire-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 anyone who should by mistake have coveted much of his company He lived in his own little house in Königstrasse, 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 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 goddaughter Gräuben, 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 Königstrasse, 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 he had planted in the terracotta 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 II A MYSTERY TO BE SOLVED AT ANY PRICE That study of his was a museum, and nothing else Specimens of everything known in mineralogy lay there in their places in perfect order, and correctly named, divided into inflammable, metallic, and lithoid minerals How well I knew all these bits of science! Many a time, instead of enjoying the company of lads of my own age, I had preferred dusting these graphites, anthracites, coals, lignites, and peats! And there were bitumens, resins, organic salts, to be protected from the least grain of dust; and metals, from iron to gold, metals whose current value altogether disappeared in the presence of the republican equality of scientific specimens; and stones too, enough to rebuild entirely the house in Königstrasse, even with a handsome additional room, which would have suited me admirably But on entering this study now I thought of none of all these wonders; my uncle alone filled my thoughts He had thrown himself into a velvet easy-chair, and was grasping between his hands a book over which he bent, pondering with intense admiration “Here’s a remarkable book! What a wonderful book!” he was exclaiming These ejaculations brought to my mind the fact that my uncle was liable to occasional fits of bibliomania; but no old book had any value in his eyes unless it had the virtue of being nowhere else to be found, or, at any rate, of being illegible “Well, now; don’t you see it yet? Why I have got a priceless treasure, that I found his morning, in rummaging in old Hevelius’s shop, the Jew.” “Magnificent!” I replied, with a good imitation of enthusiasm What was the good of all this fuss about an old quarto, bound in rough calf, a yellow, faded volume, with a ragged seal depending from it? But for all that there was no lull yet in the admiring exclamations of the Professor “See,” he went on, both asking the questions and supplying the answers “Isn’t it a beauty? Yes; splendid! Did you ever see such a binding? Doesn’t the book open easily? Yes; it stops open anywhere But does it shut equally well? Yes; for the binding and the leaves are flush, all in a straight line, and no gaps or openings anywhere And look at its back, after seven hundred years Why, Bozerian, Closs, or Purgold might have been proud of such a binding!” While rapidly making these comments my uncle kept opening and shutting the old tome I really could no less than ask a question about its contents, although I did not feel the slightest interest “And what is the title of this marvellous work?” I asked with an affected eagerness which he must have been very blind not to see through “This work,” replied my uncle, firing up with renewed enthusiasm, “this work is the Heims Kringla of Snorre Turlleson, the most famous Icelandic author of the twelfth century! It is the chronicle of the Norwegian princes who ruled in Iceland.” “Indeed;” I cried, keeping up wonderfully, “of course it is a German translation?” “What!” sharply replied the Professor, “a translation! What should I with a translation? This is the Icelandic original, in the magnificent idiomatic vernacular, which is both rich and simple, and admits of an infinite variety of grammatical combinations and verbal modifications.” “Like German.” I happily ventured “Yes,” replied my uncle, shrugging his shoulders; “but, in addition to all this, the Icelandic has three numbers like the Greek, and irregular declensions of nouns proper like the Latin.” “Ah!” said I, a little moved out of my indifference; “and is the type good?” “Type! What you mean by talking of type, wretched Axel? Type! Do you take it for a printed book, you ignorant fool? It is a manuscript, a Runic manuscript.” “Runic?” “Yes Do you want me to explain what that is?” “Of course not,” I replied in the tone of an injured man But my uncle persevered, and told me, against my will, of many things I cared nothing about “Runic characters were in use in Iceland in former ages They were invented, it is said, by Odin himself Look there, and wonder, impious young man, and admire these letters, the invention of the Scandinavian god!” Well, well! Not knowing what to say, I was going to prostrate myself before this wonderful book, a way of answering equally pleasing to gods and kings, and which has the advantage of never giving them any embarrassment, when a little incident happened to divert conversation into another channel This was the appearance of a dirty slip of parchment, which slipped out of the volume and fell upon the floor My uncle pounced upon this shred with incredible avidity An old document, enclosed an immemorial time within the folds of this old book, had for him an immeasurable value “What’s this?” he cried And he laid out upon the table a piece of parchment, five inches by three, and along which were traced certain mysterious characters Here is the exact facsimile I think it important to let these strange signs be publicly known, for they were the means of drawing on Professor Liedenbrock and his nephew to undertake the most wonderful expedition of the nineteenth century The Professor mused a few moments over this series of characters; then raising his spectacles he pronounced: “These are Runic letters; they are exactly like those of the manuscript of Snorre Turlleson But, what on earth is their meaning?” Runic letters appearing to my mind to be an invention of the learned to mystify this poor world, I was not sorry to see my uncle suffering the pangs of mystification At least, so it seemed to me, judging from his fingers, which were beginning to work with terrible energy “It is certainly old Icelandic,” he muttered between his teeth “Well, whatever mountain this may be,” he said at last, “it is very hot here The explosions are going on still, and I don’t think it would look well to have come out by an eruption, and then to get our heads broken by bits of falling rock Let us get down Then we shall know better what we are about Besides, I am starving, and parching with thirst.” Decidedly the Professor was not given to contemplation For my part, I could for another hour or two have forgotten my hunger and my fatigue to enjoy the lovely scene before me; but I had to follow my companions The slope of the volcano was in many places of great steepness We slid down screes of ashes, carefully avoiding the lava streams which glided sluggishly by us like fiery serpents As we went I chattered and asked all sorts of questions as to our whereabouts, for I was too much excited not to talk a great deal “We are in Asia,” I cried, “on the coasts of India, in the Malay Islands, or in Oceania We have passed through half the globe, and come out nearly at the antipodes.” “But the compass?” said my uncle “Aye, the compass!” I said, greatly puzzled “According to the compass we have gone northward.” “Has it lied?” “Surely not Could it lie?” “Unless, indeed, this is the North Pole!” “Oh, no, it is not the Pole; but—” Well, here was something that baffled us completely I could not tell what to say But now we were coming into that delightful greenery, and I was suffering greatly from hunger and thirst Happily, after two hours’ walking, a charming country lay open before us, covered with olive trees, pomegranate trees, and delicious vines, all of which seemed to belong to anybody who pleased to claim them Besides, in our state of destitution and famine we were not likely to be particular Oh, the inexpressible pleasure of pressing those cool, sweet fruits to our lips, and eating grapes by mouthfuls off the rich, full bunches! Not far off, in the grass, under the delicious shade of the trees, I discovered a spring of fresh, cool water, in which we luxuriously bathed our faces, hands, and feet Whilst we were thus enjoying the sweets of repose a child appeared out of a grove of olive trees “Ah!” I cried, “here is an inhabitant of this happy land!” It was but a poor boy, miserably ill-clad, a sufferer from poverty, and our aspect seemed to alarm him a great deal; in fact, only half clothed, with ragged hair and beards, we were a suspicious-looking party; and if the people of the country knew anything about thieves, we were very likely to frighten them Just as the poor little wretch was going to take to his heels, Hans caught hold of him, and brought him to us, kicking and struggling My uncle began to encourage him as well as he could, and said to him in good German: “Was heißt diesen Berg, mein Knablein? Sage mir geschwind!” (“What is this mountain called, my little friend?”) The child made no answer “Very well,” said my uncle “I infer that we are not in Germany.” He put the same question in English We got no forwarder I was a good deal puzzled “Is the child dumb?” cried the Professor, who, proud of his knowledge of many languages, now tried French: “Comment appelle t’on cette montagne, mon enfant?” Silence still “Now let us try Italian,” said my uncle; and he said: “Dove noi siamo?” “Yes, where are we?” I impatiently repeated But there was no answer still “Will you speak when you are told?” Exclaimed my uncle, shaking the urchin by the ears “Come si noma questa isola?” “STROMBOLI,” replied the little herdboy, slipping out of Hans’ hands, and scudding into the plain across the olive trees We were hardly thinking of that Stromboli! What an effect this unexpected name produced upon my mind! We were in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea, on an island of the Aeolian archipelago, in the ancient Strongyle, where Aeolus kept the winds and the storms chained up, to be let loose at his will And those distant blue mountains in the east were the mountains of Calabria And that threatening volcano far away in the south was the fierce Etna “Stromboli, Stromboli!” I repeated My uncle kept time to my exclamations with hands and feet, as well as with words We seemed to be chanting in chorus! What a journey we had accomplished! How marvellous! Having entered by one volcano, we had issued out of another more than two thousand miles from Snæfells and from that barren, faraway Iceland! The strange chances of our expedition had carried us into the heart of the fairest region in the world We had exchanged the bleak regions of perpetual snow and of impenetrable barriers of ice for those of brightness and “the rich hues of all glorious things.” We had left over our heads the murky sky and cold fogs of the frigid zone to revel under the azure sky of Italy! After our delicious repast of fruits and cold, clear water we set off again to reach the port of Stromboli It would not have been wise to tell how we came there The superstitious Italians would have set us down for firedevils vomited out of hell; so we presented ourselves in the humble guise of shipwrecked mariners It was not so glorious, but it was safer On my way I could hear my uncle murmuring: “But the compass! that compass! It pointed due north How are we to explain that fact?” “My opinion is,” I replied disdainfully, “that it is best not to explain it That is the easiest way to shelve the difficulty.” “Indeed, sir! The occupant of a professorial chair at the Johannæum unable to explain the reason of a cosmical phenomenon! Why, it would be simply disgraceful!” And as he spoke, my uncle, half undressed, in rags, a perfect scarecrow, with his leathern belt around him, settling his spectacles upon his nose and looking learned and imposing, was himself again, the terrible German professor of mineralogy One hour after we had left the grove of olives, we arrived at the little port of San Vicenzo, where Hans claimed his thirteen week’s wages, which was counted out to him with a hearty shaking of hands all round At that moment, if he did not share our natural emotion, at least his countenance expanded in a manner very unusual with him, and while with the ends of his fingers he lightly pressed our hands, I believe he smiled XLV ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL Such is the conclusion of a history which I cannot expect everybody to believe, for some people will believe nothing against the testimony of their own experience However, I am indifferent to their incredulity, and they may believe as much or as little as they please The Stromboliotes received us kindly as shipwrecked mariners They gave us food and clothing After waiting forty-eight hours, on the 31st of August, a small craft took us to Messina, where a few days’ rest completely removed the effect of our fatigues On Friday, September the 4th, we embarked on the steamer Volturno, employed by the French Messageries Impériales, and in three days more we were at Marseilles, having no care on our minds except that abominable deceitful compass, which we had mislaid somewhere and could not now examine; but its inexplicable behaviour exercised my mind fearfully On the 9th of September, in the evening, we arrived at Hamburg I cannot describe to you the astonishment of Martha or the joy of Gräuben “Now you are a hero, Axel,” said to me my blushing fiancée, my betrothed, “you will not leave me again!” I looked tenderly upon her, and she smiled through her tears How can I describe the extraordinary sensation produced by the return of Professor Liedenbrock? Thanks to Martha’s ineradicable tattling, the news that the Professor had gone to discover a way to the centre of the earth had spread over the whole civilised world People refused to believe it, and when they saw him they would not believe him any the more Still, the appearance of Hans, and sundry pieces of intelligence derived from Iceland, tended to shake the confidence of the unbelievers Then my uncle became a great man, and I was now the nephew of a great man—which is not a privilege to be despised Hamburg gave a grand fête in our honour A public audience was given to the Professor at the Johannæum, at which he told all about our expedition, with only one omission, the unexplained and inexplicable behaviour of our compass On the same day, with much state, he deposited in the archives of the city the now famous document of Saknussemm, and expressed his regret that circumstances over which he had no control had prevented him from following to the very centre of the earth the track of the learned Icelander He was modest notwithstanding his glory, and he was all the more famous for his humility So much honour could not but excite envy There were those who envied him his fame; and as his theories, resting upon known facts, were in opposition to the systems of science upon the question of the central fire, he sustained with his pen and by his voice remarkable discussions with the learned of every country For my part I cannot agree with his theory of gradual cooling: in spite of what I have seen and felt, I believe, and always shall believe, in the central heat But I admit that certain circumstances not yet sufficiently understood may tend to modify in places the action of natural phenomena While these questions were being debated with great animation, my uncle met with a real sorrow Our faithful Hans, in spite of our entreaties, had left Hamburg; the man to whom we owed all our success and our lives too would not suffer us to reward him as we could have wished He was seized with the mal de pays, a complaint for which we have not even a name in English “Farval,” said he one day; and with that simple word he left us and sailed for Reykjavík, which he reached in safety We were strongly attached to our brave eiderdown hunter; though far away in the remotest north, he will never be forgotten by those whose lives he protected, and certainly I shall not fail to endeavour to see him once more before I die To conclude, I have to add that this “Journey into the Interior of the Earth” created a wonderful sensation in the world It was translated into all civilised languages The leading newspapers extracted the most interesting passages, which were commented upon, picked to pieces, discussed, attacked, and defended with equal enthusiasm and determination, both by believers and sceptics Rare privilege! my uncle enjoyed during his lifetime the glory he had deservedly won; and he may even boast the distinguished honour of an offer from Mr Barnum, to exhibit him on most advantageous terms in all the principal cities in the United States! But there was one “dead fly” amidst all this glory and honour; one fact, one incident, of the journey remained a mystery Now to a man eminent for his learning, an unexplained phenomenon is an unbearable hardship Well! it was yet reserved for my uncle to be completely happy One day, while arranging a collection of minerals in his cabinet, I noticed in a corner this unhappy compass, which we had long lost sight of; I opened it, and began to watch it It had been in that corner for six months, little mindful of the trouble it was giving Suddenly, to my intense astonishment, I noticed a strange fact, and I uttered a cry of surprise “What is the matter?” my uncle asked “That compass!” “Well?” “See, its poles are reversed!” “Reversed?” “Yes, they point the wrong way.” My uncle looked, he compared, and the house shook with his triumphant leap of exultation A light broke in upon his spirit and mine “See there,” he cried, as soon as he was able to speak “After our arrival at Cape Saknussemm the north pole of the needle of this confounded compass began to point south instead of north.” “Evidently!” “Here, then, is the explanation of our mistake But what phenomenon could have caused this reversal of the poles?” “The reason is evident, uncle.” “Tell me, then, Axel.” “During the electric storm on the Liedenbrock sea, that ball of fire, which magnetised all the iron on board, reversed the poles of our magnet!” “Aha! aha!” shouted the Professor with a loud laugh “So it was just an electric joke!” From that day forth the Professor was the most glorious of savants, and I was the happiest of men; for my pretty Virlandaise, resigning her place as ward, took her position in the old house on the Königstrasse in the double capacity of niece to my uncle and wife to a certain happy youth What is the need of adding that the illustrious Otto Liedenbrock, corresponding member of all the scientific, geographical, and mineralogical societies of all the civilised world, was now her uncle and mine? ENDNOTES Sixty-three —Tr ↩ 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 ↩ In the cipher, audax is written avdas, and quod and quem, hod and ken —Tr ↩ The degrees of temperature are given by Jules Verne according to the centigrade system, for which we will in each case substitute the Fahrenheit measurement —Tr ↩ Recherche was sent out in 1835 by Admiral Duperré to learn the fate of the lost expedition of M de Blosseville in the Lilloise which has never been heard of ↩ In M Verne’s book a “manometer” is the instrument used, of which very little is known In a complete list of philosophical instruments the translator cannot find the name As he is assured by a first-rate instrument maker, Chadburn, of Liverpool, that an aneroid can be constructed to measure any depth, he has thought it best to furnish the adventurous professor with this more familiar instrument The “manometer” is generally known as a pressure gauge —Tr ↩ Ruhmkorff’s apparatus consists of a Bunsen pile worked with bichromate of potash, which makes no smell; an induction coil carries the electricity generated by the pile into communication with a lantern of peculiar construction; in this lantern there is a spiral glass tube from which the air has been excluded, and in which remains only a residuum of carbonic acid gas or of nitrogen When the apparatus is put in action this gas becomes luminous, producing a white steady light The pile and coil are placed in a leathern bag which the traveller carries over his shoulders; the lantern outside of the bag throws sufficient light into deep darkness; it enables one to venture without fear of explosions into the midst of the most inflammable gases, and is not extinguished even in the deepest waters M Ruhmkorff is a learned and most ingenious man of science; his great discovery is his induction coil, which produces a powerful stream of electricity He obtained in 1864 the quinquennial prize of 50,000 franc reserved by the French government for the most ingenious application of electricity ↩ The name given by Sir Roderick Murchison to a vast series of fossiliferous strata, which lies between the non-fossiliferous slaty schists below and the old red sandstone above The system is well developed in the region of Shropshire, etc., once inhabited by the Silures under Caractacus, or Caradoc —Tr ↩ The name of an Ethiopian tribe who lived in caves and holes Τρώγλη, a hole, and δύω, to creep into ↩ 10 One hundred and twenty —Tr ↩ 11 These animals belonged to a late geological period, the Pliocene, just before the glacial epoch, and therefore could have no connection with the Carboniferous vegetation —Tr ↩ 12 This distance carries the travellers as far as under the Pyrénées if the league measures three miles —Tr ↩ 13 Rather of the mammoth and the mastodon —Tr ↩ 14 The glyptodon and armadillo are mammalian; the tortoise is a chelonian, a reptile, distinct classes of the animal kingdom; therefore the latter cannot be a representative of the former —Tr ↩ 15 The facial angle is formed by two lines, one touching the brow and the front teeth, the other from the orifice of the ear to the lower line of the nostrils The greater this angle, the higher intelligence denoted by the formation of the skull Prognathism is that projection of the jawbones which sharpens or lessons this angle ↩ 16 “The shepherd of gigantic herds, and huger still himself.” ↩ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Runic glyph, arranged in seven rows and three columns Runic glyph, arranged in a row Runic glyph of the initial A S Journey to the Center of the Earth was published in 1864 by JULES VERNE It was translated from French in 1877 by F A MALLESON This ebook was produced for the STANDARD EBOOKS PROJECT by MATT CHAN, and is based on a transcription produced in 2003 by NORMAN M WOLCOTT and THE ONLINE DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADING TEAM for PROJECT GUTENBERG and on digital scans available at the INTERNET ARCHIVE The cover page is adapted from Eruption of the Volcano Vesuvius, a painting completed in 1821 by JOHAN CHRISTIAN DAHL The cover and title pages feature the LEAGUE SPARTAN and SORTS MILL GOUDY typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by THE LEAGUE OF MOVEABLE TYPE This edition was released on OCTOBER 11, 2020, 6:56 P.M and is based on REVISION 6452F72 The first edition of this ebook was released on JANUARY 1, 1900, 12:00 A.M You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at STANDARDEBOOKS.ORG/EBOOKS/JULES-VERNE/JOURNEY-TO-THE-CENTER-OF-THEEARTH/F-A-MALLESON The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements Anyone can contribute at STANDARDEBOOKS.ORG UNCOPYRIGHT May you good and not evil May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others May you share freely, never taking more than you give Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t something Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S public domain The U.S public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S to almost anything at all with, without having to get permission Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions Copyright laws are different around the world If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items—so-called “sweat of the brow” work—don’t create a new copyright That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for work like digitization, markup, or typography Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks and its contributors release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much STANDARD EBOOKS AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS OFFER THIS EBOOK AS-IS AND MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THIS EBOOK, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON INFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE, ALL TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE UNDER APPLICABLE LAW