Jules Verne

A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

by

Jules Verne

Free Public Domain Books from the

Classic Literature Library

A Journey to the Interior of the Earth Page 01

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 Sánchez 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.