A Journey to the Center of the Earth

               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.)]

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                              A JOURNEY

                               INTO THE

                        INTERIOR OF THE EARTH

                                  by

                              Jules Verne

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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