CHAPTER I
MY UNCLE MAKES A GREAT DISCOVERY
OOKING back to all that has occurred to me since that eventful day, I am scarcely able to believe in the reality of my adventures. They were truly so wonderful that even now I am bewildered when I think of them.
My uncle was a German, though I am English, he having married my mother's sister. Being very much attached to his fatherless nephew, he invited me to study under him in his home in the fatherland. This home was in a large town, and my uncle was a professor of philosophy, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and many other ologies.
One day, after passing some hours in the laboratory—my uncle being absent at the time—I suddenly felt the necessity of renovating the tissues—i.e., I was hungry, and was about to rouse up our old French cook, when my uncle, Professor Von Hardwigg, suddenly opened the street door and came rushing upstairs.
IN his immortal story, "A Trip to the Center of the Earth", Jules Verne has quite outdone himself. Not only was Jules Verne a master of the imaginative type of fiction, but he was a scientist of high calibre. Besides this, his intimate knowledge of geography, the customs and peculiarities of the various races, made it possible for him to write with authority on any of these subjects. So when, he takes us to the center of the earth, via the route through Iceland, we get the feeling that, somehow, the story is real, and this, after all, is the test of any good story.
Instead of boring a hole into the bowels of the earth, Jules Verne was probably the first to think of taking the reader to unexplored depths through the orifice of an extinct volcano. He argues, correctly, that a dead crater would prove not only the safest, but perhaps the best route for such exploration. No one has as yet explored the very center of the earth; for at no time have we descended deeper than about a mile below the surface of the planet. Who knows, therefore, but that there may be tremendous discoveries ahead of the human race, once we penetrate into the great depths of the globe?
We have no right to assume that life in the interior of the earth is an impossibility. When our deep sea expeditions come home with specimens of fish that live at the bottom of the ocean, and under what appear to be unendurable pressures, where logic would assume there could be no life, we should not judge harshly that there can be no life in the depths of the earth. If there is an entrance to a great unexplored cavity within our planet, you are free to believe that some form of life exists there. Living beings can get along without light, and it is possible that some sort of light of the phosphorescent order can be found there. And, besides, nature has a trick all its own of circumventing impossibilities, as is well witnessed in many deep sea fish, in depths where no light ever penetrates, where many of them are equipped with luminous eyes and other light-giving organs.
Now Professor Hardwigg, my worthy uncle, is by no means a bad sort of man; he is, however, choleric and original. To bear with him means to obey; and scarcely had his heavy feet resounded within our joint domicile than he shouted for me to attend upon him. "Harry—Harry—Harry"
I hastened to obey, but before I could reach his room, jumping three steps at a time, he was stamping his right foot upon the landing. "Harry!" he cried, in a frantic tone, "are you coming up?"
To tell the truth, at that moment I was far more interested in the question as to what was to constitute our dinner than in any problem of science; to me soup was more interesting than sodium, an omelette more tempting than arithmetic, and an artichoke of ten times more value than any amount of asbestos. But my uncle was not a man to he kept waiting; so adjourning all minor questions, I presented myself before him.
He was a very learned man. Now, most persons in this category supply themselves with information, as peddlers do with goods, for the benefit of others, and lay up stores in order to diffuse them abroad for the benefit of society in general. Not so my excellent uncle, Professor Hardwigg; he studied, he consumed the midnight oil, he pored over heavy tomes, and digested huge quartos and folios, and kept the knowledge he acquired to himself. There was a reason, and it may be regarded as a good one, why my uncle objected to display his learning more than was absolutely necessary; he stammered, and when intent upon explaining the phenomena of the heavens, was apt to find himself at fault, and allude in such a vague way to sun, moon, and stars, that few were able to comprehend his meaning. To tell the honest truth, when the right word would not come, it was generally replaced by a very powerful adjective.
In connection with the sciences there are many almost unpronounceable names—names very much resembling those of Welsh villages; and my uncle being very fond of using them, his habit of stammering was not thereby improved. In fact, there were periods in his discourse when he would finally give up and swallow his discomfiture—in a glass of water.
As I said, my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, was a very learned man; and I now add, a most kind relative. I was bound to him by the double ties of affection and interest. I took deep interest in all his doings, and hoped some day to be almost as learned myself. It was a rare thing for me to be absent from his lectures. Like him, I preferred mineralogy to all the other sciences. My anxiety was to gain real knowledge of the earth. Geology and mineralogy were to us the main objects of life, and in connection with these studies many a fair specimen of stone, chalk, or ore did we break with our hammers.
But before I state the subject on which my uncle wished to confer with me, I must say a word about his personal appearance. Alas! my readers will see a very different portrait of him at a future time—after he has gone through the fearful adventures yet to be related.
My uncle was fifty years old; tall, thin, and wiry. Large spectacles hid, to a certain extent, his vast, round and goggle eyes, while his nose was irreverently compared to a thin file. So much indeed did it resemble that useful article, that a compass was said in his presence to have made considerable deviation. The truth being told, however, the only article really attracted to my uncle's nose was tobacco.
Another peculiarity of his was, that he always stepped a yard at a time, clenched his fists as if he were going to hit you, and was, when in one of his
