Free Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Jules Verne Page A

replied:
    “Follow my finger along the west coast of Iceland. Do you see Reykjavik, the capital? Yes. Good. Go up the innumerable fjords m on those shores eaten away by the sea, and stop just under 65° latitude. What do you see there?”
    “A kind of peninsula looking like a bare bone with an enormous knee cap at the end.”
    “A fair comparison, my boy. Now do you see anything on that knee cap?”
    “Yes; a mountain that seems to have grown out of the sea.”
    “Right. That’s Snaefells.”
    “Snaefells?”
    “It is. It is a mountain of five thousand feet, one of the most remarkable ones on the island and certainly the most famous one in the whole world if its crater leads down to the center of the earth.”
    “But that’s impossible!” I exclaimed, shrugging my shoulders, and put off by such a ridiculous assumption.
    “Impossible?” replied the professor severely. “Why?” “Because this crater is obviously filled with lava and burning rocks, and therefore ...”
    “But suppose it’s an extinct volcano?”
    “Extinct?”
    “Yes; the number of active volcanoes on the surface of the globe is currently only about three hundred. But there’s a much larger quantity of extinct ones. Now, Snaefells is one of these, and since historic times it’s had only one eruption, that of 1219; from that time on, it has quieted down more and more, and now it is no longer counted among active volcanoes.”
    To such definitive statements I could make no reply. I therefore took refuge in other dark passages of the document.
    “What’s the meaning of this word Scartaris, and what have the calends of July to do with it?”
    My uncle stopped to think for a few moments. I had a minute of hope, but only one, because he soon answered me as follows:
    “What is darkness to you is light to me. This proves the ingenious care with which Saknussemm wanted to indicate his discovery. Snaefells has several craters. So it was necessary to point out which one of these leads to the center of the globe. What did the Icelandic scholar do? He observed that at the approach of the calends of July, that’s to say in the last days of June, one of the peaks, called Scartaris, throws its shadow down the mouth of that particular crater, and he committed that fact to his document. Could there possibly have been a more exact guide? As soon as we arrive at the summit of Snaefells we’ll have no hesitation as to the proper road to take.”
    Decidedly, my uncle had answered every one of my objections. I saw that his position on the old parchment was impregnable. I therefore ceased to press him on that part of the subject, and as above all things he had to be convinced, I passed on to scientific objections, which in my opinion were far more serious.
    “Well, then,” I said, “I’m forced to agree that Saknussemm’s sentence is clear, and leaves no room for doubt. I even admit that the document looks perfectly authentic. That learned scholar did go to the bottom of Snaefells; he saw the shadow of Scartaris touch the edge of the crater before the calends of July; he even heard the legendary stories of his time about that crater leading to the center of the world; but as reaching it himself, as for carrying out the journey and returning, if he ever went, no, a hundred times no!”
    “And your reason?” said my uncle in an especially mocking tone of voice.
    “It’s that all the theories of science demonstrate that such a feat is impossible!”
    “All the theories say that, do they?” replied the professor in a jovial tone. “Oh! evil theories! How they will bother us, those poor theories!”
    I saw that he was mocking me, but I continued all the same.
    “Yes; it’s perfectly well known that the interior temperature rises one degree for every 70 feet in depth; now if this proportion to be constant and the radius of the earth is fifteen hundred leagues, the temperature at the core must be more than 200,000°C. Therefore all the substances in the