Read the chapter
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Chapter 1. MY UNCLE MAKES A GREAT DISCOVERY
Looking back at everything that has happened to me since that eventful day, I can hardly believe my own adventures.
They were so wonderful that even now I'm confused when I think of them.
My uncle was German, having married my mother's sister, an Englishwoman.
Very fond of his fatherless nephew, he invited me to study with 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 spending some hours in the laboratory while my uncle was away, I suddenly felt the need to renovate the tissues.
That's, I was hungry and was about to wake our old French cook.
Then my uncle, Professor Von Hardwigg, suddenly opened the street door and came rushing upstairs.
Now Professor Hardwigg, my worthy uncle, is by no means a bad sort of man, he's, however, choleric and original.
To live with him meant obeying, hardly had his heavy feet sounded in our home than he shouted for me to come.
"Harry. Harry. Harry, "
I hurried to obey, but before I could reach his room, jumping three steps at a time, he was stamping his right foot on the landing.
"Harry!" he cried in a frantic tone, "are you coming up?"
At that moment I was more interested in what our dinner would be than in any scientific problem.
Soup interested me more than soda, an omelette tempted me more than arithmetic, and an artichoke was worth ten times any asbestos.
But my uncle wasn't a man to be kept waiting, so putting aside all minor questions, I presented myself before him.
He was a very learned man, respected by colleagues for his vast scientific knowledge.
Most people in this class collect information like peddlers collect goods, to benefit others and share it for society's good.
Not so my excellent uncle, Professor Hardwigg.
He studied, he worked late, he read heavy books, and learned huge quartos and folios in order to keep the knowledge to himself.
There was a reason, and it may be a good one, why my uncle refused to show his learning more than was absolutely necessary.
He stammered, and when he tried to explain the phenomena of the heavens he often got stuck.
Then he referred vaguely to the sun, moon, and stars, so few people could understand him.
To tell the honest truth, when the right word wouldn't come, he generally replaced it with a very strong adjective.
In connection with the sciences there are many almost unpronounceable names, names very much like those of Welsh villages.
My uncle liked to use them, and his stammering habit wasn't improved by that.
In fact, there were times in his talk when he'd 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 actions and hoped some day to be almost as learned myself.
It was rare for me to miss his lectures.
Like him, I preferred mineralogy to all other sciences.
My goal was to gain real knowledge of the earth.
Geology and mineralogy were our only pursuits, and for these studies we often broke fine specimens of stone, chalk, or metal with hammers.
Steel rods, loadstones, glass pipes, and bottles of various acids were more often before us than our meals.
My uncle Hardwigg was once known to classify six hundred different geological specimens by their weight, hardness, fusibility, sound, taste, and smell.
He corresponded with all the great, learned, and scientific men of the age.
I was, therefore, in constant communication with, at least by letters, Sir Humphry Davy, Captain Franklin, and other great men.
But before I state the subject on which my uncle wanted to speak with me, I must say a word about his personal appearance.
Alas, my readers will see a different portrait of him later, after he has gone through the fearful adventures to be told.
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 did it resemble that useful article that a compass was said in his presence to have made considerable N N deviation.
The truth being told, however, the only article really attracted to my uncle's nose was tobacco.
Another odd thing about him was that he stepped a yard at a time and clenched his fists as if to hit you.
When in one of his peculiar humors he was very far from a pleasant companion.
It's also necessary to say that he lived in a very nice house in that very nice street, the Konigstrasse at Hamburg.
It lay in the centre of a town but looked perfectly rural, half wood and half brick, with old-fashioned gables.
It was one of the few old houses spared by the great fire of 1842.
When I say a nice house, I mean a handsome house, old, tottering, and not exactly comfortable to English taste.
It was a house a little off the perpendicular and leaning toward the neighboring canal.
It was exactly the house for a wandering artist to paint.
You could hardly see it for the thick ivy and the magnificent old tree growing over the door.
My uncle was rich, his house was his own property, and he had a considerable private income.
To my mind the best part of his possessions was his god-daughter, Gretchen.
And the old cook, the young lady, the Professor and I were the only inhabitants.
I loved mineralogy, I loved geology, and I spent all my spare time studying them.
To me there was nothing like pebbles, and if my uncle had been a little less furious, we'd have been the happiest of families.
To show Hardwigg's impatience, I declare that when the drawing-room flowers grew, he rose each morning at four o'clock.
He did so to make them grow quicker by pulling the leaves.
Having described my uncle, I'll now give an account of our interview.
He received me in his study, a perfect museum containing every natural curiosity one can imagine, minerals however predominating.
Every one was familiar to me, having been catalogued by my own hand.
My uncle, apparently forgetting that he had summoned me, was absorbed in a book.
He was particularly fond of early editions, tall copies, and unique works.
"Wonderful!" he cried, tapping his forehead.
"Wonderful wonderful!"
It was one of those yellow-leaved volumes now rarely found on stalls, and to me it seemed to have little value.
My uncle, however, was in raptures over the book's rare and ancient binding.
He admired its binding, the clearness of its characters, the ease with which it opened in his hand.
And he repeated aloud, half a dozen times, that it was very, very old.
To my view he was making a great fuss about nothing, but it wasn't my place to say so.
On the contrary, I showed considerable interest and asked him what it was about.
"It's the Heims-Kringla of Snorre Tarleson,"
He said, "the celebrated Icelandic author of the twelfth century. It's a true and correct account of the Norwegian princes who reigned in Iceland."
My next question was about the language in which it was written.
I hoped at least it was translated into German.
My uncle was indignant at the very thought and said he wouldn't give a penny for a translation.
He was delighted to have found the original work in the Icelandic tongue.
He said it was one of the most magnificent yet simple idioms, and its grammatical combinations were the most varied known to students.
"About as easy as German?" was my sly remark.
My uncle shrugged his shoulders, showing his usual calm indifference to my remark.
"The letters at all events," I said, "are rather difficult to understand."
"It's a Runic manuscript, the language of the original population of Iceland, invented by Odin himself," cried my uncle, angry at my ignorance.
I was about to try a misplaced joke on the subject when a small scrap of parchment fell out of the leaves.
Like a hungry man grabbing at a bit of bread, the Professor seized it.
It was about five inches by three and was covered in the most extraordinary writing.
The lines shown here are an exact facsimile of what was written on the venerable piece of parchment and have wonderful importance.
They led my uncle to undertake the most wonderful series of adventures that ever fell to the lot of human beings.
My uncle looked closely at the document for some moments and then said that it was Runic.
The letters were similar to those in the book, but then what did they mean?
That was exactly what I wanted to know.
I strongly believed the Runic alphabet and its dialect were simply inventions to confuse poor human nature.
I was therefore happy to find that my uncle knew as much about the matter as I did, which was nothing.
At any rate the trembling motion of his fingers made me think so.
"And yet," he muttered to himself, "it's old Icelandic, I'm sure of it."
And my uncle ought to have known, for he was a perfect polyglot dictionary in himself.
He didn't pretend, like a certain learned pundit, to speak the two thousand languages and four thousand idioms used in different parts of the globe.
But he did know all the more important ones.
It's now a great doubt to me how far my uncle's impetuosity might have carried him.
But the clock struck two and our old French cook called out to let us know that dinner was on the table.
"Bother the dinner!" cried my uncle.
But as I was hungry, I went to the dining room, where I took up my usual seat.
Out of politeness I waited three minutes, but there was no sign of my uncle, the Professor.
I was surprised, he wasn't usually so blind to the pleasure of a good dinner.
It was the peak of German luxury, parsley soup, a ham omelette with sorrel trimmings, a veal oyster stewed with prunes, delicious fruit, and sparkling Moselle.
For the sake of studying that musty old scrap of parchment, my uncle refused to share our meal.
To satisfy my conscience, I ate for both.
The old cook and housekeeper was nearly out of her mind.
After taking so much trouble, finding her master did not appear at dinner was a sad disappointment.
As she watched the havoc I was making on the food, she grew alarmed.
If my uncle were to come to table after all?
Suddenly, just as I had eaten the last apple and drunk the last glass of wine, a terrible voice was heard not far away.
It was my uncle roaring for me to come to him.
I made almost one leap of it, so loud and fierce was his tone.