A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER VI.

EX­CIT­ING DIS­CUS­SIONS ABOUT AN UN­PAR­AL­LELED EN­TER­PRISE

At these words a cold shiv­er ran through me. Yet I con­trolled my­self; I even re­solved to put a good face up­on it. Sci­en­tif­ic ar­gu­ments alone could have any weight with Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock. Now there were good ones against the prac­ti­ca­bil­ity of such a jour­ney. Pen­etrate to the cen­tre of the earth! What non­sense! But I kept my di­alec­tic bat­tery in re­serve for a suit­able op­por­tu­ni­ty, and I in­ter­est­ed my­self in the prospect of my din­ner, which was not yet forth­com­ing.

It is no use to tell of the rage and im­pre­ca­tions of my un­cle be­fore the emp­ty ta­ble. Ex­pla­na­tions were giv­en, Martha was set at lib­er­ty, ran off to the mar­ket, and did her part so well that in an hour af­ter­wards my hunger was ap­peased, and I was able to re­turn to the con­tem­pla­tion of the grav­ity of the sit­ua­tion.

Dur­ing all din­ner time my un­cle was al­most mer­ry; he in­dulged in some of those learned jokes which nev­er do any­body any harm. Dessert over, he beck­oned me in­to his study.

I obeyed; he sat at one end of his ta­ble, I at the oth­er.

“Ax­el,” said he very mild­ly; “you are a very in­ge­nious young man, you have done me a splen­did ser­vice, at a mo­ment when, wea­ried out with the strug­gle, I was go­ing to aban­don the con­test. Where should I have lost my­self? None can tell. Nev­er, my lad, shall I for­get it; and you shall have your share in the glo­ry to which your dis­cov­ery will lead.”

“Oh, come!” thought I, “he is in a good way. Now is the time for dis­cussing that same glo­ry.”

“Be­fore all things,” my un­cle re­sumed, “I en­join you to pre­serve the most in­vi­olable se­cre­cy: you un­der­stand? There are not a few in the sci­en­tif­ic world who en­vy my suc­cess, and many would be ready to un­der­take this en­ter­prise, to whom our re­turn should be the first news of it.”

“Do you re­al­ly think there are many peo­ple bold enough?” said I.

“Cer­tain­ly; who would hes­itate to ac­quire such renown? If that doc­ument were di­vulged, a whole army of ge­ol­ogists would be ready to rush in­to the foot­steps of Arne Saknussemm.”

“I don’t feel so very sure of that, un­cle,” I replied; “for we have no proof of the au­then­tic­ity of this doc­ument.”

“What! not of the book, in­side which we have dis­cov­ered it?”

“Grant­ed. I ad­mit that Saknussemm may have writ­ten these lines. But does it fol­low that he has re­al­ly ac­com­plished such a jour­ney? And may it not be that this old parch­ment is in­tend­ed to mis­lead?”

I al­most re­gret­ted hav­ing ut­tered this last word, which dropped from me in an un­guard­ed mo­ment. The Pro­fes­sor bent his shag­gy brows, and I feared I had se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised my own safe­ty. Hap­pi­ly no great harm came of it. A smile flit­ted across the lip of my se­vere com­pan­ion, and he an­swered:

“That is what we shall see.”

“Ah!” said I, rather put out. “But do let me ex­haust all the pos­si­ble ob­jec­tions against this doc­ument.”

“Speak, my boy, don’t be afraid. You are quite at lib­er­ty to ex­press your opin­ions. You are no longer my nephew on­ly, but my col­league. Pray go on.”

“Well, in the first place, I wish to ask what are this Jokul, this Snef­fels, and this Scar­taris, names which I have nev­er heard be­fore?”

“Noth­ing eas­ier. I re­ceived not long ago a map from my friend, Au­gus­tus Pe­ter­mann, at Liepzig. Noth­ing could be more apro­pos. Take down the third at­las in the sec­ond shelf in the large book­case, se­ries Z, plate 4.”

I rose, and with the help of such pre­cise in­struc­tions could not fail to find the re­quired at­las. My un­cle opened it and said:

“Here is one of the best maps of Ice­land, that of Han­der­sen, and I be­lieve this will solve the worst of our dif­fi­cul­ties.”

I bent over the map.

“You see this vol­canic is­land,” said the Pro­fes­sor; “ob­serve that all the vol­ca­noes are called jokuls, a word which means glacier in Ice­landic, and un­der the high lat­itude of Ice­land near­ly all the ac­tive vol­ca­noes dis­charge through beds of ice. Hence this term of jokul is ap­plied to all the erup­tive moun­tains in Ice­land.”

“Very good,” said I; “but what of Snef­fels?”

I was hop­ing that this ques­tion would be unan­swer­able; but I was mis­tak­en. My un­cle replied:

“Fol­low my fin­ger along the west coast of Ice­land. Do you see Re­jki­avik, the cap­ital? You do. Well; as­cend the in­nu­mer­able fiords that in­dent those sea-​beat­en shores, and stop at the six­ty-​fifth de­gree of lat­itude. What do you see there?”

“I see a penin­su­la look­ing like a thigh bone with the knee bone at the end of it.”

“A very fair com­par­ison, my lad. Now do you see any­thing up­on that knee bone?”

“Yes; a moun­tain ris­ing out of the sea.”

“Right. That is Snæfell.”

“That Snæfell?”

“It is. It is a moun­tain five thou­sand feet high, one of the most re­mark­able in the world, if its crater leads down to the cen­tre of the earth.”

“But that is im­pos­si­ble,” I said shrug­ging my shoul­ders, and dis­gust­ed at such a ridicu­lous sup­po­si­tion.

“Im­pos­si­ble?” said the Pro­fes­sor severe­ly; “and why, pray?”

“Be­cause this crater is ev­ident­ly filled with la­va and burn­ing rocks, and there­fore -“

“But sup­pose it is an ex­tinct vol­cano?”

“Ex­tinct?”

“Yes; the num­ber of ac­tive vol­ca­noes on the sur­face of the globe is at the present time on­ly about three hun­dred. But there is a very much larg­er num­ber of ex­tinct ones. Now, Snæfell is one of these. Since his­toric times there has been but one erup­tion of this moun­tain, that of 1219; from that time it has qui­et­ed down more and. more, and now it is no longer reck­oned among ac­tive vol­ca­noes.”

To such pos­itive state­ments I could make no re­ply. I there­fore took refuge in oth­er dark pas­sages of the doc­ument.

“What is the mean­ing of this word Scar­taris, and what have the kalends of Ju­ly to do with it?”

My un­cle took a few min­utes to con­sid­er. For one short mo­ment I felt a ray of hope, speed­ily to be ex­tin­guished. For he soon an­swered thus:

“What is dark­ness to you is light to me. This proves the in­ge­nious care with which Saknussemm guard­ed and de­fined his dis­cov­ery. Snef­fels, or Snæfell, has sev­er­al craters. It was there­fore nec­es­sary to point out which of these leads to the cen­tre of the globe. What did the Ice­landic sage do? He ob­served that at the ap­proach of the kalends of Ju­ly, that is to say in the last days of June, one of the peaks, called Scar­taris, flung 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 have ar­rived at the sum­mit of Snæfell we shall 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 up­on that part of the sub­ject, and as above all things he must be con­vinced, I passed on to sci­en­tif­ic ob­jec­tions, which in my opin­ion were far more se­ri­ous.

“Well, then,” I said, “I am forced to ad­mit that Saknussemm’s sen­tence is clear, and leaves no room for doubt. I will even al­low that the doc­ument bears ev­ery mark and ev­idence of au­then­tic­ity. That learned philoso­pher did get to the bot­tom of Snef­fels, he has seen the shad­ow of Scar­taris touch the edge of the crater be­fore the kalends of Ju­ly; he may even have heard the leg­endary sto­ries told in his day about that crater reach­ing to the cen­tre of the world; but as for reach­ing it him­self, as for per­form­ing the jour­ney, and re­turn­ing, if he ev­er went, I say no - he nev­er, nev­er did that.”

“Now for your rea­son?” said my un­cle iron­ical­ly.

“All the the­ories of sci­ence demon­strate such a feat to be im­prac­ti­ca­ble.”

“The the­ories say that, do they?” replied the Pro­fes­sor in the tone of a meek dis­ci­ple. “Oh! un­pleas­ant the­ories! How the the­ories will hin­der. us, won’t they?”

I saw that he was on­ly laugh­ing at me; but I went on all the same.

“Yes; it is per­fect­ly well known that the in­ter­nal tem­per­ature ris­es one de­gree for ev­ery 70 feet in depth; now, ad­mit­ting this pro­por­tion to be con­stant, and the ra­dius of the earth be­ing fif­teen hun­dred leagues, there must be a tem­per­ature of 360,032 de­grees at the cen­tre of the earth. There­fore, all the sub­stances that com­pose the body of this earth must ex­ist there in a state of in­can­des­cent gas; for the met­als that most re­sist the ac­tion of heat, gold, and plat­inum, and the hard­est rocks, can nev­er be ei­ther sol­id or liq­uid un­der such a tem­per­ature. I have there­fore good rea­son for ask­ing if it is pos­si­ble to pen­etrate through such a medi­um.”

“So, Ax­el, it is the heat that trou­bles you?”

“Of course it is. Were we to reach a depth of thir­ty miles we should have ar­rived at the lim­it of the ter­res­tri­al crust, for there the tem­per­ature will be more than 2372 de­grees.”

“Are you afraid of be­ing put in­to a state of fu­sion?”

“I will leave you to de­cide that ques­tion,” I an­swered rather sul­len­ly. “This is my de­ci­sion,” replied Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock, putting on one of his grand­est airs. “Nei­ther you nor any­body else knows with any cer­tain­ty what is go­ing on in the in­te­ri­or of this globe, since not the twelve thou­sandth part of its ra­dius is known; sci­ence is em­inent­ly per­fectible; and ev­ery new the­ory is soon rout­ed by a new­er. Was it not al­ways be­lieved un­til Fouri­er that the tem­per­ature of the in­ter­plan­etary spaces de­creased per­pet­ual­ly? and is it not known at the present time that the great­est cold of the ethe­re­al re­gions is nev­er low­er than 40 de­grees be­low ze­ro Fahr.? Why should it not be the same with the in­ter­nal heat? Why should it not, at a cer­tain depth, at­tain an im­pass­able lim­it, in­stead of ris­ing to such a point as to fuse the most in­fusible met­als?”

As my un­cle was now tak­ing his stand up­on hy­pothe­ses, of course, there was noth­ing to be said.

“Well, I will tell you that true sa­vants, amongst them Pois­son, have demon­strat­ed that if a heat of 360,000 de­grees [1] ex­ist­ed in the in­te­ri­or of the globe, the fiery gas­es aris­ing from the fused mat­ter would ac­quire an elas­tic force which the crust of the earth would be un­able to re­sist, and that it would ex­plode like the plates of a burst­ing boil­er.”

“That is Pois­son’s opin­ion, my un­cle, noth­ing more.”

“Grant­ed. But it is like­wise the creed adopt­ed by oth­er dis­tin­guished ge­ol­ogists, that the in­te­ri­or of the globe is nei­ther gas nor wa­ter, nor any of the heav­iest min­er­als known, for in none of these cas­es would the earth weigh what it does.”

“Oh, with fig­ures you may prove any­thing!”

“But is it the same with facts! Is it not known that the num­ber of vol­ca­noes has di­min­ished since the first days of cre­ation? and if there is cen­tral heat may we not thence con­clude that it is in pro­cess of diminu­tion?”

“My good un­cle, if you will en­ter in­to the le­gion of spec­ula­tion, I can dis­cuss the mat­ter no longer.”

“But I have to tell you that the high­est names have come to the sup­port of my views. Do you re­mem­ber a vis­it paid to me by the cel­ebrat­ed chemist, Humphry Davy, in 1825?”

“Not at all, for I was not born un­til nine­teen years af­ter­wards.”

“Well, Humphry Davy did call up­on me on his way through Ham­burg. We were long en­gaged in dis­cussing, amongst oth­er prob­lems, the hy­poth­esis of the liq­uid struc­ture of the ter­res­tri­al nu­cle­us. We were agreed that it could not be in a liq­uid state, for a rea­son which sci­ence has nev­er been able to con­fute.”

[1] The de­grees of tem­per­ature are giv­en by Jules Verne ac­cord­ing to the centi­grade sys­tem, for which we will in each case sub­sti­tute the Fahren­heit mea­sure­ment. (Tr.)

“What is that rea­son?” I said, rather as­ton­ished.

“Be­cause this liq­uid mass would be sub­ject, like the ocean, to the lu­nar at­trac­tion, and there­fore twice ev­ery day there would be in­ter­nal tides, which, up­heav­ing the ter­res­tri­al crust, would cause pe­ri­od­ical earth­quakes!”

“Yet it is ev­ident that the sur­face of the globe has been sub­ject to the ac­tion of fire,” I replied, “and it is quite rea­son­able to sup­pose that the ex­ter­nal crust cooled down first, whilst the heat took refuge down to the cen­tre.”

“Quite a mis­take,” my un­cle an­swered. “The earth has been heat­ed by com­bus­tion on its sur­face, that is all. Its sur­face was com­posed of a great num­ber of met­als, such as potas­si­um and sodi­um, which have the pe­cu­liar prop­er­ty of ig­nit­ing at the mere con­tact with air and wa­ter; these met­als kin­dled when the at­mo­spher­ic vapours fell in rain up­on the soil; and by and by, when the wa­ters pen­etrat­ed in­to the fis­sures of the crust of the earth, they broke out in­to fresh com­bus­tion with ex­plo­sions and erup­tions. Such was the cause of the nu­mer­ous vol­ca­noes at the ori­gin of the earth.”

“Up­on my word, this is a very clever hy­poth­esis,” I ex­claimed, in spite rather of my­self.

“And which Humphry Davy demon­strat­ed to me by a sim­ple ex­per­iment. He formed a small ball of the met­als which I have named, and which was a very fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our globe; when­ev­er he caused a fine dew of rain to fall up­on its sur­face, it heaved up in­to lit­tle mon­tic­ules, it be­came oxy­dized and formed minia­ture moun­tains; a crater broke open at one of its sum­mits; the erup­tion took place, and com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the whole of the ball such a heat that it could not be held in the hand.”

In truth, I was be­gin­ning to be shak­en by the Pro­fes­sor’s ar­gu­ments, be­sides which he gave ad­di­tion­al weight to them by his usu­al ar­dour and fer­vent en­thu­si­asm.

“You see, Ax­el,” he added, “the con­di­tion of the ter­res­tri­al nu­cle­us has giv­en rise to var­ious hy­pothe­ses among ge­ol­ogists; there is no proof at all for this in­ter­nal heat; my opin­ion is that there is no such thing, it can­not be; be­sides we shall see for our­selves, and, like Arne Saknussemm, we shall know ex­act­ly what to hold as truth con­cern­ing this grand ques­tion.”

“Very well, we shall see,” I replied, feel­ing my­self car­ried off by his con­ta­gious en­thu­si­asm. “Yes, we shall see; that is, if it is pos­si­ble to see any­thing there.”

“And why not? May we not de­pend up­on elec­tric phe­nom­ena to give us light? May we not even ex­pect light from the at­mo­sphere, the pres­sure of which may ren­der it lu­mi­nous as we ap­proach the cen­tre?”

“Yes, yes,” said I; “that is pos­si­ble, too.”

“It is cer­tain,” ex­claimed my un­cle in a tone of tri­umph. “But si­lence, do you hear me? si­lence up­on the whole sub­ject; and let no one get be­fore us in this de­sign of dis­cov­er­ing the cen­tre of the earth.”