Project Gutenberg #18857
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Jules Verne
1864Verne's subterranean scientific adventure, prepared chapter by chapter from Project Gutenberg HTML.
Project Gutenberg #18857 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
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presented itself. This fossilized body was not the only one in this vast plain of bones—the cemetery of an extinct world. Other bodies were found, as we trod the dusty plain, and my uncle was able to choose the most marvelous of these specimens in order to convince the most incredulous.
In truth, it was a surprising spectacle, the successive remains of generations and generations of men and animals confounded together in one vast cemetery. But a great question now presented itself to our notice, and one we were actually afraid to contemplate in all its bearings.
Had these once animated beings been buried so far beneath the soil by some tremendous convulsion of nature, after they had been earth to earth and ashes to ashes, or had they lived here below, in this subterranean world, under this factitious sky, borne, married, and given in marriage, and died at last, just like ordinary inhabitants of the earth?
Up to the present moment, marine monsters, fish, and suchlike animals had alone been seen alive!
The question which rendered us rather uneasy, was a pertinent one. Were any of these men of the abyss wandering about the deserted shores of this wondrous sea of the centre of the earth?
This was a question which rendered me very uneasy and uncomfortable. How, should they really be in existence, would they receive us men from above?