Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery by Jules Verne

Robinson Crusoe fantasy camp

Not too long ago, in reviewing The Swiss Family Robinson by John David Wyss, I briefly touched upon the profound influence that Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe has had on world literature. That novel clearly had an affect on Jules Verne, who wrote at least a handful of “robinsonades” and included Crusoe-like plot elements in many of his novels of travel and exploration. Verne’s adventure novel L’école des Robinsons was published in 1882. The French title literally translates into The School for Robinsons, and the book has been published in English as School for Crusoes and An American Robinson Crusoe. The 1883 London translation of the novel, however, was entitled Godfrey Morgan, after its protagonist.

Godfrey, an orphan, was raised by his uncle, the billionaire William W. Kolderup of San Francisco. Kolderup also has an adopted daughter, Phina, with whom Godfrey is conveniently betrothed. (Almost every Verne novel features a pair of young lovers engaged to be married.) Before he ties the knot, however, young Godfrey wants to travel the world. Having never ventured far outside of the gilded cage in which he was brought up, Godfrey now has a spell of wanderlust. His future father-in-law grants Godfrey his consent to embark on a round-the-world voyage, provided he is chaperoned by his tutor, Prof. Artelett, a dandy who teaches dancing and deportment. The two head west across the Pacific Ocean towards New Zealand but never make it there. Their ship is wrecked in a storm, and the crew is lost. The two gentlemen from San Francisco find themselves marooned alone on a deserted island.

Much like the original Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, these two castaways enjoy a number of fortunate boons. All of the livestock from their ship miraculously makes it to shore, a box washes up on the beach containing many implements necessary for survival, and a hollow sequoia presents itself as a makeshift townhouse. This is not the most arduous of survival stories. Godfrey and Artelett spend most of their time gathering roots and occasionally shooting a deer. These fellows are far less industrious than the Swiss Family. In order to add some excitement to the proceedings, Verne brings in perils that belong on an entirely different continent. Eventually all is explained, though the explanation is ridiculous.

Though Verne is famous for his science fiction, little science is employed in the survival of these two gentlemen. Typical of Verne, however, this novel is largely a secular, rationalist take on the Crusoe genre. Although obligatory mention is made of the almighty every now and then, this wilderness sojourn is not a meditation on divinity like the pious contemplations of Crusoe and the Swiss. Unfortunately, there are a couple racist comments about dark-skinned islanders here. In general, I’ve found Verne to be more enlightened than many of his contemporaries, but he was still guilty of the ignorance and prejudices of his era.

There isn’t much mystery to this “Californian Mystery.” Verne sets up the plot so that every event is telegraphed well ahead of time. You’d have to be ten years old or less not to see where this story is going. Everything is so obvious that it must have been intentional by Verne to let the audience in on secrets to which Godfrey and Artelett are not privy. Does that strategy pay off? Well, so-so. This isn’t one of Verne’s more intelligent or exciting novels, but it is moderately fun, and the characters are likable. If you’ve read any of Verne beyond his two or three more famous books, then you probably know what to expect, and Godfrey Morgan neither disappoints nor exceeds those expectations.

The Child of the Cavern, or The Underground City by Jules Verne

Home sweet coal mine

Jules Verne’s novel Les Indes noires (“The Black Indies”) was published in 1877. It has been published in English under various titles, including The Child of the Cavern, The Underground City, Strange Doings Underground, and Black Diamonds. Unfortunately, some of those English titles reveal more about the plot than they should. This is a science fiction adventure novel about a coal mine, the science in this case being geology.

James Starr was the head engineer at the Aberfoyle Mine near Edinburgh, Scotland. Ten years prior to the start of the novel, that mine was shut down, its resources deemed exhausted. As the story opens, Starr receives a letter from his right-hand man at Aberfoyle, the former overseer Simon Ford. The mysterious message begs Starr to come to Aberfoyle immediately. Although the mine has been inactive for a decade, Ford never left. He lives inside the mine with his wife and 25-year-old son Harry, in a cottage thirty stories beneath the earth. Starr descends into the mine to visit the Fords, and Simon lets him in on his recent amazing discovery. At the end of one of Aberfoyle’s underground passages, Simon has found firedamp (flammable gases) issuing forth from crevices in the rock, a strong indication that a bed of coal exists behind the walls. He speculates that the mine may have some riches left in her yet, in the form of a mother lode of undiscovered coal. Ford and his family may not be the only parties to have made this discovery, however. There is evidence that some mystery person has been wandering in the caverns of Aberfoyle, perhaps with evil intentions.

I’ve always admired the fact that Verne could make a science fiction novel out of just about any field of science. He proved that scientific romances (the 19th-century term for the genre) didn’t have to be about outer space or utopian or dystopian futures. Verne wrote novels about all sorts of scientific phenomena that struck his fancy, from aeronautics (Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1873) to paleontology (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1867) to oceanography (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1871). I’ve never been fascinated with coal mines, but Verne managed to keep me interested with this subterranean adventure. In fact, he makes coal mines sound like the most wonderful places on earth. All the characters want to live and work in one, so much so that they rarely make trips to the surface. Verne’s books are also known for their geographical content and often educate the reader on exotic locales. In this novel, however, the reader doesn’t really learn a whole lot about Scotland, because so much time is spent underground.

While The Child of the Cavern is grounded in geological fact, this story gets pretty farfetched, even for Verne standards. As previously alluded to, people spend inordinate amounts of time deep underground. God only knows what they’re eating. And don’t get me started on Harfang (a secret better left unrevealed). One must suspend quite a bit of disbelief to enjoy this novel. The plot here is a little like a Scooby Doo mystery, one of the less satisfying ones where the “ghost” unmasks to reveal an unfamiliar character. As is often the case with Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires, there is a sinister villain here, as well as a couple of young lovers eager to get married when the crisis is resolved. This is not one of Verne’s greater works. It’s an obscurity, and probably deserves to be so, but if you can get in touch with your inner twelve-year-old, it is a fun ride.

The Lottery Ticket by Jules Verne

Foregone conclusions in Norway

The Lottery Ticket is a novel by Jules Verne published in 1886. It was also published in English translation under the alternate title of Ticket No. 9672. Like most of Verne’s fiction, this novel is one of his Voyages Extraordinaires, a series that consists of about 60 books. Although Verne is largely remembered today as a science fiction writer, the one element that really ties all of his work together is a love of travel, geography, and exploration. The Lottery Ticket is not science fiction but rather one of Verne’s geographical adventures. To be honest, however, there really isn’t even much adventure in this one.

The Lottery Ticket is set in the Telemark region of Southern Norway. The Hansen family, consisting of the widow Dame Hansen and her young-adult children Joel and Hulda, run an inn in the village of Dal near the Rjukan Falls, a popular tourist destination. Hulda is engaged to a fisherman named Ole Kamp, who is off on a commercial fishing voyage to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. The two young lovers’ wedding is set to take place when he returns. His ship, the Viking, however, misses its expected return date by over a month. The Hansens fear the vessel is lost at sea and Hulda may never see her betrothed again.

Like many a Verne novel, this one takes forever to get going. The story doesn’t really start until chapter 11 or 12 (out of 20). Everything prior to that is just getting acquainted with the characters and the setting. Through the daily lives of the Hansen family, Verne delivers a primer on Norwegian geography, culture, and scenery. Verne traveled to Norway in 1861, and I would assume many of the towns and sites mentioned here probably comprised his itinerary during that trip. He definitely visited the Rjukan Falls. The lottery ticket mentioned in the book’s title is really a ridiculous plot element that can only lead to a predictable conclusion. The novel would have been better without it. The one real opportunity for adventure in this novel is the search for Ole’s lost ship, but all of that happens “offstage.” The main characters are not involved in that manhunt, and the details are only relayed secondhand and after the fact.

Despite being utterly predictable, The Lottery Ticket is a pleasant enough read. The characters are likable, and the setting is inviting. There is a satisfaction that comes from watching the events unfold in their obvious manner. Verne provides enough of a travelogue of Norway to maintain one’s interest. Verne was very good at writing about the scientific and geographical aspects of his fiction. He was able to get readers excited about those subjects. When he describes an exotic locale, he typically gives you enough of an education to make you want to go and visit those places. When it came to putting plots together, however, Verne’s efforts were often clumsy and formulaic, by today’s standards anyway. There are exceptions, of course, such as the excellent Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Even given his faults, I still think Verne was a better storyteller than H. G. Wells. The Lottery Ticket is certainly not one of the more extraordinary voyages in Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires, but like almost all of his books, it’s a satisfactorily fun ride nonetheless.

Captain Antifer by Jules Verne

Orienteering to the extreme

Jules Verne’s adventure novel Captain Antifer was originally published in 1894 in the pages of the French periodical Magasin d’éducation et de récréation, under the title of Mirifiques Aventures de Maître Antifer. The novel was published in English the following year. This is the 40th novel in Verne’s series of books known as his Voyages Extraordinaires.

In 1831, a wealthy Egyptian named Kamylk-Pasha, persecuted by a greedy relative aiming to steal his fortune, fleas his homeland with his riches. He buries his treasure, consisting of three barrels full of diamonds and other gems, on an uncharted island. Flash forward thirty years later: Pierre Servan Malo Antifer, a retired sea captain, resides in the city of Saint-Malo on the northern coast of Brittany. His prized possession is a document bequeathed to him by his father. Many years prior, during the Napoleonic wars, Antifer’s father saved the life of Kamylk-Pasha. In gratitude, Kamylk-Pasha decides to leave his fortune to his rescuer. He gives the senior Antifer a document in which he has written the latitude of the island where his treasure lies buried, with the promise that the longitude will be conveyed to him at a future date. When Captain Antifer’s father dies, this document, and the fortune it promises, is passed down to the son. Captain Antifer waits twenty years before an Egyptian notary finally shows up with the longitude. The two coordinates, now united, show that the uncharted island lies in the Gulf of Oman. Accompanied by his nephew Juhel and his best friend Gildas Tregomain, Captain Antifer sets out to find the island and collect his treasure. The Egyptian notary, Ben Omar is also required to make the voyage, to oversee the uncovering of the inheritance and to collect his commission. He brings along his clerk Nazim, a man who is not who he seems and who hopes to steal the treasure for himself.

Although Verne is known these days for his science fiction, this novel is not science fiction but rather geography fiction. One can imagine Verne poring over an atlas as he penned the narrative. The prose often reads like a succession of place names read off of a map. Antifer and company travel from one city to another by boat, train, or horse-drawn coach, throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Verne seems more concerned with the logistics of the journey rather than the places visited. Because of the rapid traveling pace, the reader doesn’t really learn a whole lot about the lands through which Antifer and his friends pass.

The characters are quite likeable, however, which keeps the story engaging. Antifer is a gruff and surly old adventurer who calls to mind Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger. His pal Tregomain is a big, gentle giant and sometimes comic buffoon. Together they give off a kind of Abbott and Costello vibe. Also, as in many a Verne novel, the cast features a pair of young lovers hoping to be married. In this case, it’s Antifer’s niece and nephew, Enogate and Juhel (cousins to each other). All of the globe-hopping travel arrangements in the story tend to get a little monotonous and frustrating, but the clever ending makes up for it. The plot of this novel is very craftily conceived and thoughtfully constructed. And, since Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires were kind of the 19th-century precursor to Atlas Obscura, you end up learning a few fascinating facts about the world as well. Outside of his big hits like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days, many of Verne’s adventure novels have faded into obscurity. Captain Antifer, however, shows once again that it’s worth digging deeper into Verne’s catalog, as such an endeavor sometimes turns up hidden gems.  

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The Master of the World by Jules Verne

Slow-moving story about fast-moving vehicle

Jules Verne spent his life writing a series of adventure novels known as his Voyages Extraordinares. Published in 1904, the year before his death, The Master of the World is the second-last of the 54 novels in that series published during Verne’s lifetime (Verne’s son wrote a few after his death). The novel is narrated by John Strock, an agent with the USA’s “Federal Police.” Some mysterious occurrences have taken place on a mountaintop in North Carolina, leading some to believe a volcanic eruption may soon take place. Strock is sent to investigate. He leads an exhibition to summit the peak, but can’t reach the top. Not long after, a superfast automobile is spotted tearing down America’s roads at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour, terrifying those who encounter it. Who is this mad motorist, and how could he build such an advanced machine? Could this vehicle be related to the strange lights and sounds on that mountain in North Carolina?

This novel takes place entirely in America, but Verne doesn’t just settle for adventure in New York City or Washington, DC. As you read through The Master of the World, you can just see Verne poring over his atlas to pick out lesser-known locations from the map. For example, the plot features an automobile race across the state of Wisconsin, from Prairie du Chien to Milwaukee. In this book, Verne pays similar attention to the Great Lakes, the Atlantic Coast, and the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. On the other hand, however, he inexplicably invents a fictional lake in the nonexistent “mountains of Kansas” that is large enough to support a fishing industry and steamship traffic.

This is very slow-moving story which teases the reader in anticipation of a few reveals at the end of the novel. There are only two surprises in this novel, or intended surprises anyway, because the first one is so predictable you can see it coming as early as chapter one. This revelation has to do with the vehicle, and there’s a good chance the cover art of whatever edition you’re reading has already spoiled that surprise. The book’s second surprise is that it’s actually a sequel to an earlier Verne novel. I won’t tell you which one, because that would be a spoiler. I had not read that previous novel, but it really wasn’t necessary because here Verne spends a chapter summarizing that earlier book.

The character who calls himself “The Master of the World” is the most boring James Bond villain imaginable. Sure, he has a secret high-tech lair hidden in a remote location, and he drives a cool, technologically advanced vehicle. He doesn’t actually do anything nefarious with his vehicle, however, except drive really fast and scare people. At least Captain Nemo sunk ships with the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Speaking of which, the villain here seems like just a watered-down redux of Nemo, inferior in every way. One really gets the idea that here at the end of his career Verne had run out of ideas. The title itself is ridiculous, in that how can someone aspire to world domination with just one superior vehicle? Maybe if The Master had a fleet of hundreds, he might be a serious threat, but that idea is never even suggested.

I like the geographical aspect of Verne’s adventures, how he provides his (usually) informed take on various locations of the world. Even if he’s never traveled to the place he’s describing, one can always sense the joy of travel and exploration in his writing. That element of his fiction is even more prevalent in his body of work than the science fiction for which he is now famous. His adventure plots, however, are hit and miss, and The Master of the World is a hard miss. You’d be better off rereading one of his Nemo books, Twenty Thousand Leagues or The Mysterious Island.
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The Begum’s Fortune by Jules Verne

Odd tale of dueling Franco-Prussian utopias

Jules Verne was a very prolific author. His series of Voyages Extraordinaires includes 54 novels published during his lifetime (plus a few published after his death, with help from his son). Within such a large body of work, famous masterpiece like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea are far outnumbered by obscure oddities like The Begum’s Fortune, published in 1879. This book is a prefect example of how when one delves into some of the random titles in Verne’s catalog, you never know what you’re going to get, and the result is sometimes less satisfying than one would expect from an author with such an esteemed reputation.

The word “Begum” is an Indian title of nobility denoting the wife or female equivalent of a Raja. As Verne’s novel opens, one such begum, the widow of a French soldier, has passed away, leaving her immense fortune to her dead husband’s nephew, Dr. Sarrasin, a French physician. Sarrasin decides to dedicate his newfound 500 million francs to science by building an ideal city. Before he can collect his inheritance, however, a long-lost cousin comes out of the woodwork to claim half the fortune. This second heir, Dr. Schultze, is a German scientist who resents the fact that he has to share the fortune with a Frenchman. He therefore decides to build his own utopian city to outshine and crush that of his French rival.

Verne’s blatant objective here is to contrast the democratic and benevolent spirit of the French with that of the Germans, whom he sees as conceited, autocratic, megalomaniacal bigots bent on world domination. Some see this book as a prescient vision of Nazism, but it is really an expression of the animosity between France and Germany that escalated with the recent Franco-Prussian War and would continue through the two world wars of the twentieth century. Amid that political climate, Schultze can’t help but suggest Bismarck and Hitler. Schultze’s city, Stahlstadt, is an authoritarian military-industrial complex that manufactures weapons of mass destruction. Little is revealed about Sarrasin’s city, Frankville, other than an obsessive concern with sanitation and hygiene. By some weird whim of Verne’s, both ideal cities end up arising in Oregon, about 30 miles from each other. Somehow they operate as independent city-states within the boundaries of the United States; at least independent enough to declare war on one another.

Verne makes many bad choices in crafting this narrative. Whenever you think the story is showing some possibility of interesting or exciting developments, Verne makes a left turn in favor of the boring or ridiculous. At first you think the book is going to have something to do with India, but it doesn’t. Then it appears it’s going to focus on Sarrasin’s utopia, but Verne turns away from that idea. Just when you think a war is about to start, all action is negated by some dull, killjoy plot twists. Every time conflict seems to arise, Verne opts for a duller alternative. And while Verne’s odd choices are unexpected, somehow the book still ends up feeling like a predictable, formulaic Victorian romance.

In his attempt to depict the Germans as racists, Verne creates an unflattering ethnic stereotype of Germans that is in itself racist. It is also quite ironic that Frankville is built by Chinese laborers who aren’t allowed to live there because they are considered undesirable immigrants. Overall, Verne is usually one of the more egalitarian and politically correct authors of the late nineteenth century, but he really makes some missteps in this book. Even without the uncomfortable prejudices, however, The Begum’s Fortune fails merely by being a boring and poorly written story.
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The Castle of the Carpathians by Jules Verne

Mediocre mystery in Transylvania

Jules Verne is known as a pioneering master of science fiction for penning such works as From the Earth to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. He did not, however, confine himself exclusively to the sci-fi genre. Of the 50-plus novels in Verne’s series of Voyages Extraordinaires, many of the works are adventure stories in what might be termed geographic fiction. Verne chooses an exotic locale and then creates a story based on the environment, culture, and history of that location. Such is the case with The Castle of the Carpathians, a Verne novel published in 1892. The story is set in Transylvania, now in Northern Romania but at that time part of Austria-Hungary. In his depiction of the region, Verne emphasizes the superstitious nature of its inhabitants, which allows him to dabble in the horror genre. Verne, however, has always been a champion of science over superstition, of the natural over the supernatural, so this venture into Gothic horror feels a bit halfhearted, like a Scooby-Doo mystery just waiting for the ghost’s mask to be pulled off.

Near the Transylvanian village of Werst there lies a massive, spooky castle of rough-hewn stone, resembling a ruin from some forgotten dark age. The owner of the castle, the Baron de Gortz, abandoned the estate 15 years earlier and hasn’t been heard from since, leaving the castle uninhabited. A shepherd in the neighborhood, however, spies smoke issuing from the chimney. Who is it that could be residing in the castle? Has Baron de Gortz returned? Have bandits occupied the castle, using it as their hideout? Could the fortress be populated by evil spirits or perhaps even the devil himself? There’s only one way to find out, of course, and that’s to venture into the castle and investigate, but what brave soul would dare enter this dark and forbidding edifice, the source of so many eerie rumors and ghost stories?

That’s basically half the book right there: the townspeople of Werst talking about how spooky the castle is. It is obvious that sooner or later the reader must be taken inside the castle walls, but Verne certainly makes you wait for it. He introduces a romance into the story and goes off into a Baron de Gortz back story that resembles a romantic opera of the era. When we actually enter the castle, it is a confusing array of passages and staircases. One would need a detailed floor plan to decipher all of Verne’s confusing directions. Overall, the plot spends too much time in the local inn with the chattering townspeople and not enough in the castle itself.

I actually like Verne’s non-sci-fi novels. I chose this book because I was interested in the Carpathians, a region not often covered in literature (at least not in novels translated into English). Verne’s depiction of the region, however, seems rather one-dimensional and stereotypical. It’s possible that Bram Stoker might have been inspired by this novel when he chose Transylvania as the setting for Dracula. Even if that’s true, Stoker took the concept much further and really excels in this genre, more so than Verne. The Castle of the Carpathians is not very successful as a horror novel or thriller. (The giant squid scene in Twenty Thousand Leagues is scarier than this.) As an adventure novel it’s rather boring, and as a science fiction novel there just isn’t a whole lot of science. The ending may have been surprising and innovative for the 1890s, but for today’s readers it’s pretty predictable. Really the only thing The Castle of the Carpathians has going for it is Verne’s inimitable style, charm, and enthusiasm. Fans of his will find this book mildly entertaining but not one of his better offerings.
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Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon by Jules Verne

South American adventure with cryptography

Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon, a novel by Jules Verne, is the story of an adventurous cross-continental journey down the length of the world’s mightiest river. This was the 21st novel of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires (Extraordinary Voyages or Amazing Journeys), a series that includes Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and at least 50 other books. Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon was first published in French in 1881 under the title of La Jangada, which is the name of the type of raft used in the book. The novel has also been published in English under the title of The Giant Raft.

Brazilian-born Joam Garral is the proprietor of a fazenda (plantation) in Peru, near the headwaters of the Amazon. A successful and prosperous farmer, he rarely leaves the vicinity of his estate. When his daughter Minha becomes betrothed to family friend Manoel Valdez, however, it is decided that the wedding will be held in Manoel’s hometown of Belém, a coastal city on the far side of the South American continent. Joam Garral orders a raft built for the occasion. In typical Verne fashion, the craft is fantastical in its proportions: a thousand feet long by sixty feet wide, requiring the leveling of an entire forest, and equipped with quarters for around a hundred passengers. While the family prepares for this intrepid journey, a mysterious shady figure from Joam Garral’s past is seeking him out, which can only mean trouble for the Garral family.

The novel opens with a paragraph written in code, and cryptography plays a major part in the plot. Verne was obviously influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Gold Bug,” which he mentions in the narrative. Building upon Poe’s idea, Verne makes his cipher even harder to solve. The first half of the novel is mostly just Verne describing the wonders of the Amazon: its flora, fauna, topography, and the enormous amount of water that passes between its banks. The second half of the novel focuses on a crime/mystery story, the resolution of which depends on the solving of the mysterious code.

Verne may be primarily known these days as a science fiction writer, but like many of his Voyages Extraordinaires this novel is more geo-fi (geography fiction) than sci-fi. Verne’s main purpose is to introduce the reader to an exotic location and elaborate upon that region’s people, politics, history, geology, zoology, botany, and ethnography. The more interested you are in this part of the world, the more you’ll like this book, which is perhaps why I enjoyed this novel more than some of Verne’s arctic adventures like The Fur Country and An Antarctic Mystery. One commendable aspect of Verne’s writing is that all the characters in the novel are native to the region, either Latinos or Indians. He doesn’t feel the need to introduce a Frenchman into the Amazon to mediate the experience for European readers. Any reader who’s ever fantasized about exploring the wilds of the Amazon rain forests will find Eight Hundred Leagues an entertaining and compelling read.

In one chapter, Verne briefly summarizes the true story of a Madame Odonais (born Isabel Graméson), wife of the French cartographer Jean Godin, who made a perilous journey through the Amazon basin in 1769. This fascinating story is recounted at length in the 2004 book The Mapmaker’s Wife by Robert Whitaker, a great read for anyone interested in Amazonian adventure.
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The Fur Country by Jules Verne

Monotonous homage to the Hudson’s Bay Company

The French pioneer of science fiction Jules Verne strove to encompass a comprehensive breadth of scientific and geographic knowledge in his fictional works. This resulted in the 54 novels of exotic travel and adventure known as his Voyages Extraordinaires (Amazing Journeys), a series which includes such famed titles as Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days. In the tenth novel in this series, The Fur Country, Verne takes the reader on an adventure into the Arctic. The novel was originally published in 1873 under the French title of Le Pays des fourrures.

The story begins in 1859. The Hudson’s Bay Company is losing money because it has overhunted its prey, so it decides to expand its operations further into Northwestern Canada and Alaska. A party of explorers is dispatched to establish a new fort on the Alaskan coast above the Arctic Circle. After having reached their destination, the group becomes trapped in the Arctic and must find a way to escape their predicament. Although Verne acknowledges the environmental damage done by the fur industry, he simultaneously glorifies the romance, efficiency, and profitability of the company’s hunting operations. One admirable aspect of the book is the inclusion of a woman explorer who is treated with just as much respect and deference as the male officers.

Part of the fun of wilderness adventure is that being in the wild allows for freedom from societal laws and conventions. Unlike later authors of Klondike Gold Rush fiction, however, you won’t find any roughhousing in Verne’s work. Everyone in this novel observes the rules of Victorian propriety, and all the characters have the same prim and proper personality, so there’s never any conflict between them. The dangers and hardships of the North are never adequately conveyed. Even when they are building a fort, boat, or raft, these men of the Hudson’s Bay Company never seem to break a sweat, and the cold hardly seems to bother anyone. With the exception of a couple of scenes involving polar bears, all the perils faced by the travelers are the result of meteorological and climatological causes, meaning the novel is often about as exciting as watching ice melt. Verne tries to liven things up by having icebergs bounce around like magic bullets and working in more failed rescue attempts than an entire season of Gilligan’s Island.

There is one major plot point that just doesn’t make any sense. An astronomer accompanies the expedition so that he can observe a total solar eclipse that must be viewed above the seventieth parallel. Without spoiling too much of the plot, an argument develops over the coordinates of the party’s location, whether they are above or below the seventieth parallel. They have measured their latitude twice, and there is a discrepancy between the two measurements. However, the coordinates given from the first measurement (70° 44’ 37”) and the second measurement (73° 7’ 20”) are both above the seventieth parallel, so what’s the problem? This should have had no effect on the viewing of the eclipse. If anything, the second set of coordinates should have been advantageous to the astronomer. The whole story hinges on this one plot element, yet it seems an obvious error. Hasn’t anyone else noticed this in the past 150 years?

Before science fiction was called “science fiction” it was called “scientific romance,” which is a more fitting description of this work by Verne. The Fur Country is romantic adventure fiction that deals with scientific phenomena, but all within the realm of physical possibility. With this book Verne applies his “Extraordinary Voyages” treatment to meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology. One must have a very avid interest in those fields to enjoy this book because the characters and plot are not sufficient to captivate the reader.
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Celebrated Travels and Travelers, Volume III: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century by Jules Verne

Voyages of discovery to all corners of the globe

Author Jules Verne wrote a great deal of fiction involving explorers and adventurers who traveled to exotic locales and discovered unknown lands. Of lesser renown are his nonfiction books on the subject. From 1878 to 1880 Verne published a three-volume work on world exploration entitled Découverte de la Terre, which was translated into English as Celebrated Travels and Travelers. The first two volumes recounted expeditions from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century. In the third volume, subtitled The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century, Verne continues the history of exploration and discovery up to the current events of his time.

Volume III recalls intrepid journeys to every continent except Europe. English explorers search for the sources of the Niger and the Gambia rivers in Africa, American explorers venture West into the Rocky Mountains, Russian explorers scout the coasts of Alaska and Canada, German and Spanish explorers investigate the archaeological sites of Mexico and South America, French explorers chart the islands of Oceania, and everybody dips their toes in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The place names Verne uses are not always immediately recognizable. Hawaii is still the Sandwich Islands, for example, and the island of Oahu is called Waihou. Most readers with reasonable geographical knowledge, however, shouldn’t have too much trouble following the itineraries.

The African chapter is the least interesting because it often reads merely like a string of towns separated by stretches of starvation. One doesn’t learn much about the culture of the African people other than which kings treated the explorers nicely and which ones robbed and imprisoned them. Mention is made of many discoveries of new species of plants and animals, but Verne rarely gives examples of the plants and animals in question. You never know which explorers Verne is going to treat cursorily and which ones he will grant an extensive travel narrative. Verne is definitely more interested in nautical voyages than overland exploration. Lewis and Clark, for example, are passed over pretty quickly. Not surprisingly, Verne tends to favor French explorers, though in this volume he also focuses on a few Russians like Krusenstern and Kotzebue. The bulkiest section of the book is devoted to French circumnavigators, with detailed stop-by-stop narratives of the voyages of Freycinet, Duperrey, Bougainville, and Dumont d’Urville. The book closes with a chapter on polar exploration—a work in progress at the time of publication—including the discovery of Antarctica and attempts by John Ross, William Parry, and John Franklin to reach the North Pole. The most pleasurable aspect of reading this book is discovering explorers that I had never heard of or didn’t know much about. A lot of these men were household names 150 years ago but have since faded into relative historical obscurity.

I enjoyed Volume III more than the previous two volumes, perhaps because these nineteenth century explorers took better notes than their predecessors, leaving Verne more to work with. The range of exotic destinations is also widest in this third installment, and the expeditions are more scientific in nature rather than voyages of conquest and commerce. The summary nature of the work, requiring Verne to pare down a great deal of history into abridged synopses, insures that the exploration narratives always leave a little something to be desired. The material that Verne does provide, however, is enough for the curious reader to decide if it is worth pursuing more extensive biographies of these illustrious explorers. Celebrated Travels and Travelers is quite an informative and enjoyable read, and with Volume III it finishes on a high note.

Map from the book showing the “unknown regions” of the world left unexplored at the time of publication (1880).

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Martin Paz by Jules Verne

Romantic thriller in colonial Peru
Martin Paz, a novella by Jules Verne, was originally published in 1852 as a serial in the French literary magazine Musée des familles. Verne was only 24 years old at the time of publication, and this story predates the science fiction novels for which he is best known. The one element that unites Verne’s prolific body of work, sci-fi or not, is an adventurous love for travel and exploration, often to exotic lands. Here he takes the reader to Peru in a story set during the 1820s. Verne begins by explaining the social stratification of colonial Lima. The governing Spaniards enjoy a domineering position at the highest level of social status. Below them are the mestizos, those of mixed European and Indigenous heritage. At the bottom of the social ladder lie the Indigenous peoples of South America, referred to throughout the book as Indians. Under this rigid system, no matter how high one might rise within his own class, he was forced to suffer the condescension and abuse of those among the higher levels of the racial hierarchy.

Verne adds an interesting twist by introducing a Jewish family into the story. Though looked down upon as a stranger and outcast who fits into none of the above classes, a wealthy and successful Jewish businessman named Samuel is often sought after as a moneylender, and his riches grant him a certain degree of power in Limanian society. Samuel arranges to marry his beautiful daughter Sarah to a wealthy mestizo named André Certa, who has more affection for the family’s wealth than for the girl herself. Certa comes to suspect that an Indian named Martin Paz has eyes for his betrothed, and he fears the feeling may be mutual. One evening Sarah and Martin, she on her balcony and he in the alley below, share an emotional moment. Certa comes upon the scene and draws his sword. In the ensuing fight, Martin wounds Certa, and then must flee. When an Indian harms a mestizo, who drew first is irrelevant. If captured, Martin faces certain execution.

In Martin Paz, Verne overtly displays a respect and sympathy for Indigenous Americans. Martin is clearly the noblest character in the book, and the Indians in general, though not portrayed as saints, are depicted as freedom fighters valiantly struggling for independence from oppressive Spanish rule. Verne’s depiction of the Jewish characters is a little more problematic, however, as Samuel is not portrayed entirely positively, but Verne never stoops to anti-Semitism. If anything, he could be accused of being anti-Spanish.

In style and substance, this early work by Verne could pass for an adventure by Alexandre Dumas, one with enough melodrama and romance to be adapted into an opera. As in the novels of Dumas, the plot threads of multiple characters are braided together throughout the narrative, and all are tied neatly together in the end. So much happens so fast in this novella that it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly what’s going on, though some of the blame for that may fall upon the English translator. In the interest of establishing his setting with verisimilitude, Verne also loads his prose with Spanish terms and Peruvian colloquialisms that hinder the momentum of the action. Verne has clearly done diligent research on Peru, and he vividly brings the setting and time period to life for the reader. This is by no means a realistic work of historical fiction, however, as the plot takes contrived and theatrical turns that defy belief. In the end, Verne delivers an entertaining tour of Lima and the surrounding countryside, but Martin Paz leaves the reader wishing that a stronger, more true-to-life story had taken place there.

Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Volume II: The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century by Jules Verne

From Captain Cook to Humboldt
During his prolific authorial career, Jules Verne penned a series of 54 novels entitled Extraordinary Journeys, which included such famous works as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Not all of Verne’s books qualify as science fiction, but the one common theme that unites all of his adventure novels is travel and exploration. It is therefore fitting that Verne’s only nonfiction work should be a history of the explorers who have broadened our geographic and scientific knowledge of the world. Celebrated Travels and Travellers was published in three volumes from 1878 to 1880. In Volume I: The Exploration of the World, Verne covered European explorers and travelers from ancient times through the seventeenth century, which brings us to Volume II: The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century.

About a third of this volume is devoted to the three Pacific Ocean voyages of Captain James Cook, the British explorer who was the first to extensively explore Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and a number of other Pacific islands. One immediately senses a change in tone from the previous volume. While Volume I was all about conquest, colonization, and commerce, in Volume II we’re starting to see explorers making voyages for specifically scientific motives. Granted, trade and natural resources are still very much of interest to these explorers, so their dealings with the Indigenous inhabitants of these exotic lands are often directed towards those ends. Verne includes a lot of fascinating details about the first encounters between European and Oceanic cultures, with anthropological observations on the appearance, customs, and personalities of the Natives. Verne displays the same remarkable cultural sensitivity he showed in the first volume by speaking as an advocate for Indigenous peoples and chastising occasions of European brutality.

Verne follows Cook’s story with a series of briefer accounts of lesser-known explorers who also explored the South Pacific. He tends to favor his fellow countrymen, so he devotes a lengthy chapter to French explorers such as La Perouse, d’Entrecasteaux, and Baudin. Because these explorers followed much of the same path as Cook, their voyages are less interesting, and it feels like you’re visiting the same islands over and over again. The only differences lie in the degrees of hospitality or hostility with which the Natives greet their visitors. Verne frequently states that he is omitting portions of the explorers’ narratives due to redundancy and irrelevance, as if even he realizes that this portion of the book is dragging. Beyond narrating the history of exploration, Verne almost seems to be writing these books as a guide to those wishing to sail the South Seas themselves. As such, he pays more attention to geographic information such as coordinates and safe harbors, rather than to any zoological or botanical discoveries made along the way.

Fortunately, Verne rescues the book from tedium by devoting its final third to explorers of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These chapters are too brief, but the variety is welcome. Scottish explorer Mungo Park features prominently in the African chapter. The Asian chapter deals primarily with early visitors to the imperial court of China. The American chapter finishes the book on a high note with an account of Alexander von Humboldt’s expedition. This is likely the book’s most compelling voyage, due both to the ambitiousness of the journey and the quality of the writings Humboldt left behind.

On the whole, Verne’s skills as a historical summarizer do not measure up to his talents as a novelist, but I have enjoyed the first two books of Celebrated Travels and Travellers and look forward to Volume III: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century.
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Celebrated Travels and Travelers, Volume I: The Exploration of the Word by Jules Verne

Adventures in conquest, colonialism, and commerce
Jules Verne is best known as the preeminent science fiction author of the nineteenth century, but he also wrote at least one work of nonfiction. Published in three volumes from 1878 to 1880, Celebrated Travels and Travellers is a history of the explorers and adventurers who voyaged to the far reaches of the globe, discovered the wonders of exotic lands, and filled in the blank spaces on the world map. Travel and exploration are recurring themes in Verne’s novels, with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days being the most obvious examples. Verne was very well-read in the accounts of real-life explorers, and here he provides an overview of some of history’s most important and exciting voyages. Volume I: The Exploration of the World covers travelers from ancient times through the seventeenth century.

While few would question Verne’s talents as an author of fiction, his skills as a summarizer of historical information are not quite as praiseworthy. Granted, he is at the mercy of his source material, which in this case is centuries old. Quite a few of these travel narratives, particularly the ancient ones, are little more than lists of place names, as in, “He went here, and then he went there.” The text often reads as if bogged down in a morass of detail. If an explorer led an expedition with five ships, Verne feels the need to tell you where all five ships were at any given time and to detail the various conflicts between their captains. What these voyagers actually found in the lands they discovered often gets lost in the process. Nevertheless, though the literary quality of these expedition narratives varies widely, they are consistently informative.

The more renowned the explorer, the more ink Verne devotes to him, so household names like Marco Polo, Columbus, and Magellan get extended chapters all to themselves. Other chapters are comprised of briefer narratives about explorers from a particular nation or the exploration of a specific region of the world. Verne discusses at least 70 different explorers in Volume I, which runs about 450 pages. Most editions of Celebrated Travels and Travellers, including the ebooks available for free download from Project Gutenberg, are generously illustrated with reproductions of historic engravings, woodcuts, and maps.

The stories in this first volume are not so much about scientific exploration as they are about the claiming of territory, the conquest of Indigenous peoples, and the exploitation of resources. To his credit, Verne displays attitudes toward colonialism and race that are surprisingly liberal for his time. He expresses frank disgust over slavery and the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples. Although he seems to consider the conversion of pagans to Christianity a good thing, he acknowledges that Christian missionaries were also guilty of cruelty and cultural destruction.

Like Verne, I enjoy reading the firsthand accounts of historic expeditions. From this book, I hoped to discover some interesting and unfamiliar travel narratives so that I might seek out the primary sources and read them on my own. Even though some of Verne’s retellings are rather dry and lifeless, this book does succeed as a comprehensive reference on the history and geography of European exploration. It enlarged my knowledge of the more famous explorers and drew my attention to some intrepid voyagers whom I had never heard of before. I am more interested in scientific discoveries than I am in conquest and trade, so I look forward to Volumes II and III of Celebrated Travels and Travellers, which cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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Travelers discussed in Volume I

FIRST PART: HANNO—HERODOTUS—PYTHEAS—NEARCHUS—EUDOXUS—CÆSAR—STRABO—PAUSANIAS—FA-HIAN—COSMOS INDICOPLEUSTES—ARCULPHE—WILLIBALD—SOLEYMAN—BENJAMIN OF TUDELA—PLAN DE CARPIN—RUBRUQUIS—MARCO POLO—IBN BATUTA—JEAN DE BÉTHENCOURT—CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS—COVILHAM AND PAÏVA—VASCO DA GAMA—ALVARÈS CABRAL—JOAO DA NOVA—DA CUNHA—ALMEIDA—ALBUQUERQUE.

SECOND PART: HOJEDA—AMERICUS VESPUCIUS—JUAN DE LA COSA—YAÑEZ PINZON—DIAZ DE SOLIS—PONCE DE LEON—BALBOA—GRIJALVA—CORTÈS—PIZARRO—ALMAGRO—ALVARADO—ORELLANA—MAGELLAN—ERIC THE RED—THE ZENI—THE CORTEREALS—THE CABOTS—WILLOUGHBY—CHANCELLOR—VERRAZZANO—JACQUES CARTIER—FROBISHER—JOHN DAVIS—BARENTZ AND HEEMSKERKE—DRAKE—CAVENDISH—DE NOORT—W. RALEIGH—LEMAIRE AND SCHOUTEN—TASMAN—MENDANA—QUIROS AND TORRÈS—PYRARD DE LAVAL—PIETRO DELLA VALLE—TAVERNIER—THÉVENOT—BERNIER—ROBERT KNOX—CHARDIN—DE BRUYN—KÆMPFER—WILLIAM DAMPIER—HUDSON AND BAFFIN—CHAMPLAIN AND LA SALE.

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

OutMacGyvering Robinson Crusoe
What I liked best about reading Jules Verne’s novel The Mysterious Island is that I came to the book with absolutely no idea what made the island so mysterious. Given the breadth and depth of Verne’s literary output, all manner of scientific oddities could have been possible. The less known about the book ahead of time, the more fun the reading experience. In some editions, however, the chapters have titles that act as spoilers to the story. When I was about halfway through the book, an inadvertent glance at one of these chapter headings let the cat out of the bag, ruining the surprise ending.

The Mysterious Island was originally published in French in 1874, with the English-language version, translated by William Henry Giles Kingston, coming out the following year. The story begins in 1865, during the American Civil War. Five northerners are being held as prisoners in the Confederate capital of Richmond. They make a daring escape by stealing a hot air balloon, and then end up getting caught in a hurricane. Carried thousands of miles from their native soil, the five castaways crash on an uncharted island somewhere in the temperate latitudes of the South Pacific. The group consists of Cyrus Harding, a captain in the Union Army, frequently referred to as “the engineer;” his former slave, now servant, Neb; Gideon Spilett, a reporter for the New York Herald; a sailor named Pencroft, and his teenaged ward Herbert.

For most of its length, the book is a Robinson Crusoe-style survival adventure, though survival may be an overstatement since few castaways have ever had it so easy as these five. Ever since Daniel Defoe published the original Robinson Crusoe novel back in 1719, countless imitators have tried to outdo the godfather of castaways with ever more ingenious feats of invention in the face of isolation. The Mysterious Island resembles James Fenimore Cooper’s The Crater in that it gives its marooned heroes an almost unlimited ability to construct anything from coconut shells and dirt. With “the engineer” as their leader, these five can MacGyver their way out of any problem. In fact, what the book sorely needs is some adversity. Everything that Verne proposes is within the realm of scientific possibility, but there’s never any false starts, failed experiments, or tests of patience, no mistakes made, nor any conflict or disagreement between the five companions. If it’s realism you want, you won’t find it on this island, but the book does succeed as utopian fantasy. The characters are simplistic and one-dimensional, but the reader really does get to like them over time and delight vicariously in their technological successes.

I’m not a unilateral fan of Verne’s work. I enjoyed Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but didn’t care much for Journey to the Center of the Earth. The Mysterious Island is more along the lines of the former example, and is likely one of Verne’s better novels. Like Twenty Thousand Leagues, the joy of scientific discovery is contagious, and the adventure is sufficiently thrilling, especially for those who appreciate the slowly building suspense of 19th-century storytelling rather than the nonstop action of a 21st-century potboiler. Another fun aspect of Verne’s work is the way he draws connections between his various books, creating a precursor to something like the Marvel Universe. Call it the Verniverse. It’s a fascinating world, and great fun to visit.
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Doctor Ox’s Experiment by Jules Verne

Comic antiflemitism
In America you occasionally hear jokes about Canadians—how they’re always so polite, passive, quiet, and reasonable. Apparently, in the 19th century, the French used to make the same jokes about the Flemish (the inhabitants of Flanders, or northern Belgium). Now imagine basing an entire novel around that stereotype. That’s exactly what Jules Verne does with his 1872 novella Doctor Ox’s Experiment. Verne is best known as a science fiction writer, but he was also somewhat of a geography nut. In all of his works, he goes to great pains to establish the settings of his stories in great detail, no matter in what exotic locales they may take place. In this book, Verne paints for us a picturesque village in the mountains of Flanders named Quiquendone, where the citizens never fight, complain, or raise their voices in anger. They are so prim and stuffy that couples even require a decade of courtship before they get married. Verne renders the scene with a broad brush and lays it on pretty thick.

Have no fear, there’s also a science fiction story going on here. Doctor Ox, a mysterious scientist, arrives in Quiquendone and donates his expertise in a scheme to technologically advance this backwater town. To elaborate further on his plan would be to spoil the surprises (and this is a pretty short book, so surprises are few). There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the science here, and the story is pretty predictable. The sci-fi component of the plot just serves to reinforce the dumb joke upon which the whole story is based. The anti-Flemish ridicule is by no means offensive (at least I don’t think so, and I’m 1/4 Belgian), but it’s just not all that funny. After the initial chuckle it gets old fast. Nevertheless, Verne delivers a lively fairy-tale story that does manage to keep the reader interested. I enjoy his adventure novels a lot more than his comedies, but he’s a great writer who rarely if ever bores. Needless to say, he has a lot of better and better-known works than this one, but if you’re a Verne fan looking for a quickie then you might find this novella mildly entertaining.

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Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

A dismal abyss
Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Center of the Earth was originally published in 1864. The first English translation, published by Griffith and Farran, appeared in 1871. A second English translation of 1877, usually titled Journey to the Interior of the Earth, is said to be more faithful to Verne’s original work. The 1871 version, however, is the one that I got my hands on, so that’s what I’m reviewing here. One alteration the 1871 translator made was to change the names of the characters. In this version, the narrator is named Harry. He is a young scientist following in the footsteps of his uncle, Professor von Hardwigg. Paging through an antiquated Icelandic book, Uncle Hardwigg finds a coded note describing a passage to the center of the Earth. He immediately ropes his nephew into a scientific expedition, and the two head for Iceland. Once there, they enlist the services of Hans, a local eider down hunter, as their guide, and the three set off into the crater of an extinct volcano.

As is often the case with 19th-century sci-fi, Verne takes his time getting to the marvels and monsters. The book starts out as a typical scientific expedition, with all the usual discussion of gear and preparations. Then, as is often the case in Verne novels, he segues into a travelogue, giving us a tour of Iceland worthy of National Geographic. When the adventurers enter the crater, they explore the depths of the earth much like the passengers of the Nautilus explore the depths of the ocean in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Harry, Professor Hardwigg, and Hans wander through various strata of the earth’s crust, marveling at the crystals, the granitic formations, and the fossils of prehistoric life that have been deposited through the ages. As hard as Verne tries to jazz up the rocks and minerals, however, the scenery and science is nowhere near as interesting as the marine wonders presented in Twenty Thousand Leagues.

Something else the book lacks is its Captain Nemo. If you’re going to write a book with only three characters, they better be good characters, but as protagonists the three voyagers leave a lot to be desired. The running joke with Hans is that he’s extremely stoic and barely utters a word. Professor Hardwigg exudes a satisfying Professor Challenger-esque vibe with his indefatigable mania for scientific pursuits. Harry, however, makes for a frustrating narrator. It’s usually a good strategy to tell an astonishing adventure story from an everyman’s point of view, but Harry is a far wimpier than your average everyman. Throughout the book he constantly moans about how frightened, tired, and uncomfortable he is, and I lost track of all the times he was sick, injured, or unconscious. If I were leading the expedition, I would have left him behind.

Our three heroes spend most of the book coasting through the subterranean passages on a sort of caveman carnival ride that so defies belief it enters the realm of fantasy. Often all they can do is comment on their surroundings as they whiz by. Toward the end, even Verne seems to grow tired of his story and has to resort to a flashback and a dream sequence. If there isn’t enough interesting stuff to talk about beneath the earth, what are we doing there? I usually enjoy Verne’s work, and I loved Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but apparently geology doesn’t make as interesting a fictional narrative as oceanology or marine biology, and other sci-fi books have covered paleontology to better effect. Five years separated the publication of Journey to the Center of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues. It’s amazing how much Verne improved as a writer over that half-decade, because the latter is a masterpiece while the former is mediocre at best.
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