Saturday, July 18, 2020

For Colorado coal miners, the canary in the coal mine was actually ...



THE UNDERGROUND CITY

Jules Verne  (1828-1905)

This tale takes place near Loch Katrine, in Scotland.  Simon Ford, his son Harry and wife Madge live in a cottage at the bottom of the abandoned Aberfoyle coal mine.  The mine was closed ten years ago when the seam of coal ran out.  But Simon, ever hopeful, thinks he's discovered evidence of an extension of the old stratum, and writes a letter to his friend, F.R. Starr, a mining engineer, to invite him to dinner and to see something interesting.  When he arrives, they meet at the train station and travel back to the mining site, where they descend into the Dochert Pit, one of the upper levels of the mine.  The Ford residence is dimly lit by a vent extending to the surface.  After dining, Simon, Harry, Madge and Starr descend 1500 feet by ladder into the Aberfoyle mine itself and Simon leads the others to the end of a remote gallery (the mine is a maze of tunnels and passages extending for miles in every direction).  Along the way, Harry checks for firedamp (methane) as they progress.  Methane is explosive when mixed with air.  As they progress, Simon tells the others about the ghost in the mine.  A shadowy figure has been seen flitting by at times, and strange sounds have been heard occasionally, like pounding or cracking inside the tunnel walls.  At one spot, one of the supporting pillars has been blown up.

They reach the end of their long walk (4 miles) and Simon tries to find the firedamp leak that he had noticed sometime earlier, firedamp being an indicator of the presence of coal, but the fissures that he'd previously discovered have been plugged up with lime.  Undeterred, Harry attacks the wall with his pick and opens up a new crack from which firedamp is detected.  Excited, the trio returns later with dynamite and blows open the stope (a producing wall of coal) and reveals a completely unknown labyrinth of passages, all rich with coal and ready to be mined.  They explore the vast new maze for a long time, revealing a bottomless pit and an underground loch in addition to a rich, unlimited source of coal.  Then Harry accidentally drops his lamp and it breaks.  Even though they're stranded without light, they manage to find their way back to their starting point, only to find that what was a blown open entrance has now been filled in, so they are no longer sure of how to return to the old Aberfoyle galleries. 

Meanwhile, the local citizens have seen flames issuing from the top of the old DunDonald castle, a nearby ruin on the edge of a firth.  One stormy night, a ship is wrecked on the rocky shore, having mistaken the flames for the Irvine light, a local channel marker.  After rescuing the crew, one of Harry's friends, Jack Ryan, realizes that Harry has been absent for a while, so he pays the mine a visit and finds that that nobody is home.  A rescue party is organized and the members begin to climb down the series of ladders but are chagrined to find that the bottom 200 feet is ladderless.  They have to use rope to get to the bottom.  Following the tunnel to the end they are able to rescue the four trapped explorers who are still alive after ten days because a mysterious entity has left food and water for them.  They had found a girl unconscious at the lowest level, who helped them backtrack to the entrance of the New Aberfoyle mine.

Three years later, the new New Aberfoyle mine is in full production mode.  Electric light has been installed and a small city has been built to expedite the removal of the coal.  Train tracks have been laid and trams laden with the "black gold" are being shunted to the outside as rapidly as possible.
There are ducks on the underground loch (Loch Malcolm) and domesticity has regularized the existence of the subterranean mining community.  In order to further the education of Nell, the family takes a trip to Edinburgh.  They tour Arthur's seat and admire the view and later take a ferry across Loch Katrine.  In the middle of the lake, they hear a loud roaring sound and all the water vanishes, grounding the ship.  A little surprised, they return home expecting to see everything drowned, but discover that Loch Malcom has only risen a few feet.  After investigation, it's evident that some of the pillars supporting the roof (also the bed of Loch Katrine) have been destroyed by explosives.

Nell and Harry fall in love, and a wedding ceremony is held on the bank of Loch Malcolm.  As the ceremony is being performed, another loud explosion is heard, part of the shore of the Loch vanishes, and water begins to drain into the gallery below.  At the same time an old man with a huge owl is shooting across the water in a canoe, waving a broken safety lamp in an apparent attempt to blow up the entire village by throwing the lamp up toward the ceiling, where firedamp has collected as a result of the explosion.  Nell cries to the owl to catch the lamp, which it does, thereby saving the lives of the inhabitants along with their houses.  The old man, Nell's grandfather, disappears into the depths and the survivors live happily ever after.

I'd never heard of this Verne production before i ran across it on the Gutenberg site.  It's certainly not one of his best known novels, and is rather haphazardly assembled, but it possessed the perhaps questionable feature of having an explosion periodically to keep the reader alert.  There was a major scandal several years ago about the translations of Verne's work.  The most available versions at that time were ones that were translated by a relation of Verne's, and there was a lot of criticism about the quality of his renditions.  Since then, there have been several new translations of some of his works published, but i haven't heard of any comprehensive edition arriving on the market, so perhaps the versions we have, barring knowledge of the French language, may be the only door we have to Verne's original thoughts.  Most of the ones i've read are still pretty interesting, and Verne remains a welcome resource for those attracted by older works of science fiction...

16 comments:

  1. I also have not read this Verne book.

    You raise an interesting point about the translations. I may delve into his books again but I probably will try to find the best translation that I can find.

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  2. i've some modern translations and i recall noting that the language style was quite different than what i was used to... even in a common European language like French, there's apparently a lot of leeway for interpretation... i guess i've seen opinions to that effect in print at various times, but it's more striking when the reader sees it in person... tx for the comments this year, Brian; it's always good to see your imprint!

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  3. An explosion every now and then to keep the reader/viewer's interest sounds like a lot of summer blockbusters I've seen.

    I'd never heard of this one before; it does sound like it could be interesting.

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    1. i had the feeling, as i indicated, that the translation wasn't very accurate... it was probably one of the original ones, as it read like some of the other early Vernes i've tried... sort of eighth grade level English, maybe... plus the subject was not a happy one, dealing with coal in a sort of pro-pollution advertising vein...

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  4. Sounds like a good mystery and adventure wrapped up into one story. Sounds like something I'll read.

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    1. i think it might well be as good as one might wish... if it was a different translation. it's still readable, but just ho hum in spots...

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  5. I’m also suspicious of translations .... we all know that certain words and phrases are not translatable .... hell, even English is hard to translate into English ....

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    1. haha... you're so right about that! some of Verne's books have been recently translated; i've read a couple of them and the style and flavor was quite different than the older ones... the library might have some...

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  6. It sounds like the consensus is to read recent translations of Verne. I noted how the characters took all the explosions and results of those in stride. I suppose that would be because mining was their profession and they were accustomed to the scene. But was the "ghost" ever identified?

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    1. i'm sorry i didn't make that a bit clearer... i was in too much of a hurry... the ghost was the old miner who was stuck down in the galleries when the mine ran out of coal and the business folded. he was so used to it he liked it and he raised his daughter down there (Nell) and didn't want anyone crossing his turf. the bit with the wrecked ship was due to him lighting flares to imitate the local light house and to lure ships on to the rocks so he could rob their cargoes... i'll have to think about my posts a bit more instead of just flopping down in the chair and hammering them out... lol

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    2. Thank you! It is much clearer now. I love ghost stories.

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  7. Mudpuddle, I've been missing your updates! My blog reader is failing me. :( Anyways, this sounds intriguing... I haven't read this Verne yet, though I've heard of it. As for translations... Jules Verne translations are my reading bane. The old ones are iffy, and the new ones sometimes use modern language and such. I would love to see some enterprising person(s) translate all the Extraordinary Voyages with a consistent voice and 19th century vocabulary.

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    1. i don't know what a blog reader is, but i'm sorry it's got a case of the fits... the same things annoy me also as regards Verne. you'd think some grad student what undertake to do a bunch of quality translations for his doctorate or some such. maybe there aren't enough old 19th C. sci fi fogies laying around to make it worth while, haha...

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  8. I’ve never heard of this book either. At first it sounded like something R.L. Stevenson would have written - probably the Aberfoyle bit gotme going in that direction. Usually it’s the Russian translations that are the problem. I’m surprised that a French book would be troublesome but then it’s not everyone that can translate a book well.

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  9. i've tried some of the modern Russian translations and i thought they were pretty grim... i still think Constance Garnett is hard to beat... and she didn't even learn Russian until she was 30!

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  10. I love Scotland SO MUCH. So much, in fact, (and Edinburgh in particular, though the whole country is stunning and beautiful), that my daughter's middle name is spelled 'Edin' instead of 'Eden'.

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