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...

PLUTONIA

Vladimir Obruchev (1863-1956)

In 1913 Pyotr Kashtanov, Professor of Geology, was invited by Nikolai Trukhanov, an expert on Siberia and builder of astronomical observatories, to take part in an expedition to the northern Arctic Ocean to discover a new continent.  For years, polar explorers had reported seeing remote mountains in the far north, and there was a theory, current at that time, that a large ice-covered continent lay underneath the polar ice-cap.  Kashtanov had spent several years arranging for financial and material backing for an exploration of that area and now he was ready to undertake the voyage.  He had had a ship constructed after the famous design originated by Fridtjof Nansen, with a double-walled hull and storage room for several years worth of supplies.  The North Star, manned by Trukhanov, Kashtanov, Papochkin (zoologist), Gromeko (botanist), and Borovoi (meterologist), left Vladivostok on May 4th and sailed north through the Sea of Okhotsk, the Kuril Islands and the 16 active volcanos in the Kamchatka rift zone, headed for the Beaufort Sea.  They stopped briefly at Petropavlosk to acquire sledges and a dog manager, Igolkin.  Passing through the Bering Strait, they picked up another member of the party, Yakov Maksheyev, a mining engineer who they discovered paddling a canoe across the Strait, who expressed a willingness to join the expedition.  He had just discovered gold in the Chukotka area of north-eastern Siberia.

At 76 degrees latitude, they sighted a range of mountains in the north, and soon after they dropped anchor in a small bay after sailing through the pack ice for several weeks.  The six left the ship there, planning to mush north with sledges and dogs while the crew members of the North Star mapped the coastline.  The first two days the party covered 34 miles and shortly afterwards they discerned, through the fog and mist, a range of mountains looming above them.  Casting about for a way forward, they came upon a pass of sorts, 4500 feet high, which permitted them to cross the mountains and to descend the far side.  After topping out, they slogged down through 3 feet of snow and fog for what seemed like an overly long interval when they happened to check their barometer and discovered they were 1200 feet below sea level.  Also the compass needle was wavering all over the dial, so they worried about losing their bearings.  Fortunately there was a strong south wind blowing, so they used that as a direction indicator.  They chopped their way through a number of ice walls, cutting steps and path-finding their way through the windy, fractured ice blocks that impeded their progress.  One night while fixing dinner they observed that the boiling temperature of their water for tea was 248 degrees.  Also the atmospheric pressure had increased to 2.5 atmospheres.  All the instruments indicated that they were, although traveling on a more or less flat slope, 4000 feet below sea level.  They continued on and the pressure of the air dropped again at about the same time that the ambient light started to increase.  But the air was a peculiar reddish tint and, as the fog began to clear, they saw that the sun was smaller and dimmer than the one they were used to.  Soon, the snow fields thinned out and vanished altogether, as the temperature warmed up and the south wind died down somewhat. 

The group decided to establish a base camp, as they had to abandon the sledges and dogs in order to continue their explorations.  They found a convenient hill and built a small cabin and a storage hut.  The decision was made to leave two members at the camp while the rest continued exploring the unknown region ahead.  By this point they realized that they were no longer traveling north, but had somehow gotten turned around and were descending into a warmer environment, with fields of coarse grass and occasional patches of shrubbery.  In the distance they could see small grey hills, which, as they watched, moved from place to place.  Maksheyev and Kashtanov left to investigate and they found that the hills were actually mammoths browsing on the yellow grasses and shrubbery.  Not paying attention to their surroundings, they were unpleasantly surprised by a crashing in the brush and, turning around, saw a very large rhinoceros charging them.  They managed to escape and return to camp, where speculation was rife as to what was actually going on.  At first they thought the Earth had rotated on its axis while they were traveling, but later they realized that the red sun was probably a captured red dwarf star, and that they were in fact inside the planet, apparently living in a portion of a past geological era that had somehow been preserved through some sort of ancient cataclysm in which a meteor (so they speculated) had penetrated the earth's surface and dragged part of the Tertiary fauna and flora with it, creating another sub- surface Terra.  They spent time examining the local rocks and botany and realized that they were indeed in the presence of living fossils from the Tertiary period.  There was some discussion about the gravitational anomalies that should effect life traveling upside down on the inside of the planet, but none of the scientists could agree on what exactly could account for such a situation.

Two party members, Igolkin and Borovoi stayed at the cabin to take care of the dogs and supplies and the other four men prepared themselves to further explore the southern regions of the territory.  There was a small creek or brook nearby, so they built two canoes and began paddling downstream.  The savannah disappeared fairly quickly and as the river widened, the banks became laden with bushes and trees, interspersed with glimpses of vast plains with mammoths, giant yak-like kine, giant deer, shaggy proto-horses, rhinoceroses, hordes of giant mosquitos, horse-flies and gnats.  Giant boars and saber-toothed tigers occasionally made an appearance.  Once, when camped for the night, Gromeko was picked up in the twilight by vulture with a 15 foot wing span.  A dose of buckshot discouraged him, however, and the botanist suffered nothing more than indignity and a few bruises.  Wandering on the prairie one day, Kashtanov saw another moving mountain and discovered it to be a giant turtle.  Several times, giant hippopotami charged the camp, once dragging off a canoe until Maksheyev raced after it and cut the rope by which it was being carried off.  Monster storms were frequent, with thunder like cannon shots and rivers of rain accompanied by sheets of lightning.  Kashtanov found outcrops to analyze occasionally, some of which he was able to identify as aerolites from a mesosiderite group, half iron with olivine and nickel. 

Eventually the party arrived at a large lake, which they paddled across and found themselves, briefly, in a Cretaceous environment with the appropriate fossils living around them.  Soon, as they continued south, they entered a Jurassic zone, however, with it's brontosauri, camel-giraffes, glyptodonts,  iguanodons and other titanotheriums.  They had run-ins with Creodonts, Triceratops, Hesperornis (large birds), and foot long dragonflies that bit.  There was an archeopteryx, some ammonites, pterodactyls and plesiosuarises.  An ichthyosaur made its appearance with a stinky stegosaur that was 12 feet high and 25 feet long.

The worst encounter they had was with an ant colony.  These insects were 3 feet long and voraciously aggressive.  They stole most of the party's supplies at one point, and after considerable thought, two of the party climbed a local volcano and scraped 200 pounds of sulfur off the inside walls of the crater, with which they made a poisonous gas that they used to kill all the ants in their nest.  They were able to recover their provisions and accouterments and journey onward.  Inside another volcano, they felt the ground shake and a deep rumble;  they left with all dispatch, just in time to observe a Plinian eruption, like Mt. St. Helens, with nuee ardentes (flowing ash clouds), explosive eruptions and ejecta flying about their ears.

The adventures continued, including yet another erupting volcano (which they named "Old Grouchy" because it spit black gravel at them) which trapped them in a mudslide and caught them between two lava flows.  There was a battle with more ants, there were boggy sloughs that stole their boots, and they had constant battles with iguanodons.  At one point, on top of a high peak, they saw nothing to the south but bleak, arid desert that was lifeless so far as they could tell, so they decided to return to base camp.  Winter was coming on, and they hurried to avoid being trapped in the northern snows.  Making about 25 miles a day, they reached the camp only to find that it was deserted.  After investigation, they found that Igolkin and Borovoi had been kidnapped by a tribe of primitive ancestors of modern humanity who worshipped the captives as gods because of their weapons and clothes.  So there was an episode of tracking and rescuing, after which the reunited explorers made their way back through the snowy mountains to the North Star.  Setting sail for home, the ship was accosted by a destroyer which captured them and stole all their records and samples.  World War One had just begun, and travel was discouraged by the authorities.  Abandoned at Kamchatka, the friends drifted away one by one, until only Kashtanov and Trukhanov were left.  These last two finally got a Japanese fishing boat to carry them to Japan from which they took a ferry to the Chinese mainland and contrived to catch the train across Siberia and back to Moscow.

This was an exciting and well written book.  Obruchev lived a very long time and supposedly wrote one thousand books, only a few of which have been translated.  The geology was interesting and the portrayal of the antediluvian creatures was accurate and detailed.  The plotting was well thought out and realized.  I have to say that this was the most believable and convincing account of hollow earth experiences that i've read, comparing it to the works of Margaret Cavendish, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Captain Symm, and the others i've had the opportunity of perusing.  It's a subject that was of considerable importance and interest in centuries past even though it's not paid much attention today.  But studying all the various ramifications and theories , from scientific based ones, to spiritually oriented productions, has given me a kind of overview of how humans have dealt with unusual concepts, or actually how they have gone about explaining the real world to themselves.  Curious clues to the operation of the psyche, one might say...

NB:  this novel meets Cirtnecce's challenge of reading a summer book of more than 400 pages...  it had 404...

OF THE DANGERS ATTENDING ALTRUISM ON THE HIGH SEAS

Observe these Pirates bold and gay,
That sail a gory sea:
Notice their bright expression:-
The handsome one is me.

We plundered ships and harbours,
We spoiled the Spanish main;
But Nemesis watched over us,
For it began to rain.

Oh all well-meaning folk take heed!
Our captain's fate was sore;
A more well-meaning Pirate,
Had never dripped with gore.

The rain was pouring long and loud,
The sea was drear and dim;
A little fish was floating there:
Our Captain pitied him.

"How sad," he said, and dropped a tear
Splash on the cabin roof,
"That we are dry, while he is there
Without a waterproof.

"We'll get him up on board at once;
For Science teaches me,
He will be wet if he remains
Much longer in the sea."

They fished him out; the First Mate wept,
And came with rugs and ale:
The Boatswain brought him one galosh,
And fixed it on his tail.

But yet he never loved the ship;
Against the mast he'd lean;
If spoken to, he coughed and smiled,
And blushed a pallid green.

Though plied with hardbake, beef and beer,
He showed no wish to sup:
The neatest riddles they could ask,
He always gave them up.

They seized him and court-martialled him,
In some excess of spleen,
For lack of social sympathy,
(Victoria Xll. 18).

They gathered every evidence
That might remove a doubt:
They wrote a postcard in his name,
And partly scratched it out.

Till, when his guilt was clear as day,
With all formality
They doomed the traitor to be drowned
And threw him in the sea.

The flashing sunset, as he sank,
Made every scale a gem;
And, turning with a graceful bow,
He kissed his fin to them.


This piece of doggerel caught my eye and i said (he said),
why not share it with others?
There is a mystery associated with it:  who wrote it?
Dodgson, Tennyson, Chesterton, Lear, Nash, Wodehouse,
Atwood, Seuss, or maybe Walt Kelley?

If you think you know the answer, let me know in the Comments section,
and you'll receive (he said with frabjous glee) a slice of literary pie,
and a bowl of poetical porridge!

FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN ACROSS A CONTINENT ON A BICYCLE

Jerome J. Murif  (1863-1926)

"A vague longing to do something..."  is what inspired Jerome to plan a ride over some of the harshest country in the southern hemisphere.  Once he'd decided to actually do it, he looked around for quite a while for a bicycle that he thought could stand up to the trip.  He was under no illusions about the terrain:  Although not terribly mountainous, it consisted in large measure of seasonally dry lake beds and creeks.  Mud cracks, root holes, "gibbers" (loose rocks and boulders), mulga scrub and spear grass (up to twelve feet high with seeds that stabbed passers-by and burrowed into their skin).  Not to mention the ubiquitous millions of flies and mosquitos, or snakes by the dozen.  At length he bought an Electra.  Hugo Wertheim was the manufacturer, a piano producer and also a maker of sewing machines.  Murif didn't want to be a moving advertisement, though, so he removed the brand name and substituted "Diamond" in its place.

His intention was to travel lightly, as he meant to make full use of railroad and telegraph "stations" that dotted his planned route with some regularity.  That worked out quite well, and Jerome had to camp out in the wild a minimum number of times, mostly taking advantage of the open hospitality proffered, as a general rule, by the said stations.  In terms of setting the bicycle up for arduous conditions, he added extra rubber to the tires and carried enough neatsfoot oil to last the trip.  In those days, wheel hubs had small capped holes for oiling the wheel bearings;  this had to be done fairly often.  For his own luggage, he strapped several bags to the handle bars and carried a satchel over his shoulder for more immediate availability.

To begin with he bought a voucher book he planned on using to verify his mileage by gathering signatures from station managers, workers, ranchers and farmers.  The first person to sign was the Postmaster of Glenelg, near Adelaide.  Jerome wheeled his bike into the surf of the southern ocean, got the signature, told his landlady he wouldn't be home for tea, and left.  He biked fifty miles the first day, to Kapunda, noting in his diary the Flinders range on his right.  The road was clay mixed with "ironstone" and partly paved.  This fairly satisfactory surface only lasted for several hundred miles, though, and after that he had to wade creeks, dodge ten foot high ant hills, evade cracks up to 4" wide, suffer the constant attentions of millions of flies, and keep a sharp eye out for snakes.  He accidentally ran over a small snake - a mere 3 feet long - and had to pedal faster because it chased him.  His rate of pedaling was just about 62 gear inches.  This is a figure used in cycling to represent the rate of travel.  The number of teeth in the chain gear multiplied by the tire size, divided by the number of teeth in the rear cog, equals "gear inches".  (That's about what i have on my bike and i go about 12 mph @about 60 rpm).

One day he stopped to get a drink from a small water fall and slung his satchel over a nearby fence while doing so.  When he was finished he noticed a horse, obviously starved and tired, leaning against the fence post and trapping the bag.  Murif's description of the animal was a "barrel-hooped skeleton held together by rawhide".  He tried everything he could think of to get the horse to move with no luck.  He rode off about four miles then came back to see if the horse had shifted at all.  It hadn't and Jerome didn't mention whether he recovered the satchel or not.  Moving right along, head winds were a constant problem, occasionally stirring up dust storms that made track finding a major hassle.  Three cornered Jacks made life unpleasant:  they were thorns so structured that one of their points was directed upward however it happened to fall on the ground.  Because of thicker tires, these weren't normally a difficulty, but flats occurred occasionally even so.

Sometimes cycling wasn't in the cards.  Frequently the terrain was so rough and rocky, or wet and slimy, that he had to push the bike, or even carry it.  He finally reached Oodnadatta with eyes sore from fly attacks and pretty well worn out from pushing and carrying.  This was 688 miles from Adelaide.  He rested up for five days, then set off again.  Vast plains, sand flats and hills, stony tablelands all presented their individual hardships until Murif at last crossed into the Northern Territory at Charlotte Waters telegraph station.  After a short rest, he continued on through the intense heat (124 in the shade) and almost immediately got off on the wrong track and became lost.  And got stomach cramps from the heat, or possibly bad water.  Casting about, he got back on the right road and soldiered on.

He started seeing occasional natives, and was a bit alarmed at first, due to gossip about how dangerous they could be.  As it turned out, gossip is what the stories were, the aboriginal peoples being merely curious and helpful.  Meeting one of them in a desert, the spear carrier observed, "white feller riding big mosquito".   

Acacia, mulga, spinifex, desert oak and loose sand hills made pedaling impossible sometimes.  Just before Depot Wells, he had to carry the bike for 15 miles, zig-zagging up and down red sand hills in the constant heat.  At Alice Springs, situated in a sort of hole in the MacDonnell mountains, he took a few days off before tackling the Todd, a sort of gap that penetrated the range and led into a wilder portion of the continent.  Here there were fewer stations and ranches, and not as many water holes.  His clothes were getting worn out.  "A torn garment called through the rent, for thread, and i gave it some".  He amused himself by playing tunes on the bicycle spokes.  Between Barron and Tennant creeks there were no ranches or stations for 160 miles, but Jerome decided to just starve for a bit and set out with just his water bag.  A friendly householder had given him a piece of cake that he was carrying in his hand and he accidentally dropped it while pedaling.  So he stopped and went back to find it.  Returning, he saw that his water bag had fallen over and leaked most of the liquid into the sand.  Disheartened but determined, he forged ahead anyway and ran into even more trouble.  He ran into an anthill (they are like concrete) and bruised himself badly but didn't damage Diamond.  Suffering from dire thirst, he fell into a water hole which held only salt water.  Pushing through red loam and heavy sand he reached The Devil's Marbles, a collection of giant granite blocks haphazardly strewn over the landscape.  He saw a monster lizard, not resembling any known reptile, and at last got himself lost again following a billabong (a dead-end branch of a creek).  Another 30 miles and he had the good fortune to meet two fence riders who gave him food and water.  They had a conversation about metempsychosis (soul migration):  perhaps an apt topic relating to his waterless experience.

Powell's Creek station marked the end of the wild country and at this point Murif began to sense victory.  He passed by Lake Woods, a body of water 90 miles in circumference and almost immediately was in jungle:  trees with trunks 30 feet around, and flowers of all sorts and hues.  Thick grass gave him some problems:  the bike would stand up in it without falling over.  But the end was rapidly approaching.  A series of long rides led into Palmerston, near Darwin, the effective end of the trip.  The Palmerston Cycling Club met him 2.5 miles out of town and cheered him all the way to the ocean, where he rode into the surf, having completed over 2000 miles of extremely difficult country.  In his final analysis, the only comment Jerome made that was recorded, was that his excellent bike had not even broken one spoke on the whole journey.

This was another remarkable adventure by an extraordinary human being.  The book was conversational, humorous in a way that i took to be typically Australian, and well written.  I had the feeling that if Murif had known beforehand how hard it was going to be he might not have done it.  But it was a superb accomplishment and he deserved all the recognition he got.  Later, he held various positions in Australia until he migrated to America, where he spent the balance of his life in the Bay Area.  He died and was buried in San Mateo, near where i used to live...

WHEELBARROW ACROSS THE SAHARA

Geoff Howard  (b. 1945?)

Geoff and his wife Joan spent a year in Nigeria just after they were married.  They were both members of a religious society and they taught in a small school located in northern Nigeria.  After mulling over the question of how to help the poverty- stricken natives, Geoff came up with the idea of crossing the Sahara on foot without dependence on outside assistance in order to drum up some publicity and financial aid to help them.  He did some experimentation and came to the conclusion that a Chinese wheelbarrow, with a mast and sail, would be ideal for the set of problems that he anticipated. 

Securing support from corporations, societies and businesses occupied much of his spare time for two years.  He wrote 1500 letters to equipment providers, corporations, businesses and societies of all sorts and finally, in 1974 he was ready to go.  The British Special Air Service provided support in the form of two soldiers who were to accompany him with a Land Rover.  Mick and Paddy were experienced mechanics and campers and their role was to supply protection and infrastructural support.  They were there in case Geoff needed rescuing, basically, and to facilitate repairs on the wheelbarrow.  Geoff had trained for the trip, running and practicing with the wheelbarrow on the beach.  He hoped to make the trek without ancillary assistance, relying on the storage capacity of the machine and the occasional village or town to provide water and food.

Taking ship to Tangier, Algeria, they drove to Algeria, apprehensively dealing with border guards and patrolling soldiers.  At the actual border crossing they bribed the local official with two cans of beer.  They had to drive south to the starting point, Beni Abbas.  They traveled mainly at night to evade official notice.  On Christmas Eve, they drank to a successful endeavour.  Leaving early in the morning on Christmas Day, Geoff managed to shove the wheelbarrow for 13 miles before he was totally exhausted.  And this was on a paved road.  Only one of the unanticipated difficulties was the wind.  Surges and gusts tended to blow against the barrow and, since it was loaded with 2 to 3 hundred pounds of gear, it required a lot of strength to keep it on a level roll.  And any irregularities in the surface were magnified as the vibrations were transferred through the hand bars to the operators body.  No shock absorbers. 

Geoff gradually got used to the unaccustomed exertion and by the time the pavement ended in two hundred miles, he was coping fairly well.  His routine involved cooking his own food and doing his own cleaning and camp regimen;  at the end of the day he was commonly exhausted and as a result had frequent trouble with some of his equipment.  The stove in particular seemed to plug up with sand a lot.  It was only several hundred miles later that he found that a piece of fabric was partially impeding gas flow to the burner.  Later in the trip, due to a bad gasket, it was responsible for burning Geoff's tent and almost Geoff himself.  But most of his trouble lay with the terrain he was covering.  There were sand pits and ruts across the road which seemed, more often than not, to jerk the barrow out of his hands and dump it on the ground.  Lifting it back up was increasingly strenuous as he lost energy during the day.  The sand pits acted like unannounced brakes, and jarred him painfully when he ran into one and the bars were wrenched out of his grasp.  Additionally, the barrow would get often stuck in a rut or pothole and sometimes Geoff had to twist the machine around and pull it out inch by inch.

He was drinking up to twenty pints of water a day and never had enough to eat.  Since there was no spare water, he couldn't bathe, and consequently attracted flies, which he pretty quickly got used to, as they covered his exposed face and neck.  Diarrhoea was a constant problem, probably related to not being able to wash the dishes very well if at all.  After 4 to 500 miles the wheel started to wear out.  The rim was made out of aluminum and seated in a kind of foam mesh that began to deteriorate, so that the rim itself started wobbling and became damaged as a result.  Luckily, there was a spare wheel in the Rover, which either Mick or Paddy swapped out with the worn out one, but fairly soon it began to give trouble as well.  The rim on the second wheel was supported with spokes, like a bicycle wheel,  and they weren't strong enough to resist the lateral and vertical forces that the poor contraption had to deal with. 

But they coped, one way or another.  The daily routine involved the two soldiers driving ahead to a suitable camping spot and waiting for Geoff to catch up with them.  If he was delayed, they'd go back and help him.  Theoretically, Geoff wasn't supposed to accept any help, but that rule soon went by the wayside, and the heat and mechanical breakdowns demanded that all three co-operate just in order to survive.  Mud villages were fairly common along the route, and passersby were also frequent.  The principal law of the desert seemed to be that all travelers, regardless of nationality or origin, helped each other with food, water, or assistance whenever required.  Things progressed fairly well until they reached the Niger border, where the road got a lot worse.  Part of it was deep sand that strained Geoff's muscles to the utmost.  Sometimes the mountains he encountered drove him to tears.  To make matters harder, a species of very small sharp thorn, apparently ubiquitously distributed over their route, made life a misery for walkers and vehicle tires.

They had several days of rest at Tamanrasset, but they were constrained by a deadline to hurry as much as they could, because they didn't want to be caught traveling in the summer time.  As it was , the temperature reached 110 degrees in central Niger.  But Geoff got stronger as time went on.  One day he managed to cover 30 miles in spite of sand holes and ruts that made for grueling progress.  Finally after 2000 miles, they reached their destination, Kano in north Nigeria.  When they crossed into the latter country, Mick and Paddy weren't allowed to cross because the officers back in England had neglected to forward the requisite visas.  So Geoff went on alone, but soon made friends with various tourist types who gave him a lot of assistance, both physical and moral.  When he reached Kano, he trundled along toward the airport where he had arranged to meet his wife, who was flying in from England.  But before he got there, he saw a figure in the distance whom he at first thought was another native, but soon realized it was Mrs. Howard.  Ecstatic reunion.

Geoff went back to his job as Reverend in Salford, England, where he stayed right up until the present day, apparently.  This was a most amazing story.  Mr. Howard displayed more grit and guts than any explorer i've ever heard of;  the daily pain and exertion would have killed or discouraged almost any other person attempting such a feat.  It was at times painful reading about the hardships, quandaries, and dilemmas the small group managed to deal with daily.  The writing was standard English prose, very readable and clear, and, if anything, understated the horrors that they faced every day.  I'd read this book again if I hadn't already read it. Maybe i will anyway.  Excellent and inspiring...

SYMZONIA:  A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY


John Cleve Symmes, Jr.   (1780-1829)

The beginning of the 19th century was a time of increasing general interest in scientific phenomena.  All sorts of innocent and occasionally weird theories arose, among which was the one about a hollow earth.  John Symmes was rather taken away by the thought and wrote articles and one novel describing and explaining how such a geological curiousity had come about, and what it was actually like down there.

Captain Seaborn, hired to lead the expedition, had a 400 ton ship built, with which he intended to sail through the Antarctic seas to the inner earth.  The vessel was steam-powered but was also equipped with masts and sails.  The driving force was via mechanically operated paddles that protruded through the ship's sides at an angle.  They were designed to be retractable in hazardous situations, as in plowing through heavy ice.  After obtaining a crew, he set out on August 1, 1817, the initial destination being the Falkland Islands.  This archipelago (over 400 islands) was portrayed as having a mild climate which supported hogs and goats, being covered with tussock grass, an ideal fodder.  Penguins were abundant and Seaborn and his crew admired the towns the animals had built for themselves, with neatly designed streets and house-like nests arranged  just like city blocks.  They seemed to have an active social life, and an organized political structure that could only (according to Seaborn's observations) have originated from a civilization inside the earth.  Approaching South Georgia, the Captain also explained why the South Pole must be free of ice, citing refracted sunlight and the seven months of sunshine lasting 24 hours a day.

Not all of the crew were sanguine about this theory, and one of them, Slim, fomenting rebellion, led them in a mutiny.  But Captain Seaborn managed to convince them that if nothing else, they would find lots of seals to harvest which would make them rich.  They continued on and soon found land and a large harbor.  Dropping anchor, they explored the vicinity a bit and were surprised upon returning to the ship to find it sitting on dry land.  Soon after, however, a tidal bore was seen approaching which lifted the vessel 80 feet.  They were pushed up a nearby river for fifty miles into an old growth forest and discovered, after debarking,  a number of mammoth bones lying around.  Later a live one appeared and encouraged them to regain the ship.  Returning to the bay, some of the crew set up permanent house-keeping and planned on spending the winter hunting for seals.  The rest of the contingent continued on toward the south, but soon ran into an ice barrier along the edge of which they traveled until they came upon a gap which provided access to the interior.  The ice was apparently a sort of girdle that surrounded the South Pole, and was (according to the Captain) created by the condensation of warm air emanating from the inside of the planet meeting the cold air common to the polar region.

The Captain and his crew resumed sailing but after a short period noticed that the compass was now pointing north.  After five days they veered to the east for another seven days after which they sighted land.  A ship with five masts and narrow sails appeared and after a short exchange, the two vessels entered another harbor behind an island (sort of like the relation which the Isle of Wight bears to the English mainland).  The new arrivals saw a land of rolling hills, cows, green with tussock grass and trees with snow covered mountains in the background.  Captain Seaborn landed by himself and was conducted to a large white building, resembling in part a sort of ancient Greek temple.  He met a short man who bowed and sat on his feet like an East Indian and they attempted to communicate.  Over several weeks, Seaborn became familiar with their language, but the little person has already learned English.  They are, evidently, extremely intelligent.

Seaborn is invited by Surui (his teacher's name) to a Senate session to see how the government operates in the new country.  Leaving the crew and ship behind, they travel up the local river about 100 miles.  In the distance is seen the Auditory, a building 750 feet high, made of stone on top of a hill.  It's supported by massive columns, and the hill has been dug away and the resulting cavity has been converted into an arena with benches placed on the sloping embankment so that the entire structure resembled a football stadium.  Surui and Seaborn enter the establishment along with thousands of natives and they listen to a concert played by a 500 piece orchestra.  Afterwards, the Best Man (equivalent to a president) sits in a swivel chair and deals with issues brought up by the audience. 

Later, Seaborn meets with the Best Man in person, and they discuss various subjects.  At first the natives had mistaken Seaborn for an escapee from the north part of the country, near our North Pole, a kind of penal colony established for the rare disaffected and violent persons who cannot live in society.  In fact, after some deliberation, the Best Man believes that the inhabitants of the exterior of the planet originated from prisoners migrating through the hole at the north end of the planet to populate the outside of it.  Seaborn attempts to justify his own civilization but without much luck.  He teaches them about books and printing, these being the sole benefits the locals value from the strange visitor.  The "internals" are universally peaceful and quiet, eschewing alcohol and drugs of any sort and are not ambitious or greedy.  They believe that "Usefulness is the test of value", being basically Utilitarians.  Their clothes are all made out of a cobwebs harvested from a large local spider.

But Seaborn does discover that long ago there had been war between two segments of the internal civilization.  The Belzubians had invaded from the east and had been defeated by a weapon developed by the defenders:  a sort of very large blimp attached to an enormous flame thrower that was capable of burning up whole armies at a time.  At the mere appearance of this engine, the enemy fled and peace had reigned ever since.

After the Best Man had read some of the books that Seaborn had donated to the internals, they expelled him and his crew because they came to believe that the externals were "pestiferous beings spreading moral disease and contamination".  So, back at the ship, the explorers retraced their voyage and sailed back to the island where the remnant of the crew had stayed for the winter.  Discarding some of the supplies to make room for more seal skins (100,000 of them), the expedition  sailed for the nearest commercial port.  They sold the skins and bought products that were in demand in America, and set off to cross the Pacific ocean.  Caught in an enormous hurricane, they lost most of their cargo and the materials that Seaborn had brought from the internal world, but managed to arrive safely home.  The remaining materials were entrusted to an agent, a Mr. Slippery, who stole all the money, and Captain Seaborn was forced into dire poverty and wrote this book to recoup his losses.

This was an occasionally unintentionally funny book, and also somewhat grim in representing the attitude of the characters as regards killing and conservation.  It was more than evident that attitudes toward natural preservation were a lot different then than they are now.  I'd guess that this work was more widely known at the time;  probably read by Mr. Verne, i'd suspect, and possibly other authors dabbling in descriptions of fantasy worlds.  Certainly the subject of internal civilizations has been utilized by quite a few writers ever since:  Burroughs, C.S. Lewis (Perelandra), etc.  I've been sort of looking for more;  time will tell if i succeed, haha...

Baron Ludvig Holberg  1684-1754

Niels Klim was a Norwegian student with aspirations.  He graduated from the university at Copenhagen and pursued a career as a mailman for four years.  Tiring of that, he returned home and occupied his time in studying the geology of the mountains surrounding his home town of Bergen.  With several friends, he climbed Florien mountain and found a large cavern at the top that had warm air flowing out of it.  He decided to explore the inside of it and descended on a rope held by his friends.  The rope broke and Niels fell for a long time, until the darkness began to recede and sunlight displaced the blackness.  A new world impinged itself on his eyes as he floated around in the atmosphere for three days.  A very large eagle made a pass at him and he fended it off at first with a boat hook he had had the foresight to bring along.  But the danger became greater so Niels stabbed the bird with the boat hook and they both plummeted to the ground, the eagle cushioning Niels fall.  it happened to be dark at the time and Niels found a soft spot and went to sleep.  A ferocious roar woke him up and he saw that a large bull was about to attack, so he jumped up and ran to the nearest tree and began to climb up.  With a low, shrill scream, the tree hit him with a branch and knocked him to the ground.  Another tree came along and picked him up, and with a sort of arboreal entourage, carried him into the nearest town.  Later Niels was informed that he had greatly offended the local sheriff's wife.

The citizens of this newly discovered country were trees.  Some of them were quite large, and they all had human-type heads situated in their tops.  They were mobile, but slow, meandering about upon their lower appendages that resembled roots.  The town consisted of high, tower-like buildings in which the tree people lived, and featured larger structures that housed the various mayoral entities, secretaries, attorneys, judges, etc.  There was a class framework of sorts, based on the number of branches possessed by the citizens.  They were in general a peaceful population with a high regard for their traditions and law-abiding to a fault.  Law-breakers were scarce and when they were apprehended, were sent off to a distant town named Maholki, populated by thorn trees that were appreciably more contentious than the general run of trees, and frowned upon as a result. 

Niels was imprisoned for a year while he learned the language and the social character of his jailers.  He learned about their religion and the country's constitution.  There were five holy days a year, there were no sects or prejudices, and attempts to explain or interpret their holy books were punishable by law.  A King ruled the country and the Kingship passed down through the eldest sons.  The system of justice was based on principles, not laws, and strict equality was observed in the courts.  There were three "academies"that taught history, political economy, math, and the like, but education was not particularly respected, as the habits of the people were slow and methodical, eschewing haste in any form.

After two years of inculcative instruction, permission was granted to Niels to travel the world and make reports on what he discovered about the inhabitants.  The land of Quamso was the home of oak trees.  They were passionless and boring, as contrasted to the occupants of Lalak who lived in a veritable paradise and were idle and drowned in luxury.  Cypresses lived in Mardak, where class distinctions were measured by eye characteristics:  how many and what shape they were.  Kimal was the largest and most powerful state, as that country had extensive gold, and silver deposits, and had an abundance of pearls as well.  But they were of nervous temperament because of their wealth, which attracted myriads of thieves and carpet-bagger types.  In Quamboja, aging was reversed, babies being old and recovering youth as they grew.  The trees of Kokleku were possessed of a feminist government, the males being servants and the females rulers of everything.  Maskattia had terrible roads and a decayed infrastructure, probably having to do with the universal addiction to philosophical wrangling that occupied most of the citizens most of the time.  Niels was beaten by some of the more intense debaters, and made his escape from that country just before they were about to dissect him out of curiousity.  etcetera...

After returning to Potu (the city near his initial touch-down) and publishing a book on his travels, he offended the government by suggesting that ladies don't belong in official positions.  As mentioned, equality is universal in Potu.  So Niels is banished to the Mezendoric archipelago, which is the name for the separate civilization that occupies the inside of earth's crust.  The island he landed on is called Martinia, an aristocratic metropolis that has a king and a religion that features hundreds of sects, inspiring endless arguments, wars, debates, and disagreements.  The denizens are monkeys who are devoted to endless numbers of pointless projects, like burrowing  through the crust to the earth's surface.  They deride Niels, of whom they credit his species as "long-eared mortals, in perpetual fogs, oft losing their way in horrid bogs".  Niels can only find a job as a porter, carrying the king around in his sedan chair.  Later he makes wigs.  But he gets in trouble when the Queen falls for him and he's sentenced to be a galley slave.

Aboard ship, he visits many more countries and describes their occupants.  Picardania is inhabited by intelligent magpies, Music-land has live instruments, bouncing bass-viols and flying flutes that communicate with musical phrases;  Pyglossia is a very stinky country, Iceland has sentient icebergs, and Mezendoria, the largest island, has many different species:  a lion is regent of the country, senators are elephants, geese are counsellors, magpies are lawyers, goats are grammarians, and wolves are bankers.  A sow writes Niels a love sonnet.

Continuing on their trading mission, a giant storm develops that wrecks the ship and Niels is cast away in the land of Quama, the home of humans.  This is a type of Mongolian civilization that has a lot of horses and a rather inadequate government.  Over time, Niels rises in importance until he becomes King of the country.  He builds a vast army and makes war on his neighboring countries, eventually creating his own empire.  At one point he has the entire library of Tanaquite transferred to his castle and finds a fragmented manuscript that was written by an explorer of Europe.  He reads various summaries of European cultures, German, French, Italian, that parodize the individual cultures in unflattering estimations.  Germany has many rights, but they're not available to the people.  In England the population lives on smoke.  Religion allows no independent thinking.  Science promulgates the opinions of the few over the sentiments of the many, Spaniards live on air, Rome sells heaven, philosophers preach self denial until they are rich, and so on...

Niels conquers all and turns cruel and unjust, a veritable Nero.  Finally a disgruntled faction gains enough power that they are able to defeat his armies and Niels vacates the castle and disappears into a dark wood in which he falls into another cave and apparently due to momentum, finds himself back on the surface of planet earth.  He's a poor scholar again.  He gets a job as sacristan in a local church, marries and has three sons and discusses his adventures underground with nobody.  After a calm and pleasant life, he gently passes on in 1695.

This was a somewhat mind-bending book, considering the early date at which it was written.  And it's hard to believe that Jules Verne didn't read it before writing "Journey to the Center of the Earth".  It's a lot different than Verne's book, but even wilder in the events and figures it describes.  It's obviously supposed to be satirical of practically every solemn cultural component of the time.  Religion, clothing style, politics, government, war, peace, are all viewed through a mordant microscope;  how Holberg managed to stay out of the hands of the authorities of the time seems a mystery.  But it was fun to read, and turns the society of that era on it's head, so to speak...