Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
My uncle turned to the imperturbable guide, who nodded, and spoke as usual one word. "Scartaris." My uncle looked at me with a proud and triumphant glance. "A crater," he said, "you hear?" I did hear, but I was totally unable to make reply. The crater of Mount Sneffels represented an inverted cone, the gaping orifice apparently half a mile across; the depth indefinite feet.
This very phrase shows how particular Saknussemm is in his directions. The Sneffels mountain has many craters. He is careful therefore to point the exact one which is the highway into the Interior of the Earth. He lets us know, for this purpose, that about the end of the month of June, the shadow of Mount Scartaris falls upon the one crater. There can be no doubt about the matter."
We are to the southeast, two hundred and fifty miles from the base of Sneffels, and, according to my preceding notes, I think we have gone sixteen leagues in a downward direction." "Sixteen leagues fifty miles!" I cried. "I am sure of it." "But that is the extreme limit allowed by science for the thickness of the earth's crust," I replied, referring to my geological studies.
You will make a harvest of curious observations. In the first place, how do you propose to get to Sneffels?" "By sea. I shall cross the bay. Of course that is the most rapid route." "Of course. But still it cannot be done." "Why?" "We have not an available boat in all Reykjavik," replied the other. "What is to be done?" "You must go by land along the coast.
With an involuntary shudder, I reflected on what the heat must have been when the volcano of Sneffels was pouring its smoke, flames, and streams of boiling lava all of which must have come up by the road we were now following. I could imagine the torrents of hot seething stone darting on, bubbling up with accompaniments of smoke, steam, and sulphurous stench!
As for me, amused and occupied by the incidents of travel, I had begun to forget the inevitable future; but now I was once more destined to realize the actual state of affairs. What was to be done? Run away? But if I really had intended to leave Professor Hardwigg to his fate, it should have been at Hamburg and not at the foot of Sneffels.
Which bad Latin may be translated thus: "Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; which I have done, Arne Saknussemm." In reading this, my uncle gave a spring as if he had touched a Leyden jar.
While I spoke thus, my uncle evidently avoided my face: he held down his head; his eyes were turned in every possible direction but the right one. "Yes," I continued, getting excited by my own words, "we must go back to Sneffels. May heaven give us strength to enable us once more to revisit the light of day. Would that we now stood on the summit of the crater."
The contraction of the terrestrial scaffolding, when it suddenly cooled, had been evidently the cause. If it had ever served in former times as a kind of funnel through which passed the eruptive masses vomited by Sneffels, I was at a loss to explain how it had left no mark. We were, in fact, descending a spiral, something like those winding staircases in use in modern houses.
Why should not a man as seriously convinced as my uncle, succeed, with so excellent a guide as worthy Hans, and so devoted a nephew as myself? These were the brilliant ideas which now invaded my brain. Had the proposition now been made to go back to the summit of Mount Sneffels, I should have declined the offer in a most indignant manner. But fortunately there was no question of going up.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking