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Journey to the Centre of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre), also translated as A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, is a classic 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne. The story involves a German professor (Otto Lidenbrock in the original French, Professor Von Hardwigg in the most common English translation) who believes there are volcanic tubes going toward the center of the Earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their guide Hans encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy. The living organisms they meet reflect geological time; just as the rock layers become older and older the deeper they travel, the animals become more and more ancient the closer the characters approach the center. From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth contains have since been proven wrong. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne's own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters encounter. One of Verne's main ideas with his stories was also to educate the readers, and by placing the different extinct creatures the characters meet in their correct geological era, he is able to show how the world looked a long time ago, stretching from the ice age to the dinosaurs.

The book was inspired by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863. By that time geologists had abandoned a literal biblical account of Earth's development and it was generally thought that the end of the last glacial period marked the first appearance of humanity, but Lyell drew on new findings to put the origin of human beings much further back in the deep geological past. Lyell's book also influenced Louis Figuier's 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le déluge which included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes, in place of the Garden of Eden shown in the 1863 edition.

 

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
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I was quite worried after hearing such words, but my hunger
was, at that moment, more important. We went to the dining room to
wait for Martha to make lunch. During the meal, my uncle was quite
content and talkative. After finishing, my uncle asked me to
follow him into his study.
"Axel," he said gently, "you're a clever boy. You helped me a
great deal. I'll never forget what you did. You'll share in this
fame when we return from the center of the Earth."
I then decided that since my uncle was in a good mood, I
must talk to him about his crazy plans for us.
"Uncle, how do you know this document is, indeed, real? Isn't
it possible that this writing is a fake? Do you even know where
Sneffels is? I've never heard of it."
"That's easy to explain. Sneffels is a volcano in Iceland,
although the volcano has been dead for several hundred years. Its
last volcanic explosion was in 1219; we'll go into the center of
the Earth through the hole in the volcano."
Seeing how confident my uncle was about his decision to go to
the center of the Earth, I realized that there was no way I could
persuade him not to go; and I would be forced to go along, as
well.
"Yes, I believe this document could be real," I said, "and
perhaps Saknussemm did go to the center of the Earth, but I do not
believe he could have gone and come back from the center of the
Earth alone."
"And why do you have such an opinion?" my uncle asked with a
smile.
"Most scientists say it cannot be done; they believe the
Earth is quite hot at the center of the earth, which would not
allow us to reach the center alive. It is well- known that heat
rises about one degree for every forty feet below the surface of
the Earth. From the surface of the Earth to the center, there is a
distance of nearly thirty- eight hundred mile
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