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the most remarkable in the whole island, and certainly doomed to be the
most celebrated in the world, for through its crater we shall reach the
centre of the earth."

"Impossible!" cried I, startled and shocked at the thought.

"Why impossible?" said Professor Hardwigg in his severest tones.

"Because its crater is choked with lava, by burning rocks--by infinite
dangers."

"But if it be extinct?"

"That would make a difference."

"Of course it would. There are about three hundred volcanoes on the
whole surface of the globe--but the greater number are extinct. Of these
Sneffels is one. No eruption has occurred since 1219--in fact it has
ceased to be a volcano at all."

After this what more could I say? Yes,--I thought of another objection.

"But what is all this about Scartaris and the kalends of July--?"

My uncle reflected deeply. Presently he gave forth the result of his
reflections in a sententious tone. "What appears obscure to you, to me
is light. 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."

My uncle had an answer for everything.

"I accept all your explanations" I said, "and Saknussemm is right. He
found out the entrance to the bowels of the earth, he has indicated
correctly, but that he or anyone else ever followed up the discovery is
madness to suppose."

"Why so, young man?"

"All scientific teaching, theoretical and practical, shows it to be
impossible."

"I care nothing for theories," retorted my uncle.

"But is it not well-known that heat increases one degree for every
seventy feet you descend into the earth? Which gives a fine idea of the
central heat. All the matters which compose the globe are in a state of
incandescence; even gold, platinum, and the hardest rocks are in a state
of fusion. What would become of us?"

"Don't be alarmed at the heat, my boy."

"How so?"

"Neither you nor anybody else know anything about the real state of the
earth's interior. All modern experiments tend to explode the older
theories. Were any such heat to exist, the upper crust of the earth
would be shattered to atoms, and the world would be at an end."

A long, learned and not uninteresting discussion followed, which ended
in this wise:

"I do not believe in the dangers and difficulties which you, Henry, seem
to multiply; and the only way to learn, is like Arne Saknussemm, to go
and see."

"Well," cried I, overcome at last, "let us go and see. Though how we can
do that in the dark is another mystery."

"Fear nothing. We shall overcome these, and many other difficulties.
Besides, as we approach the centre, I expect to find it luminous--"

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