The "Voyages Extraordinaires" of M. Jules Verne deserve to be made widely known in English-speaking countries by means of carefully prepared translations. Witty and ingenious adaptations of the researches and discoveries of modern science to the popular taste, which demands that these should be presented to ordinary readers in the lighter form of cleverly mingled truth and fiction, these books will assuredly be read with profit and delight, especially by English youth. Certainly no writer before M. Jules Verne has been so happy in weaving together in judicious combination severe scientific truth with a charming exercise of playful imagination.
       Iceland, the starting point of the marvellous underground journey imagined in this volume, is invested at the present time with. a painful interest in consequence of the disastrous eruptions last Easter Day, which covered with lava and ashes the poor and scanty vegetation upon which four thousand persons were partly dependent for the means of subsistence. For a long time to come the natives of that interesting island, who cleave to their desert home with all that amor patriae which is so much more easily understood than explained, will look, and look not in vain, for the help of those on whom fall the smiles of a kindlier sun in regions not torn by earthquakes nor blasted and ravaged by volcanic fires. Will the readers of this little book, who, are gifted with the means of indulging in the luxury of extended beneficence, remember the distress of their brethren in the far north, whom distance has not barred from the claim of being counted our "neighbours"? And whatever their humane feelings may prompt them to bestow will be gladly added to the Mansion-House Iceland Relief Fund.
       In his desire to ascertain how far the picture of Iceland, drawn in the work of Jules Verne is a correct one, the translator hopes in the course of a mail or two to receive a communication from a leading man of science in the island, which may furnish matter for additional information in a future edition.
       The scientific portion of the French original is not without a few errors, which the translator, with the kind assistance of Mr. Cameron of H. M. Geological Survey, has ventured to point out and correct. It is scarcely to be expected in a work in which the element of amusement is intended to enter more largely than that of scientific instruction, that any great degree of accuracy should be arrived at. Yet the translator hopes that what trifling deviations from the text or corrections in foot notes he is responsible for, will have done a little towards the increased usefulness of the work.
       F. A. M.
       The Vicarage,
       Broughton-in-Furness

Preface
Chapter I. The Professor and His Family
Chapter II. A Mystery to be Solved at Any Price
Chapter III. The Runic Writing Exercises the Professor
Chapter IV. The Enemy to be Starved into Submission
Chapter V. Famine, Then Victory, Followed by Dismay
Chapter VI. Exciting Discussions About an Unparalleled Enterprise
Chapter VII. A Woman's Courage
Chapter VIII. Serious Preparations for Vertical Descent
Chapter IX. Iceland! But What Next?
Chapter X. Interesting Conversations with Icelandic Savants
Chapter XI. A Guide Found to the Centre of the Earth
Chapter XII. A Barren Land
Chapter XIII. Hospitality Under the Arctic Circle
Chapter XIV. But Arctics can be Inhospitable, Too
Chapter XV. Snaefell at Last
Chapter XVI. Boldly Down the Crater
Chapter XVII. Vertical Descent
Chapter XVIII. The Wonders of Terrestrial Depths
Chapter XIX. Geological Studies in Situ
Chapter XX. The First Signs of Distress
Chapter XXI. Compassion Fuses the Professor's Heart
Chapter XXII. Total Failure of Water
Chapter XXIII. Water Discovered
Chapter XXIV. Well Said, Old Mole! Canst Thou Work I' the Ground so Fast?
Chapter XXV. De Profundis
Chapter XXVI. The Worst Peril of All
Chapter XXVII. Lost in the Bowels of the Earth
Chapter XXVIII. The Rescue in the Whispering Gallery
Chapter XXIX. Thalatta! Thalatta!
Chapter XXX. A New Mare Internum
Chapter XXXI. Preparations for a Voyage of Discovery
Chapter XXXII. Wonders of the Deep
Chapter XXXIII. A Battle of Monsters
Chapter XXXIV. The Great Geyser
Chapter XXXV. An Electric Storm
Chapter XXXVI. Calm Philosophic Discussions
Chapter XXXVII. The Liedenbrock Museum of Geology
Chapter XXXVIII. The Professor in His Chair Again
Chapter XXXIX. Forest Scenery Illuminated by Eletricity
Chapter XL. Preparations for Blasting a Passage to the Centre of the Earth
Chapter XLI. The Great Explosion and the Rush Down Below
Chapter XLII. Headlong Speed Upward Through the Horrors of Darkness
Chapter XLIII. Shot Out of a Volcano at Last!
Chapter XLIV. Sunny Lands in the Blue Mediterranean
Chapter XLV. All's Well that Ends Well