Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 3.djvu/17

 INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

HE Adventures of Captain Hatteras," made popular by the first half, or book, of the tale, were continued and concluded in the "Magazine of Adventure" by "The Desert of Ice." It is in this second book of Captain Hatteras that Verne struck again the bolder note of imagination and creation. Here the daring explorers are represented as actually attaining the pole; and the bold inventions of what they saw and did, rising to the startling climax of the volcano and the madman's climb, are led up to through such a well-managed, well-constructed and convincing story, that many critics have selected this in its turn as the most powerful of Verne's works.

''It is notable that, with the exception of the open sea and the volcano, the world which our author here pentrates [sic] in imagination, coincides closely with that which Peary has discovered to exist in reality. Here are the same barren lands, the same weary sledge journey, the same locations of land and sea, the "red snow," the open leads in the ice. Verne's predictions, wild as they sometimes seem, were all so carefully studied that they shoot most close to truth.''

''"The Desert of Ice" was followed by the two other remarkable tales contained in the present volume, "A Trip from the Earth to the Moon," and "A Tour of the Moon." These, though published as separate volumes in 1865, really constitute a single story. They are thus like the two books of Captain Hatteras, examples of that peculiar system of nomenclature which makes the titles of our author's books so confusing and misleading. It became quite the publisher's custom, especially among Verne's earlier books, to issue a first volume, wholly incomplete, under one name, then a second section or volume of the tale under another'' 1