Jules Verne · 1864 · overland

Jules Verne's 1864 descent into the unknown. Professor Lidenbrock, his nephew Axel and their guide Hans follow a cryptic message from the alchemist Arne Saknussemm down the crater of the Icelandic volcano Snaefellsjokull, through caverns and a vast underground sea full of prehistoric wonders, to be hurled back to the surface through the erupting volcano of Stromboli.

1. 1
   Hamburg

   In his house in Hamburg, the formidable Professor Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel decipher a runic message hidden in an old Icelandic book, in which the alchemist Arne Saknussemm claims to have travelled to the centre of the Earth. The instructions point to a crater in distant Iceland, and the professor, deaf to all objection, sets off at once to follow them down.

2. 2
   Copenhagen

   Uncle and nephew travel north through Kiel and across to Copenhagen, where Axel anxiously prepares for the descent while the professor, impatient as ever, drives them onward. Taking ship for Iceland, they cross the northern seas toward a land of glaciers and volcanoes at the very edge of the known world.

3. 3
   Reykjavik

   Landing at Reykjavik, the travellers engage the calm, capable Icelander Hans Bjelke as their guide and lay in the gear for the journey below. Then they set out overland, across lava fields and barren country, toward the dead volcano whose crater is the doorway Saknussemm described.

4. 4
   Snaefellsjokull

   At the summit of Snaefellsjokull they descend into the central one of the three chimneys, the one over which the peak of Scartaris casts its shadow in the last days of June, exactly as the cryptogram foretold. Down they climb into the dark, mile after mile, until daylight is a memory and the true descent into the body of the planet begins.

5. 5
   Stromboli

   Far below they find a vast subterranean ocean, lit by a strange electric glow, and cross it by raft through tempest and the battles of prehistoric monsters, before a rising tide of lava seizes them and hurls them upward. They are flung into the open air through the erupting cone of Stromboli, in the Mediterranean, half a world from where they went down.