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my uncle was not gifted with a sufficiently rapid utterance;
in the august presence of rhombohedral crystals, retinasphaltic resins, gehlenites, Fassaites, molybdenites, tungstates of manganese, and titanite of zirconium, why, the most facile of tongues may make a slip now and then.
he united the genius of a true geologist with the keen eye of the mineralogist.
in walking he kept his fists firmly closed, a sure sign of an irritable temperament,
great fire of 1842
My uncle was tolerably well off for a German professor. The house was his own, and everything in it. The living contents were his god-daughter Gräuben, a young Virlandaise of seventeen, Martha, and myself. As his nephew and an orphan, I became his laboratory assistant.
The Family - 5 people in all. (Martha is housekeeper)
occasional fits of bibliomania;
old tome.
manuscript of Snorre Turlleson.
I was seated in a trice.
mm.rnlls esrevel seecIde sgtssmf vnteief niedrke kt,samn atrateS saodrrn emtnaeI nvaect rrilSa Atsaar .nvcrc ieaabs ccrmi eevtVl frAntv dt,iac oseibo KediiI
"the cipher is of later date than the book,
there are two hundred years between the manuscript and the document."
"Nor you either, Axel,"
LOL :D
In this document there are a hundred and thirty-two letters, viz., seventy-seven consonants and fifty-five vowels. This is the proportion found in southern languages, whilst northern tongues are much richer in consonants; therefore this is in a southern language."
pretty Virlandaise and the professor's nephew loved each other with a patience and a calmness entirely German.
mmessvnkaSenrA.icefdoK.segnittamvrtn ecertserrette,rotaisadva,ednecsedsadne lacartniiilvIsiratracSarbmvtabiledmek meretarcsilvcoIsleffenSnI.
ancient Oedipus.
But I knew also that twenty letters alone could form two quintillions, four hundred and thirty-two quadrillions, nine hundred and two trillions, eight billions, a hundred and seventy-six millions, six hundred and forty thousand combinations.
In Sneffels Joculis craterem quem delibat Umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende, Audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges. Quod feci, Arne Saknussemm. [1]
"Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; which I have done, Arne Saknussemm."
All the vocanos/ glaciers in Iceland. OR
All eruptive mountains in Iceland.
"Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; which I have done, Arne Saknussemm."
A 5,000 feet high mountain on the peninsula on the capital of Iceland, Rejkiavia, which is on its West Coast.
"Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of t...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
One of the peaks of the mountain (which points towards a particular crater, out of many, on the first day of July whioch will lead to centre of the earth).
a man exhausted by too lavish an expenditure of vital power,
Never, my lad, shall I forget it; and you shall have your share in the glory to which your discovery will lead."
the number of active volcanoes on the surface of the globe is at the present time only about three hundred. But there is a very much larger number of extinct ones.
one of the peaks, called Scartaris,
But how to know which peak is Scartaris?
"Yes; it is perfectly well known that the internal temperature rises one degree for every 70 feet in depth; now, admitting this proportion to be constant, and the radius of the earth being fifteen hundred leagues, there must be a temperature of 360,032 degrees at the centre of the earth. Therefore, all the substances that compose the body of this earth must exist there in a state of incandescent gas; for the metals that most resist the action of heat, gold, and platinum, and the hardest rocks, can never be either solid or liquid under such a temperature. I have therefore good reason for asking
...more
and is it not known at the present time that the greatest cold of the ethereal regions is never lower than 40 degrees below zero Fahr.? Why should it not be the same with the internal heat? Why should it not, at a certain depth, attain an impassable limit, instead of rising to such a point as to fuse the most infusible metals?"
the creed adopted by other distinguished geologists, that the interior of the globe is neither gas nor water, nor any of the heaviest minerals known, for in none of these cases would the earth weigh what it does."
Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius?
Ah! women and young girls, how incomprehensible are your feminine hearts! When you are not the timidest, you are the bravest of creatures. Reason has nothing to do with your actions.
"Time, time, flying with irreparable rapidity."
you monument of ignorance!
I dropped down unfathomable precipices with the accelerating velocity of bodies falling through space. My life had become an endless fall.
voluminous impedimenta,
I had no time to get tired of the monotony;
we must do something to while away the time.
In his impatience I believe he was trying to accelerate the train with his feet.
I possessed neither the equilibrium of an eagle nor his fearless nature.
Cape Portland, the most southerly point of Iceland.
It is not what is upon this island, but what is underneath, that interests me."
It was evident that we were more at home than he was himself.
Our principle is, that books, instead of growing mouldy behind an iron grating, should be worn out under the eyes of many readers.
I am glad to think that our host, in the innocence of his Icelandic soul, was blind to the transparent artifices of my uncle.
eider-down hunter,
should be eider-DUCK hunter
be beholden to nobody,
He carried economy of motion even to parsimony.
Neither looked at the amount of the payment: the one was ready to accept whatever was offered; the other was ready to give whatever was demanded. Never was bargain more readily concluded.
instruments here, arms there, tools in this package, provisions in that: four sets of packages in all.
