And within the preceding nine months alone two of the most celebrated events of the century had occurred: the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad and the opening of the Suez Canal. All at once the planet had grown very much smaller. With the canal, the railroad, the new iron-screw ocean steamers, it was possible—in theory anyway—to travel around the world in a tenth of the time it would have taken a decade earlier, as Jules Verne would illustrate in his next voyage extraordinaire.
