File:St. Nicholas (serial) (1873) (14781321504).jpg

Identifier: stnicholasserial251dodg (find matches)
Title: St. Nicholas (serial)
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Dodge, Mary Mapes, 1830-1905
Subjects: Children's literature
Publisher: (New York : Scribner & Co.)
Contributing Library: Information and Library Science Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Digitizing Sponsor: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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on theearth itself in the sametime. The only prob-lem of any difficultythat I see is the se-curing of sufficientcapital to carry out theundertaking; but good-ness knows that thereis no lack of free capi-tal in the world, andour business men aresufficiently enterpris-ing to risk it gladlyin a work of this sort.The conversationwas dropped here, butthe following morningthe whole civilizedworld was startled bythe announcement thatits foremost scientist,Dr. Joshua Giles, wasplanning to constructa railroad through thecenter of the earth,and that he requiredfive billion dollars forthe undertaking. To the surprise ofeverybody,, the projectbecame popular, andthe capital came pour-ing in; so that in anincredibly short spaceof time the stupendoussum required for thisstrange enterprise was more than subscribed. Ofcourse a large number of the capitalists lookedupon their money as entirely lost, and gavemerely in the interests of science; but there weremany who gave with the confident hope that the
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the gigantic machine devised for boring through the earth wasmasterpiece of invention. (see next page.) of hundred miles an hour, will then be able totravel some ten thousand miles in the same time,without noise or jolting. Surely that ought tobe some inducement, to say nothing of the VERITABLE cheapness of the transportation, the earth fur-nishing an inexhaustible motive power for our enterprise would prove a profitable investment 182 THROUGH THE EARTH. (Jan. As for the doctor, he rubbed his hands glee-fully at the thought that before long the prod-ucts of the United States would reach Aus-tralia on the very day of their manufacture, andvice versa. Surely this would be the grandestachievement science had yet witnessed! The great, and in fact the only, difficulty to-ward putting the plan in operation was theboring of the hole. Imagine digging a welleight thousand miles deep! It was indeed aperplexing problem; and it had required allthe doctors ingenuity to devise a machine thatwould d

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