"Jules Vernes - The Underground City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verne Jules)

The Underground City
OR
The Black Indies
(Sometimes Called The Child of the
Cavern)
CHAPTER I CONTRADICTORY LETTERS
To Mr. F. R. Starr, Engineer, 30 Canongate, Edinburgh.
IF Mr. James Starr will come to-morrow to the Aberfoyle coal-mines,
Dochart pit, Yarrow shaft, a communication of an interesting
nature will be made to him.
"Mr. James Starr will be awaited for, the whole day, at the
Callander station, by Harry Ford, son of the old overman Simon
Ford."
"He is requested to keep this invitation secret."
Such was the letter which James Starr received by the first post,
on the 3rd December, 18--, the letter bearing the Aberfoyle
postmark, county of Stirling, Scotland.
The engineer's curiosity was excited to the highest pitch. It never
occurred to him to doubt whether this letter might not be a hoax.
For many years he had known Simon Ford, one of the former
foremen of the Aberfoyle mines, of which he, James Starr, had for
twenty years, been the manager, or, as he would be termed in
English coal-mines, the viewer. James Starr was a strongly-constituted
man, on whom his fifty-five years weighed no more
heavily than if they had been forty. He belonged to an old
Edinburgh family, and was one of its most distinguished members.
His labors did credit to the body of engineers who are gradually
devouring the carboniferous subsoil of the United Kingdom, as
much at Cardiff and Newcastle, as in the southern counties of
Scotland. However, it was more particularly in the depths of the
mysterious mines of Aberfoyle, which border on the Alloa mines and
occupy part of the county of Stirling, that the name of Starr had
acquired the greatest renown. There, the greater part of his
existence had been passed. Besides this, James Starr belonged to
the Scottish Antiquarian Society, of which he had been made
president. He was also included amongst the most active members
of the Royal Institution; and the Edinburgh Review frequently
published clever articles signed by him. He was in fact one of those
practical men to whom is due the prosperity of England. He held a
high rank in the old capital of Scotland, which not only from a
physical but also from a moral point of view, well deserves the name
of the Northern Athens.
We know that the English have given to their vast extent of coal-mines
a very significant name. They very justly call them the
"Black Indies," and these Indies have contributed perhaps even.more than the Eastern
Indies to swell the surprising wealth of the
United Kingdom.
At this period, the limit of time assigned by professional men for
the exhaustion of coal-mines was far distant and there was no
dread of scarcity. There were still extensive mines to be worked in