Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapters Twenty-Six to Twenty-Eight

In which our party takes the express train on the Pacific Railroad; Passepartout follows, with a speed of twenty miles an hour, a course of Mormon history; Passepartout could not succeed in making anyone listen to reason; and in which our narrator assures you that the depiction of Mormonism is at least more accurate than that in A Study in Scarlet, for real.



Hey hey! Sorry about the long unannounced break, which was not caused but was unfortunately prolonged by snow and malfunctioning internet (which actually seem to be independent of each other). Anyway, I'm back, and while updates may still be a bit patchy for a bit, I'm going to try as much as I can to get back on our regular schedule. Thanks for sticking with me, and onto the illustrations!

5:35 - "The sheets were clean and the pillows soft."

8:33 - "A herd of ten or twelve thousand blocked the railroad."

16:36 - "'And you, my brother.'"

17:07 - "A beautiful lake."

 Round about 17:29, mention is made of "Lake Asphaltite" in comparison to the Great Salt Lake of Utah. As context sort of makes clear, this refers to the super-salty Dead Sea. This is a version of its Greek name, Lake Asphaltites.

The "follies" referred to at 18:56 as one of the squarely-built things in America is not quite a snide a remark as it might seem, as a folly is an architectural term for a structure that is rather extravagantly ornamental, much more so than its actual function (if any) really calls for.

35:38 - "The bridge, already about to fall, went down
with a crash into the rapids of Medicine Bow."

Oh, those foolhardy Americans, always jumping trains over gorges!


If you would like to read along, my translation by Stephen W. White can be found courtesy of Choptank Press on Google Books. If you prefer one of the other options, the George Towle translation can be found at Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection, which is also where I got the illustrations, or the more accurate but rather fusty Henry Frith translation can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!