Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century

This forms the third and concluding volume of Verne's Celebrated Travels an Travellers. One is struck with the great mass of interesting matter, geographical, ethnological, and other, which is here compacted together; bespeaking as it does no small amount of research, an still more afiording fresh evidence of that instinctive perception of the popular which is, to a large extent, the secret of the author's success in his numerous works. A preliminary chapter is devoted to a general survey of explorations by Seetzen, Burckhardt, Webb, an others in the East in the early part of the century--a survey very interesting so far as it goes, but superficial. The value of the work, however, grows as it advances, the story of African travel evidently drawing out the author's enthusiasm more successfully; and the expeditions of Clapperton and the Landers are narrated with greater fulness, and with more sympathy. The whole of the second part of the book is devoted to Polar Explorers and Circumnavigators, and the stirring careers of Kotzebue and Krusenstern, of Bougainville and Freycinet, as well as of James Clark Ross and John Ross, Parry and Franklin, are concisely and graphically recorded.