Jules Verne, antarctic mystery of the sphinx

 chapter 5 of the jule Verns antatic mystery is

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10339/pg10339-images.html#chap_V

CHAPTER V.
EDGAR POE’S ROMANCE.

In this chapter I have to give a brief summary of Edgar Poe’s romance, which was published at Richmond under the title of

THE ADVENTURES OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM.

Tristan d’Acunha lies to the south of the zone of the regular south-west winds. Its climate is mild and moist. The prevailing winds are west and north-west, and, during the winter—August and September—south. The island was inhabited, from 1811, by American whale fishers. After them, English soldiers were installed there to watch the St. Helena seas, and these remained until after the death of Napoleon, in 1821. Several years later the group of islands populated by Americans and Dutchmen from the Cape acknowledged the suzerainty of Great Britain, but this was not so in 1839. My personal observation at that date convinced me that the possession of Tristan d’Acunha was not worth disputing. In the sixteenth century the islands were called the Land of Life.

CHAPTER X.
THE OUTSET OF THE ENTERPRISE.

Here was I, then, launched into an adventure which seemed likely to surpass all my former experiences. Who would have believed such a thing of me. But I was under a spell which drew me towards the unknown, that unknown of the polar world whose secrets so many daring pioneers had in vain essayed to penetrate. And this time, who could tell but that the sphinx of the Antarctic regions would speak for the first time to human ears!