The Underground City | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, NE From: Verne, Jules. Works of Jules
Verne. Ed. Charles F. Horne. Vol. 9. New York: F. Tyler Daniels Company, 1911.
277-394. [Off on a Comet, transmitted as a separate file earlier, constitutes pp. 1-276 of
Vol. 9.]

The Underground City
OR
The Black Indies (Sometimes Called The Child of the Cavern)

The Underground City
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 the two Americas. The manu-factories, appropriated to so many

different uses, locomotives, steamers, gas works, &c., were not likely to fail for want of
the mineral fuel; but the consumption had so increased during the last few years, that
certain beds had been exhausted even to their smallest veins. Now deserted, these mines
perforated the ground with their useless shafts and forsaken galleries. This was exactly
the case with the pits of Aberfoyle.
Ten years before, the last butty had raised the last ton of coal from this colliery. The
underground working stock, traction engines, trucks which run on