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THE
GOLDEN VOLCANO
by Jules
Verne
Publisher:
University of Nebraska Press
Pub Date: 2008
Format: Trade
Paperback
Brief Description
The original novel that
Jules Verne left upon his death, published for the first time in the
English language.
In Canada, in the midst of the Gold Rush, two
cousins are left an inheritance when their uncle dies. The
inheritance: the stake to a gold mine, which may be worth nothing
or may make them rich. They decide to excavate, and thus their
adventures begin.
(see below for Full Description)
Full Description
Ben Raddle and Summy Skim, cousins and best friends, live together in an
idyllic life on a farm in Montréal, Canada. One day they are summoned
by a lawyer to discover that their last remaining relative died, leaving
them an inheritance: a plot of land in the Klondike, a mining province
situated on the border of Canada and Alaska. The Klondike has become the
new promised land of gold prospectors, and the two cousins do not delay
to receive a purchase offer for their plot. In order to know the value
of their claim and know if it conceals Gold, they launch themselves in
an adventure, in a hostile country where disease, miseries and severe
winters lie in wait for them.
Arriving in the Klondike, the
cousins must fight against the band of the Texan Hunter, their neighbour
and rival, and above all against the passion for gold that unfortunately
will contaminate Ben. Soon their plot is submerged when the creek
floods, ruining their hopes.
Nevertheless, they learn the
existence of a new spot, supposed to possess the biggest gold assessment
ever known: the Golden Mount or Golden Volcano, suspected to shelter a
multitude of gold nuggets. Ben, won by the passion of gold and the lure
of profit, uses his engineering skills to conceive a plan to divert a
neighbouring river towards the depths of the volcano and to explode it,
in order to spit its nuggets. After some adventures, the eruption
happens, but by a stroke of bad luck, rocks, wash, ashes and nuggets all
fall into the Arctic ocean.
Thus, at the end of eight
months of efforts and difficulties, the two cousins set off back to
Montreal, penniless, leaving all their wealth rested at the far end of
an icy sea, along with their gilded dreams.
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