In this chief of his works, Jules Verne has set himself to tell the story of all the most stirring adventures of which we have any written record - to give the history, 'from the time of Hanno and Herodotus down to that of Livingstone and Stanley,' of those voyages of exploration and discovery which are among the most thrilling episodes in the history of human enterprise. In short, Jules Verne has chosen for his most important book the only subject which he could make surpass his own vivid and realistic stories in absorbing interest; to the treatment of such material he brings all the dash and vivid picturesqueness of his own creations, and it may be imagined that he makes a book worth reading.