Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original magazine edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)


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Once again, author Jules Verne comes forward to delight us with his fertile imagination and marvellous ingenuity of plot. And in the present instance he is more than usually happy. César Cascabel is a showman at Sacramento, and the proud possessor of a fortune of ten thousand francs, which he has carefully locked in a strong box. He has also a caravan, in which he proposes to travel from California to New York on his homeward journey to beloved France. The acute reader, acquainted with Verne's previous writings, will at once see what a splendid opportunity here offers for the exercise of the author's peculiar gift of description, and it is needless to say that he utilises it to the full, piling on incident after incident with a reckless prodigality that seriously threatens to imperil the reader's balance of mind. Of course, the money is stolen before the troupe have gone far, and under these circumstances the manager decides to cross Oregon and Washington territory, cut through British Columbia and the province of Alaska to Behring Strait, and to proceed by Asiatic and European Russia to France. How he carries out this wild project the story must be left to tell for itself. It is a thrilling piece of work, and the interest is enhanced by some very spirited illustrations.