The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 36: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER V. ENTIRELY EXPLANATORY. Of course I was all on the qui vive until I could have a private talk with my host, whose name I had learned was Costa, and hear from him, if he would give it, an explana- tion of the mysterious country in which I had landed. For by this time I had given over all idea of fear. There was a soothing presence 1n the very atmosphere about me, and I could not believe that any harm was meant me. And yet all these mysterious events called for an explana- tion. Consequently the next morning I took advantage of a quiet hour in which we were walking through the park, smelling the fragrance of the trees and flowers, that I asked him: “Mr. Costa, will you please relieve me from this sus- pense which you must know is weighing upon me, and tell me where I am and who you are?” He smiled at the question, but replied: “Yes. I think you are so far recovered from your ter- trible experiences in shipwreck and crossing the ice land, that I may. To be brief and to the point, you are on the South Polar continent—a land I know your geographers have often conceived, but have believed uninhabited, even if it really existed, which the most learned of them (©) CORNICE OOOKS