developed and elaborated into an enduring force, possessing creative
energy. What boundless empire of life will not such ideas realize, and
how entrancing the story of such discoveries in the interior world of
the soul!

I may also, dear reader, request you to accompany me to other
undiscovered realms of Plutusia, where, according to report, exist
fairy-lands, peopled with strange, fantastic races of men and women,
as well as fabulous animals, with characteristics surpassing the
wildest dreams of fancy.

As shown on the map of the interior world, which forms the
frontispiece of this volume, many more continents remain yet unknown
to me, to explore which will be my ambition. If the rumors I have
heard of semi-spiritual men and semi-human monsters that dwell in
tropical environments, where mountains rise so high that there is no
weight on their summits, and where torrents of water roll upward,
sweeping away villages in their path; of rocks of gold suspended in
the air; of tribes dwelling on floating islands of jewels in the
empyrean, and of a thousand still stranger places and peoples, where
every phantasy of the imagination can be produced in reality by spirit
power, then, indeed, the story of my adventures will develop the soul
of the age with a profound delight.

I therefore bid adieu to you, dear reader, in the hope of meeting you
again, to feast you with these wonders. I hope to have you accompany
me on the _Polar King_, which, after a season of repair and refitment,
will most assuredly be launched for a still more adventurous voyage on
the waters of the interior sea. How many books have been written on
the discovery of the western hemisphere by Columbus, while, as yet,
but one has been written about the interior sphere, a region not less
important than the outer earth, whose geographical features are now
for the first time revealed to human eyes! What a wonder it would be
if one could travel to the moon or the planet Mars and return to the
earth to tell of all that he had seen or heard on those distant
spheres! Here indeed is no less a miracle that for ages two vast
planets have existed each unknown to the other, although only a
thousand miles apart, with the means of communication possessing but
few difficulties to be overcome. The mutual discovery of two such
worlds has opened up a future for the human race that may well strike
one dumb with its splendor. It has conferred on the meanest individual
a glory, a