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A detailed transcriber's note can be found at the end of this book.
Entered according to act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and ninety, by LAIRD & LEE, in the office of the librarian of Congress at Washington.
Lest originality of title and theme be denied, it is but justice to myself to state that both were assumed in November, 1887. My thanks are due to Lieutenant D. L. Brainard, Second Cavalry, for the true copy of the record of the Greely party left in the cairn at the farthest point on the globe ever reached by man--83 degrees 24 minutes North Latitude, 40 degrees 46 minutes West Longitude.
CHAPTER I JUNIUS COBB'S MARVELOUS DISCOVERY 9
CHAPTER IV JEAN COLCHIS, CONSPIRATOR AND SAVANT 61
CHAPTER V ON THE EVE OF A CENTURY'S SLEEP 80
CHAPTER VII "YOU SAY THIS IS A. D. 2000?" 108
CHAPTER VIII SAN FRANCISCO IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 130
CHAPTER IX THE CENTRAL PNEUMATIC RAILROAD 150
CHAPTER XII JUNIUS COBB READS A NEWSPAPER 235
CHAPTER XIII NEW YORK CITY--POPULATION 4,000,000 245
CHAPTER XVI CHICAGO THE METROPOLIS OF THE COUNTRY 299
CHAPTER XVIII THE MYSTERY OF THE COPPER CYLINDER 315
CHAPTER XXI THE TRANSATLANTIC LIFE-SAVING STATIONS 363
"Number three! half-past eleven o'clock--and all's well!"
"All is well!" came the response from the sentry at the guard-house, while the sharp click of his piece as he brought it to his shoulder and the heavy tread of his retreating footsteps were all that was heard to break the stillness that reigned supreme throughout the garrison.
It was a dark, dreary, foggy night. The heavy atmosphere seemed laden with great masses of fleeting vapor, and the walks of the post and the ground surrounding them were as wet as if a heavy shower had just spent its force.
Such was the Presidio of San Francisco, California, a military post of the United States government, on the night of November 17th, 1887. The lights of the garrison made little effect upon that thick and saturated atmosphere; yet the little that they did make only seemed to add more to the depth of the surrounding gloom.