【英文原著类】The Coming Race(一个即临种族).pdf

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by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton
1
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CHAPTER I.
I am a native of _____, in the United States of America. My
ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my
grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My
family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth;
and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public
service. My father once ran for Congress, but was signally defeated by
his tailor. After that event he interfered little in politics, and lived much in
his library. I was the eldest of three sons, and sent at the age of sixteen to
the old country, partly plete my literary education, partly to
commence mercial training in a mercantile firm at Liverpool.
My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and
having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of
the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the
earth.
In the year 18__, happening to be in _____, I was invited by a
professional engineer, with whom I had made acquaintance, to visit the
recesses of the ________ mine, upon which he was employed.
The reader will understand, ere he close this narrative, my reason for
concealing all clue to the district of which I write, and will perhaps thank
me for refraining from any description that may tend to its discovery.
6Let me say, then, as briefly as possible, that I panied the
engineer into the interior of the mine, and became so strangely fascinated
by its gloomy wonders, and so interested in my friend's explorations, that I
prolonged my stay in the neighbourhood, and descended daily, for some
weeks, into the vaults and galleries hollowed by nature and art beneath the
surface of the earth. The engineer was persuaded that far richer deposits
of mineral wealth than had yet been detected, would be found in a new
shaft that had menced under his opera