20K Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne

[Omphalos]

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/v/verne/jules/v52tw/

[Sev]

This looks like the shoddy 1872 translation by Louis Mercier that cuts out almost a third of the original book - unfortunately it's also the one which is most widely available and read. If you look at the start of Chapter 2 Professor Aronnax writes "I had just returned from a scientific research in the disagreeable territory of Nebraska" - what Verne actually wrote was he'd been in the Badlands of Nebraska, a well-known geological terrain not a remark about its citizens

It's a shame that the most widely available Verne is a pale shadow of what he wrote...