''Les Indes noires'' (literally ''The Black Indies'') is a novel by the French writer Jules Verne, serialized in ''

Le Temps ''Le Temps'' ( literally "The Time") is a Swiss French-language daily newspaper published in Berliner format in Geneva by Le Temps SA. It is the sole nationwide French-language non-specialised daily newspaper of Switzerland. Since 2021, it has ...

'' in March and April 1877 and published immediately afterward by

Pierre-Jules Hetzel Pierre-Jules Hetzel (15 January 1814 – 17 March 1886) was a French editor and publisher. He is best known for his extraordinarily lavishly illustrated editions of Jules Verne's novels, highly prized by collectors today. Biography Born in Ch ...

. The first UK edition was published in October 1877 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington as ''The Child of the Cavern, or Strange Doings Underground''. Other English titles for the novel include ''Black Diamonds'' and ''The Underground City''.

Plot summary

Covering a time span of over ten years, this novel follows the fortunes of the mining community of

Aberfoyle Aberfoyle may refer to: *Aberfoyle, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland *Aberfoyle, Stirling, Scotland * Aberfoyle, Ontario, Canada *Aberfoyle, Texas Aberfoyle is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated community in Hunt County, Texas, Hunt Count ...

near

Stirling Stirling (; sco, Stirlin; gd, Sruighlea ) is a city in central Scotland, northeast of Glasgow and north-west of Edinburgh. The market town, surrounded by rich farmland, grew up connecting the royal citadel, the medieval old town with its me ...

, Scotland. Receiving a letter from an old colleague,

mining engineer Mining in the engineering discipline is the extraction of minerals from underneath, open pit, above or on the ground. Mining engineering is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, and ...

James Starr sets off for the old Aberfoyle mine, thought to have been mined out ten years earlier. Starr finds mine overman Simon Ford and his family living in a cottage deep inside the mine; he is astonished to find that Ford has made a discovery of the presence of a large vein of coal. Accompanying Simon Ford are his wife, Madge, and adult son, Harry. From the outset, mysterious and unexplained happenings start to occur around the main characters, attributed initially to

goblin A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearances depending on ...

s and firemaidens. Soon after the discovery of the new vein of coal, the community is revitalised with a whole town growing up around the underground lake called Loch Malcolm. Suspicious of a malevolent force at work, Harry continues his explorations of the cavern system, where down a deep shaft, he discovers a young orphan girl named Nell. Over the course of the next few years Nell is adopted by Simon and Madge but reveals nothing of where she came from, only that she had never been out of the mine. Eventually, when Harry and Nell announce their marriage, the mysterious occurrences come to a head. It becomes clear that all of the happenings have been caused by Silfax, another former employee of the mine, who along with his trained

snowy owl The snowy owl (''Bubo scandiacus''), also known as the polar owl, the white owl and the Arctic owl, is a large, white owl of the true owl family. Snowy owls are native to the Arctic regions of both North America and the Palearctic, breeding m ...

has inhabited the mine since its closure.

Notes

James Starr, a respected member of the Royal Institution, like many of Verne's characters is a member of the academic "aristocracy" of the day.

References

External links

* * (English)
45 illustrations
by Jules Férat *
The Child of the Cavern, audio version
(in French) {{DEFAULTSORT:Child Of The Cavern, The 1877 French novels Novels by Jules Verne Novels set in Scotland Novels set in subterranea Stirling (council area)