Jules Verne's Voyage of Discovery

(A brief discussion of the early success of the Volapuk movement can be found here:
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/conlang2.htm... )

Vanof then provides some illustrative examples of Volapuk's flaws, and states that Esperanto, because of its more "natural" formation, is now spoken in many countries. He gives a long list of European nations and then continues:

"And as you can imagine, Esperanto, without any difficulty, has also crossed the seas. Travel to America, Africa or Oceania and you will find Esperantists everywhere who will be able to understand you when you speak the language. Esperanto is the surest and the speediest vehicle of civilization."

After Vanof's long speech, Jules Verne, as he does in other novels, takes up the theme of Esperanto himslef and writes a typical didactic passage. Whatever scientific subject happens to crop up in his stories, Verne was always very good at setting out, clearly and succinctly, some basic facts about it. It seems to me that he had a real gift for providing his reader with new information in a way which added to rather than detracted from the entertainment value of his works.

Verne wrote: "It is worthwhile noting that Esperanto is a simple, flexible, pleasant-sounding language which is equally well-suited to elegant prose and lyrical poetry. It is capable of expressing the whole of human thought, not excluding the finest sentiments of the spirit. Furthermore, it is the ideal international language because of the nature of its constituent parts."

Verne then explains how, to create a language which anyone in the world could pronounce easily, Zamenhof carefully balanced both phonetic and graphical qualities when selecting the roots of Esperanto's vocabulary from other languages. This approach of Zamenhof, which I have elsewhere described as the approach of an artist, rather than a scientist, is not (I think) well-known even among Esperantists of long-standing and I was quite surprised to see it mentioned by Verne. I was also surprised at this reference:

"...the brilliant idea of Dr Zamenhof, the realisation of which was celebrated on the 5th of December 1878."

Now if you have read this Topic from the beginning, you will be aware that the first book of Esperanto was not published until July 1887. But on the 17th of December 1878, (not the 5th as Verne wrote), a party was held for the young Zamenhof, whose 19th birthday had been on the 15th of December. And at this party some of his school friends made short

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