The Star of the South

The Star of the South, originally published in 1884, takes us back to Africa again; but not the Africa of Vernes first success Five Weeks in a Balloon, nor of his tragic slave tale Dick Sands. Those dealt with the Africa of the negro. This tale is of the Africa of the white man. The diamond region and the diamond mines are fully and close depicted, so are the rough and hard types of men who make their way there.Among these is presented, in singular contrast, the educated young French engineer, a man, a gentleman, and a scientist. Verne has drawn few better characters than this of Victor Cyprien. Though perhaps one may be permitted to suggest that Cypriens altruism is scarcely convincing. The love which twice surrenders its beloved, rather than transgress the conventions of a social world with which neither love is any longer associated, seems to us a rather feeble one. The indifference to wealth which, while watching other men gather diamonds all around, can only puzzle over their desire, and be contemptuous of their madness, is as little French as it is American.The easy deception of the engineer into the idea that he has manufactured a giant diamond, may be accepted by the not too critical reader as the necessary foundation of the story, which is certainly bright, mystifying, and interesting in the extreme. Africa had been treated so seriously in the earlier tales, that one is glad to find Verne here playing with it in the scenes where his people ride ostriches and giraffes, are borne aloft by trapped birds, and leave the manufacture of their artificial diamonds to dodge one another murderously across country.