Note: Translated by Frederick Paul Walter & Walter James Miller from Verne's original manuscript. This translation begins: "The complications of the following story take place in a town that's located, we may as well admit, in Virginia, U.S.A. With your kind permission, dear reader, we'll dub this town Whaston, and we'll add that is occupies the east side, or right bank, of the Potomac River; but it strikes us as pointless to be more specific than that, so if you want to look for this community on even the best American maps, frankly, you're wasting your time."