"In Search of the Unknown", Book 3, by Robert W. Chambers

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Chapters 9-12: The Paris Exposition of 1900

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0:00:00 Chapter 9
0:24:57 Chapter 10
0:31:50 Chapter 11
0:37:49 Chapter 12
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100 F = 37.8 C
90 F = 32.2 C
80 F = 26.7 C
70 F = 21.1 C

Of course, the characters here are all completely fictional not merely in name, but in many cases in title as well. In 1900, there was no King of Finland, for example. That is to say, Finland was part of the Russian Empire ruled by Tsar Nicholas II at the time, and while the Tsar took the title of Grand Duke of Finland, the person actually in charge of day to day administration went by the title of Governor-General, which in 1900 would have been Nikolai Bobrikov. The Minister-Secretary of State for Finland in 1900 was Vyacheslav von Plehve. So King Christian of Finland is completely and utterly without basis in historical reality.

There is a place by the name of Esch-sur-Alzette, but it is in southern Luxembourg, not Belgium. There is a river by the name of Alzette, but it runs through France and Luxembourg, and not Belgium. No title of Count or Countess d'Alzette of Belgium ever existed. Another complete fabrication.

But, King Leopold of Belgium was a real historical figure (technically in 1900 it would be Leopold II), so there's that.

Of course, some of the names are meant to be a nod to birding, like Grebe and Bécasse (French for woodcock, a type of wading bird).

The Paris Exposition of 1900 was a real event (a.k.a. Exposition Universelle of 1900), although it is not obvious to me that there was a Tasmanian Pavilion, or even an ornithological committee, so those bits appear to be tacked on as fictional elements.

The pictures used are:

Chapter 9: "L' Exposition de Paris (1900), c. 1900" from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/)

Chapter 10: "Cradle Mountain, Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania, Australia" by Diego Delso (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28147777) used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

Chapter 11: "Dromaius novaehollandiae (emu) egg" by James St. John, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/).

Of course, the Tasmanian Ux is not a real bird, so I went with the egg of another large bird that also happens to be native to Australia. It's not really as large as what we expect an Ux egg should be, but since there's nothing in this picture to give any size reference, we can imagine it being as large as we care to! Normally emu eggs are decidedly green, not sure why this one is grey instead.

Chapter 12: a man riding an Ostrich at Cawston Ostrich Farm in California. Since the ux is not a real creature, obviously I will never find a picture of a man riding one. And while an ostrich is not as large as an ux, it's ok in this case because in the story we are dealing with freshly hatched uxen, which may well be more ostrich sized.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18668/18668-h/18668-h.htm#IX

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