The Risky Enterprises of John W Hakenbough
"Well, I'll be damned," began John (The Hack) Hakenbough. After years of seemingly fruitless search, after untold hundreds of unsolicited PigeonPost enquiries, after crossing the bulk of the untraversable Whatjamacollit argepeligo, there it was: gleaming in the forward window of his floating machine. Rising out of the junglely green, disappearing into the greyish fog was the blue veined massif named PickleNose Mountain in the mad observations of Larco Rolo's TravelingEastward.
John banked the sputtering flame in the floating machines firebox, pushed forward the impeller control and drifted down towards the little beach town clinging to the edge of NorthWillenstead (which was as it turned out a good ways to the east of Willenstead). As he approached the view revealed a collection of slapdash buildings arranged on cul-de-sacs's embedded in cul-de-sacs likes in an escaped lymphatic system.
He hoped that the PickleNose would turn out to be a un-discovered source of BlueCoal; controling this resource would gain him a seat on the AugustCombine's trading councel. In the thirty years since Tesla succeeded in igniting for the first time a lump of BlueCoal causing his firebox to fly up through the roof of his laboratory, the demand for levitatium (aka BlueCoal) had increase exponentially. The development of the FloatingMachine had both opened the world to trade and created a great demand for the bluish substance.
John's colleague's at the AugustCombine had scoffed when he declared his intent to follow the directions found in the book TravelingEastward written by the antique whackjob and wandering writer LarcoPolo in search of the described enormous outcropping of blue-veined rock. He had persevered in search, drawing all his savings out to fund the expedition. And there his goal lay, just over the horizon.