grave matter of fact_, that is not entitled to the most implicit credit.
We scorn deception. Lest, however, some cavillers may be found, we will
present a few of those reasons which occur to our mind, on the spur of
the moment, as tending to show that everything related here _might_ be
just as true as Cook's voyages themselves. In the first place, this
earth is large, and has sufficient surface to contain, not only all the
islands mentioned in our pages, but a great many more. Something is
established when the possibility of any hypothetical point is placed
beyond dispute. Then, not one half as much was known of the islands of
the Pacific, at the close of the last, and at the commencement of the
present century, as is known to-day. In such a dearth of precise
information, it may very well have happened that many things occurred
touching which we have not said even one word. Again, it should never be
forgotten that generations were born, lived their time, died, and have
been forgotten, among those remote groups, about which no civilized man
ever has, or ever will hear anything. If such be admitted to be the
facts, why may not _all_ that is here related have happened, and equally
escape the knowledge of the rest of the civilized world? During the wars
of the French revolution, trifling events attracted but little of the
general attention, and we are not to think of interests of this nature,
in that day, as one would think of them now.

Whatever may be thought of the authenticity of its incidents, we hope
this book will be found not to be totally without a moral. Truth is not
absolutely necessary to the illustration of a principle, the imaginary
sometimes doing that office quite as effectually as the actual.

The reader may next wish to know why the wonderful events related in
these volumes have so long been hidden from the world. In answer to this
we would ask if anyone can tell how many thousands of years the waters