certain alleged facts (we think to the number of
six), every one of which was untrue. Fortunately for the party
implicated, the matter sworn to was purely _ad captandum_ stuff,
and, in a legal sense, not pertinent to the issue. This prevented
it from being perjury in law. Still, it was all untrue, and nothing
was easier than to show it. Now, we do not doubt that the person
thus swearing _believed_ all that he swore to, or he would not have
had the extreme folly to expose himself as he did; but he was so
much in the habit of publishing gossip in his journal, that, when
an occasion arrived, he did not hesitate about swearing to what he
had read in other journals, without taking the trouble to inquire
if it were true! One of these days we may lay all this, along with
much other similar proof of the virtue there is in gossip, so
plainly before the world, that he who runs may read.]

In the last century, however, matters were not carried quite so far as
they are at present. No part of this community, claiming any portion of
respectability, was willing to publish its own sense of inferiority so
openly, as to gossip about its fellow-citizens, for no more direct
admissions of inferiority can be made than this wish to comment on the
subject of any one's private concerns. Consequently Mark and his islands
escaped. There was no necessity for his telling the insurers anything
about the Peak, for instance, and on that part of the subject,
therefore, he wisely held his tongue. Nothing, in short, was said of any
colony at all. The manner in which the crew had been driven away to
leeward, and recovered, was told minutely, and the whole process by
which the ship was saved. The property used, Mark said had been
appropriated to his wants, without going into details, and the main
results being so very satisfactory, the insurers asked no further.

As soon as off the capes, the governor set about a serious investigation
of the state of his affairs. In the way of cargo, a great many articles
had been laid in, which experience told him would be useful. He took
with him such farming tools as Friend Abraham White had not thought of
furnishing to the natives of Fejee, and a few seeds that had been
overlooked by that speculating philanthropist. There were half a dozen
more cows on board, as well as an improved breed of hogs. Mark carried
out, also, a couple of mares, for, while many