elf in
conversation with me.

After having turned over the leaves of the printed volumes, I at
length lighted on a small book of maps, from which, of course, I could
reasonably expect no information, on that point about which I was most
curious. It was an atlas, in which the maps had been drawn by the pen.
None of them contained any thing remarkable, so far as I, who was indeed
a smatterer in geography, was able to perceive, till I came to the end,
when I noticed a map, whose prototype I was wholly unacquainted with. It
was drawn on a pretty large scale, representing two islands, which bore
some faint resemblance, in their relative proportions, at least, to
Great Britain and Ireland. In shape they were widely different, but
as to size there was no scale by which to measure them. From the great
number of subdivisions, and from signs, which apparently represented
towns and cities, I was allowed to infer, that the country was at least
as extensive as the British isles. This map was apparently unfinished,
for it had no names inscribed upon it.

I have just said, my geographical knowledge was imperfect. Though I had
not enough to draw the outlines of any country by memory, I had still
sufficient to recognize what I had before seen, and to discover that
none of the larger islands in our globe resembled the one before me.
Having such and so strong motives to curiosity, you may easily imagine
my sensations on surveying this map. Suspecting, as I did, that many
of Ludlow's intimations alluded to a country well known to him, though
unknown to others, I was, of course, inclined to suppose that this
country was now before me.

In search of some clue to this mystery, I carefully inspected the other
maps in this collection. In a map of the eastern hemisphere I soon
observed the outlines of islands, which, though on a scale greatly
diminished, were plainly similar to that of the land above described.

It is well known that the people of Europe are strangers to very nearly
one half of the surface of the globe. [*] From the south pole up to the
equator, it is only the small space occupied by southern Africa and
by South America with which we are acquainted. There is a vast extent,
sufficient to receive a continent as large as North America, which our
ignorance has filled only with water. In Ludlow's maps nothing was still
to be seen, in these regions, but water, except in that spot where the
transverse parallels of the southern trop