It was strange, however, that he should betray himself by such an inadvertency.

One who talked so confidently of his own powers, to unveil any secret of mine, and, at the same time, to conceal his own transactions, had surely committed an unpardonable error in leaving this important document in my way.

My reverence, indeed, for Ludlow was such, that I sometimes entertained the notion that this seeming oversight was, in truth, a regular contrivance to supply me with a knowledge, of which, when I came maturely to reflect, it was impossible for me to make any ill use.

There is no use in relating what would not be believed; and should I publish to the world the existence of islands in the space allotted by Ludlow's maps to these _incognitae_, what would the world answer?
That whether the space described was sea or land was of no importance.

That the moral and political condition of its inhabitants was the only topic worthy of rational curiosity.