Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/11

 PREFACE. V 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 commence ment 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 ad mitted to be the facts, why may not all that is here related have happened, and equally escape the know ledge 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 to tally without a moral. Truth is not absolutely necessary to the illustration of a principle, the imaginary some times doing that office quite as effectually as the actual. The reader may next wish to know why the won-