68 THE CRATER; In the last century, however, matters were not carried quite so far as they are at present. No part of this com munity, claiming any portion of respectability, was willing to publish its own sense of inferiority so openly, as to gos sip 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 ex perience 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 philan thropist. There were half a dozen more cows on board, ^is well as an improved breed of hogs. Mark carried out, also, a couple of mares, for, while many horses could never be much needed in his islands, a few would always be ex ceedingly useful. Oxen were much wanted, but one of his new colonists had yoked his cows, and it was thought matter sworn to was purely ad captandum stuff , and, in a legal sense, riot pertinent to tli.e 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 oc casion 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.
