isplay it in Europe.

I have made these long-winded and apparently uncalled-for remarks partly
to show my learning, but chiefly in conformity with the fashion of the
day, that requires that every story, long or short, should be ushered in
by at least one chapter of prefatory remarks. I do not intend to be so
unreasonable; but before this my first chapter is finished, shall give
my readers an idea of my purposed principal scene of operations.

If then, the reader will turn to the proper map, he will find in about
the latitude of twenty-one north, Cape Corrientes; and not far from this
three islands, called Las Tres Marias; the Three Marys, that is, so
named after the three Marys of the New Testament.

Geographers, when they make maps, seem to start with the notion that
there must be a certain number of islands, &c. inserted in each map; and
when they have located the larger and more important ones within fifteen
or twenty degrees of latitude and longitude of their proper places,
which is as near as they commonly come to the truth, they proceed to
distribute the remainder according to their own taste. In compliance
with this fashion of theirs, they have laid down upon all modern maps,
especially those that are called the best, and in nearly the latitude
that I have above mentioned, and longitude that I have not, namely,
about one hundred and fifteen west from Greenwich Observatory, a little
island which they call Revalligigedos. I have passed twice over the spot
where this little island with the big name "stays put," in all maps by
them, and have conversed with many whalemen and others, who, taken
collectively, have sailed over every square inch of salt water in that
place, and none of them have seen it. So too, they have studded the
ocean off Cape Horn so thickly with islands, that a landsman wonders how
a ship of any size can manage to squeeze through into the Pacific. I
have passed that cape three times, and have been working to windward off
them some weeks, but although we always kept a bright look-out for ice
islands and strange vessels, we never, to use a vulgar expression, saw
"hide or hair" of these supererogatory islands.

But to return; in a direction nearly east from the Three Marys, the
reader will find, on most maps, a small river, called by the Spaniards,
in their usual style of bombast, El Rio Grande, or the Great River;
though the identical legs that I now stand upon have waded across it at
low water, a