Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/21

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to be opaque bodies like our own; but the best way after all, out of these and all other difficulties, is to hark back to the fact.—I am not in the least anxious to be the author of any new theory of the earth, nor to rival the justly celebrated Herschel in the discovery of other worlds, but I am conscious of my own integrity, and cannot doubt the evidence of my senses.—If this sea, therefore, and the country whose shores it washes beyond it, and which I afterwards visited, can be considered as part of our earth, let them, in God's name, be so considered—and if they cannot, then let philosophy and fancy go each their own way to find places for them: I shall stand perfectly neuter in the controversy.—It is enough for me that I possess the celestial observations taken as we entered the jaws of the current, and as we escaped from its dominion; these fortunate precautions enabled me to return to England, and could at pleasure lead me back again; but the discovery no man can expect from me without a corresponding compensation.—If ten thousand pounds were given toHarrison