“There is nothing wanton in the matter,” answered the traveller; “indeed, it is precisely because I believed it would have had no such good effect as you suppose, that I have kept out the matter alluded to. It might, indeed, have gained for the work a little more temporary popularity; but that was not what I desired. At all events, I had, as I conceived, a still higher duty to perform. Being sent to execute a given service, I performed my task to the best of my ability. But on returning, I felt I had another obligation to attend to, not less binding, which was, to give such an account as, over and above being strictly true, should carry with it such evidence of its own good faith, as should insure every part of my story being credited. These anecdotes, however, which I only venture to tell you because you have known me all my life, I have shrunk from repeating to the world, whose knowledge of my character is drawn from this book alone. In short, I did not feel that I was at liberty to shake my own credit, or even to risk its being shaken, by relating anecdotes so much out of the ordinary line of events as some of these stories are. As a servant of the public in the great field of discovery, I considered my character for veracity as part of their property, which was not to be trifled with, merely for the sake of making idle people laugh or stare a little more. And I feared, that even one doubtful point in such a work, no matter how small, or how true, might have weakened the authority of the whole, and this I did not choose to hazard.” After Park’s death, and when a biographical sketch of this most amiable and persevering of travellers was in the course of preparation, one of this circle of friends, whose memory for such things was known to be very retentive, was applied to for these suppressed anecdotes, the existence of which had, somehow or other, leaked out. After a moment’s reflection, he said— “No!—I won’t tell you one word of them. If my friend Park, in his soberest and most reflecting moments, considered it proper to keep these things out of his book, and only betrayed them even to his intimates, over a glass of toddy, I don’t see that we should be acting a generous part by his memory to publish them after he is gone, however true we are convinced they must be.” After preparing the above adventure of the whale’s leap for the press, I felt, on Park’s principle, a certain hesitation as to trusting it before the public; but in order to fortify myself by an authority of the highest rank in whaling matters, I sat down and wrote the following letter to my friend Captain Scoresby:—