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About This Passage
These three sentences frame the chapter's central problem of evidence. Notice Poe's scrupulous balance: he reports Weddel's exhaustive failure with the same even hand he gives to the sailors who 'declare positively that they have seen' the islands. The long final sentence holds both impossibilities at once — searchers who find nothing, witnesses who swear they were 'close in with their shores' — so that the prose itself dramatizes a genuine dispute. Copying it trains the balanced, qualifying sentence and the discipline of reporting conflicting testimony without resolving it prematurely.
On the twenty-seventh of January 1820, Captain James Weddel, of the British navy, sailed from Staten Land also in search of the Auroras. He reports that, having made the most diligent search and passe...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the chapter's movement: how the Jane Guy sails from Christmas Harbor to the towering islands of Tristan da Cunha, how the crew finds a small, self-governed settlement under Glass and stocks the ship, and how she then sails off to test whether a long-disputed group of islands, the Auroras, truly exists — crisscrossing the sea for three weeks until the crew is satisfied that no vestige of them remains. Pause where the chapter's purpose shifts most sharply and account for the change.
Discussion Questions
- On Tristan, lone settlers like Lambert and Glass crown themselves 'sovereign' and 'supreme governor,' while distant nations claim the islands and then abandon them. What might Poe's account of this shifting, self-declared authority suggest about how power is actually held in remote places, and why? Use details from the chapter.
- Captain Guy ends the three-week search convinced that no vestige of the Auroras remains. What is the strongest reason someone could still doubt that conclusion, and why might Poe nevertheless want the reader to trust it? Use details from the chapter's account of the search to defend your view.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A supreme ruler; one who holds royal authority.
Item 2
A wide range of differences or variety.
Item 3
Enclosed within limits; bounded.
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Critical Thinking
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