Pym.' This is all we know, and
even this fact, when I told it to Peters, was new to him; for Pym and
Peters parted in the month of February, 1830, at the City of Montevideo,
Uruguay; Peters, with an old sailor chum, whom he happened to meet in
South America, shipping to Australia; and Pym, a few days later,
starting for the United States.
"It had no doubt been the policy of the Hili-lites to prevent all
strangers from returning to the outer world; but this policy was, it
seems, not a firmly founded one, and many circumstances arose to modify
and finally even to reverse it. They looked upon Pym almost as one of
themselves. When he left them, it was with the intention of returning;
and they exacted of him a promise to hide, even from Peters, the
longitudes traversed during the entire journey from Hili-li until they
should touch the land of some civilized people, or meet with a ship; to
which promise Pym rigidly adhered. And though they were in other ways
very kind to him, they would not allow him to take away a single grain
of gold, of which nuggets were as plentiful in the fissures of the
Olympian ranges as are pebbles in the beds of mountain streams; nor
would they allow him to retain, of the many precious stones in his
possession, even the ruby which Lilama had given him; and no amount of
argument or pleading could move them to a different decision.
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