CHAPTER XIX. LAND? “Land” is the only word to be found at the beginning of the nineteenth chapter of Edgar Poe’s book. I thought it would be a good idea—placing after it a note of interrogation—to put it as a heading to this portion of our narrative. Did that word, dropped from our fore-masthead, indicate an island or a continent? And, whether a continent or an island, did not a disappointment await us? Could they be there whom we had come to seek? And Arthur Pym, who was dead, unquestionably dead, in spite of Dirk Peters’ assertions, had he ever