One winter’s evening, as Captain Compass was sitting by the fireside with his children all around him, little Jack said to him, “Papa, pray tell us some stories about what you have seen in your voyages. I have been vastly entertained, while you were abroad, with Gulliver’s Travels, and the Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor; and I think, as you have gone round and round the world, you must have met with things as wonderful as they did.”—“No, my dear,” said the captain, “I never met with Lilliputians or Brobdignagians, I assure you, nor ever saw the black loadstone mountain, or the valley of diamonds; but, to be sure, I have seen a great variety of people, and their different manners and ways of living; and if it will be any entertainment to you, I will tell you some curious particulars of what I observed.”—“Pray do, papa,” cried Jack and all his brothers and sisters: so they drew close round him, and he began as follows:—

“Well, then—I was once, about this time of the year, in a country where it was very cold, and the poor inhabitants had much ado to keep themselves from starving. They were clad partly in the skins of beasts, made smooth and soft by a particular art, but chiefly in garments made from the outward covering of a middle-sized quadruped, which they were so cruel as to strip off his back while he was alive. They dwelt in habitations, part of which was sunk underground. The materials were either stones, or earth hardened by fire; and so violent in that country were the storms of wind and rain, that many of them covered their roofs all over with stones. The walls of their houses had holes to let in the light: but to prevent the cold air and wet from coming in, they were covered by a sort of transparent stone, made artificially of melted sand or flints. As wood was rather scarce, I know not what they would have done for firing, had they not discovered in the bowels of the earth a very extraordinary kind of stone, which when put among burning wood, caught fire and flamed like a torch.”

“Dear me,” said Jack, “what a wonderful stone! I suppose it was somewhat like what we call fire-stones, that shine so when we rub them together.”—“I don’t think they would burn,” replied the captain; “besides, these are of a darker colour.”

“Well—but their diet too was remarkable. Some of them ate fish that had been hung up in the smoke till they were quite dry and hard; and along with it they ate either the roots of plants, or a sort of coarse black cake made of powdered seeds. These were the poorer class; the richer had a whiter kind of cake, which they were fond of daubing over with a greasy matter that was the product of a large animal among them. This grease they used, too, in almost all their dishes, and, when fresh, it really was not unpalatable. They likewise devoured the flesh of many birds and beasts when they could get it; and ate the leaves and other parts of a variety of vegetables growing in the country, some absolutely raw, others variously prepared by the aid of fire. Another great article of food was the curd of milk, pressed into a hard mass and salted. This had so rank a smell, that persons of weak stomachs often could not bear to come near it. For drink, they made great use of the water in which certain dry leaves had been steeped. These leaves, I was told, came from a great distance. They had likewise a method of preparing a liquor of the seeds of a grasslike plant steeped in water with the addition of a bitter herb, and then set to work or ferment. I was prevailed upon to taste it, and thought it at first nauseous enough, but in time I liked it pretty well. When a large quantity of the ingredients is used, it becomes perfectly intoxicating. But what astonished me most, was their use of a liquor so excessively hot and pungent that it seems like liquid fire. I once got a mouthful of it by mistake, taking it for water, which it resembles in appearance, but I thought it would instantly have taken away my breath. Indeed, people are not unfrequently killed by it; and yet many of them will swallow it greedily whenever they can get it. This, too, is said to be prepared from the seeds abovementioned, which are innocent and even salutary in their natural state, though made to yield such a pernicious juice. The strangest custom that I believe prevails in any nation I found here, which was, that some take a mighty pleasure in filling their mouths full of stinking smoke and others, in thrusting a nasty powder up their nostrils.”

“I should think it would choke them,” said Jack. “It almost did me,” answered his father, “only to stand by while they did it—but use, it is truly said, is second nature.”

“I was glad enough to leave this cold climate; and about half a year after, I fell in with a people enjoying a delicious temperature of air, and a country full of beauty and verdure. The trees and shrubs were furnished with a great variety of fruits, which, with other vegetable products, constituted a large part of the food of the inhabitants. I particularly relished certain berries growing in bunches, some white and some red, of a very pleasant sourish taste, and so transparent that one might see the seeds at their very centre. Here were whole fields full of extremely odoriferous flowers, which they told me were succeeded by pods bearing seeds, that afforded good nourishment to man and beast. A great variety of birds enlivened the groves and woods; among which I was entertained with one, that without any teaching spoke almost as articulately as a parrot, though indeed it was only a repetition of a single word. The people were tolerably gentle and civilized, and possessed many of the arts of life. Their dress was very various. Many were clad only in a thin cloth made of the long fibres of the stalk of a plant cultivated for the purpose, which they prepared by soaking in water, and then beating with large mallets. Others wore cloth woven from a sort of vegetable wool, growing in pods upon bushes. But the most singular material was a fine glossy stuff, used chiefly by the richer classes, which, as I was credibly informed, is manufactured out of the webs of caterpillars—a most wonderful circumstance, if we consider the immense number of caterpillars necessary to the production of so large a quantity of stuff as I saw used. This people are very fantastic in their dress, especially the women, whose apparel consists of a great number of articles impossible to be described, and strangely disguising the natural form of the body. In some instances they seem very cleanly; but in others, the Hottentots can scarce go beyond them; particularly in the management of their hair, which is all matted and stiffened with the fat of swine and other animals, mixed up with powders of various colours and ingredients. Like most Indian nations, they use feathers in their head-dress. One thing surprised me much, which was, that they bring up in their houses an animal of the tiger-kind, with formidable teeth and claws, which, notwithstanding its natural ferocity, is played with and caressed by the most timid and delicate of their women.”

“I am sure I would not play with it,” said Jack. “Why, you might chance to get an ugly scratch if you did,” said the captain.

“The language of this nation seems very harsh and unintelligible to a foreigner, yet they converse among one another with great ease and quickness. One of the oddest customs is that which men use on saluting each other. Let the weather be what it will, they uncover their heads, and remain uncovered for some time, if they mean to be extraordinarily respectful.”

“Why that’s like pulling off our hats,” said Jack.—“Ah, ah! papa,” cried Betsy, “I have found you out. You have been telling us of our own country, and what is done at home, all this while!”—“But,” said Jack, “we don’t burn stones or eat grease and powdered seeds, or wear skins and caterpillars’ webs, or play with tigers.”—“No?” said the Captain—“pray, what are coals but stones? and is not butter, grease; and corn, seeds: and leather, skins; and silk, the web of a kind of caterpillar? And may we not as well call a cat an animal of the tiger kind, as a tiger an animal of the cat-kind? So, if you recollect what I have been describing, you will find, with Betsy’s help, that all the other wonderful things I have told you of are matters familiar among ourselves. But I meant to show you, that a foreigner might easily represent everything as equally strange and wonderful among us as we could do with respect to his country; and also to make you sensible that we daily call a great many things by their names, without ever inquiring into their nature and properties; so that, in reality, it is only their names, and not the things themselves, with which we are acquainted.”