There are many persons of both sexes in my country, who believe in fairies and supernatural beings, and who are ready to swear, that they have been conveyed by spirits to hills and mountain caves. This superstition is ridiculed in Klim, the hero of the tale. He is supposed to be transported to the world under ground, where he meets with some surprising adventures. Many strange creatures inhabit this new world; trees, for instance, are introduced, endowed with speech, and musical instruments discuss questions of philosophy and finance. Amongst the characters, those geniuses, who perceive everything at a glance, but penetrate nothing, are conspicuous. People of quick perception, whom we use to admire, are despised by the Potuans, who look upon them as idle loungers, that, though always moving, make no progress. Prudent men, on the contrary, who measure their own strength, and advance cautiously, are greatly esteemed by that nation, though with us they pass for fools or cowards. The Potuans and Martinians are examples of both these extremes. By the former Klim was considered a blockhead, on account of the quickness of his perceptions; by the latter he was equally despised for the slowness of his apprehension. To Klim, who measures virtues and vices by the ordinary standard, everything is a paradox; but what he at first condemns, he admires and extols after deliberation; so that the object of the whole work is to correct popular errors, and to distinguish the semblance of virtue and vice from the reality. Its subordinate design is to expose the monstrous fictions, which some authors obtrude upon us in their descriptions of remote countries. "_The Narrative of Niels Klim_," though written so many years ago, contains many satirical hits, exceedingly applicable to the present time; thus showing that what appears to one age to be a whim altogether new, may be, in fact, only some old notion newly promulgated. Greater liberties were allowed at that period in literature than would now be permitted. Holberg's humorous productions are not wholly free from a fault, whose existence the taste of any age may explain, but does not excuse. After living in competency for many years in Copenhagen, he was, in 1747, created a baron by the king of Denmark. He died in 1754. [Illustration] [Illustration] APOLOGETIC PREFACE. PETER KLIM AND ANDREAS KLIM, THE SONS OF THOMAS KLIM, AND GRANDSONS OF KLIM THE GREAT, TO THE KIND READER.