Their eyes they can take in and out of their places when they please,
and can see as well with them in their hand as in their head! and if
by any accident they lose or damage one, they can borrow or purchase
another, and see as clearly with it as their own. Dealers in eyes are
on that account very numerous in most parts of the moon, and in this
article alone all the inhabitants are whimsical: sometimes green and
sometimes yellow eyes are the fashion. I know these things appear
strange; but if the shadow of a doubt can remain on any person's mind,
I say, let him take a voyage there himself, and then he will know I am a
traveller of veracity.
CHAPTER XIX
_The Baron crosses the Thames without the assistance of a bridge, ship,
boat, balloon, or even his own will: rouses himself after a long nap,
and destroys a monster who lived upon the destruction of others._
My first visit to England was about the beginning of the present king's
reign. I had occasion to go down to Wapping, to see some goods shipped,
which I was sending to some friends at Hamburgh; after that business was
over, I took the Tower Wharf in my way back. Here I found the sun very
powerful, and I was so much fatigued that I stepped into one of the
cannon to compose me, where I fell fast asleep. This was about noon:
it was the fourth of June; exactly at one o'clock these cannon were all
discharged in memory of the day. They had been all charged that morning,
and having no suspicion of my situation, I was shot over the houses on
the opposite side of the river, into a farmer's yard, between Bermondsey
and Deptford, where I fell upon a large hay-stack, without waking, and
continued there in a sound sleep till hay became so extravagantly dear
(which was about three months after), that the farmer found it his
interest to send his whole stock to market: the stack I was reposing
upon was the largest in the yard, containing above five hundred load;
they began to cut that first. I woke with the voices of the people
who had ascended the ladders to begin at the top, and got up, totally
ignorant of my situation: in attempting to run away I fell upon the
farmer to whom the hay belonged, and broke his neck, yet received no
injury myself. I afterwards found, to my great consolation, that this
fellow was a most detestable character, always keeping the produce of
his grounds for extravagant markets.
CHAPTER XX
_The Baron slips through the world: after paying a visit to Mount Etna
he finds himself in the South Sea; visits Vulcan in his passage; gets on
board a Dutchman; arrives at an island of cheese, surrounded by a sea
of milk; describes some very extraordinary objects--Lose their compass;
their ship slips between the teeth of a fish unknown in this part of the
world; their difficulty in escaping from thence; arrive in the Caspian
Sea--Starves a bear to death--A few waistcoat anecdotes--In this
chapter, which is the longest, the Baron moralises upon the virtue of
veracity._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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