e day
together, being wonderfully struck with the sight of everything that is
new or uncommon. I have, since their departure, employed a friend to make
many enquiries of their landlord the upholsterer[4] relating to their
manners and conversation, as also concerning the remarks which they made
in this country: for next to the forming a right notion of such
strangers, I should be desirous of learning what ideas they have
conceived of us.
The upholsterer finding my friend very inquisitive about these his
lodgers, brought him some time since a little bundle of papers, which he
assured him were written by King Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow, and, as he
supposes, left behind by some mistake. These papers are now translated,
and contain abundance of very odd observations, which I find this little
fraternity of kings made during their stay in the isle of Great Britain.
I shall present my reader with a short specimen of them in this paper,
and may perhaps communicate more to him hereafter. In the article of
London are the following words, which without doubt are meant of the
church of St. Paul.
"On the most rising part of the town there stands a huge house, big
enough to contain the whole nation of which I am king. Our good brother E
Tow O Koam king of the Rivers, is of opinion it was made by the hands of
that great God to whom it is consecrated. The kings of Granajah and of
the Six Nations believe that it was created with the earth, and produced
on the same day with the sun and moon. But for my own part, by the best
information that I could get of this matter, I am apt to think that this
prodigious pile was fashioned into the shape it now bears by several
tools and instruments; of which they have a wonderful variety in this
country. It was probably at first an huge mis-shapen rock that grew upon
the top of the hill, which the natives of the country (after having cut
it into a kind of regular figure) bored and hollowed with incredible
pains and industry, till they had wrought in it all those beautiful
vaults and caverns into which it is divided at this day. As soon as this
rock was thus curiously scooped to their liking, a prodigious number of
hands must have been employed in chipping the outside of it, which is now
as smooth as polished marble;[5] and is in several places hewn out into
pillars that stand like the trunks of so many trees bound about the top
with garlands of leaves. It is probable that when this great work was
begu
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