enlarged afterwards, as well as I could, and was thus enabled to
deliver to the king a volume of considerable size.

I soon observed that this work was far from being displeasing to his
majesty. He read it through with attention, and then recommended it to
the senate with much ceremony. It was soon determined that I should be
made use of to discover and make known whatever there was of interest
throughout the planet. Truly! I expected some other reward for my
sleepless nights and laborious days, than still greater burthens, still
heavier travail. But I could only in silence sigh with the poet:

"Alas! that Virtue should be praised by all,--
Should warm, with its mild beams, all hearts:
Yet mock and freeze its owner."

However, as I have always had a great desire to see and hear every thing
new, and expected, withal, a magnificent reward from the really
kind-hearted king on my return, I set about this work with a kind of
pleasure.

Although the planet Nazar is but about six hundred miles in
circumference, it seems, to the trees, of vast extent, principally on
account of their slow movement. No Potuan could go round it in less time
than two years, whereas, I, with my long legs, could traverse it easily
in two months.

I set out on this journey in the Poplar month.

Most of the things which I shall now relate, are so curious, that the
reader may be easily brought to believe them to be written from mere
whim, or at least to be poetical contrivance. The physical and moral
diversities are so many and so great, on this planet, that a man who has
only considered the difference between the antipodal nations of the
earth, can form but a faint idea of the same. It must be observed that
the nations of Nazar are divided by sounds and seas, and that this globe
is a kind of Archipelago.

It would be wearisome to relate all my adventures, and I shall limit my
remarks to those people who seemed to me the most remarkable.

The only things which I found in common with all, were figure and
language. All were trees. But in customs, gestures, and sense, so great
was the diversity, that each province appeared like a new world.

In Quamso, the province next to Potu, the inhabitants are entirely oak
trees. They know not of bodily weakness or disease, but arrive in
perfect and continued health to a very great age. They seem to be the
most fortunate of all creatures; but I found, after some intercourse
with them, that this