lers
of maps or geographers are fanciful enough to imagine. What a happy
event, therefore, should we not expect from a voyage of discovery and
colonisation undertaken in so magnificent a style as the present! what a
pride--what an acquisition to philosophy!"

CHAPTER XXV

_Count Gosamer thrown by Sphinx into the snow on the top of
Teneriffe--Gog and Magog conduct Sphinx for the rest of the voyage--The
Baron arrives at the Cape, and unites his former chariot, &c., to
his new retinue--Passes into Africa, proceeding from the Cape
northwards--Defeats a host of lions by a curious stratagem--Travels
through an immense desert--His whole company, chariot, &c., overwhelmed
by a whirlwind of sand--Extricates them, and arrives in a fertile
country._

The brave Count Gosamer, with a pair of hell-fire spurs on, riding upon
Sphinx, directed the whole retinue towards the Madeiras. But the Count
had no small share of an amiable vanity, and perceiving great multitudes
of people, Gascons, &c., assembled upon the French coast, he could not
refrain from showing some singular capers, such as they had never seen
before: but especially when he observed all the members of the National
Assembly extend themselves along the shore, as a piece of French
politeness, to honour this expedition, with Rousseau, Voltaire, and
Beelzebub at their head; he set spurs to Sphinx, and at the same time
cut and cracked away as hard as he could, holding in the reins with all
his might, striving to make the creature plunge and show some uncommon
diversion. But sulky and ill-tempered was Sphinx at the time: she
plunged indeed--such a devil of a plunge, that she dashed him in one
jerk over her head, and he fell precipitately into the water before her.
It was in the Bay of Biscay, all the world knows a very boisterous sea,
and Sphinx, fearing he would be drowned, never turned to the left or
the right out of her way, but advancing furious, just stooped her head
a little, and supped the poor count off the water, into her mouth,
together with the quantity of two or three tuns of water, which she
must have taken in along with him, but which were, to such an enormous
creature as Sphinx, nothing more than a spoonful would be to any of you
or me. She swallowed him, but when she had got him in her stomach, his
long spurs so scratched and tickled her, that they produced the effect
of an emetic. No sooner was he in, but out he was squirted with the
most horrible impetuo