h in the great sea, and which everybody knew to be
absolute falsehoods: the work, however, was not unentertaining.
Besides these, many others have likewise presented us with their own
travels and peregrinations, where they tell us of wondrous large
beasts, savage men, and unheard-of ways of living. The great leader
and master of all this rhodomontade is Homer's "Ulysses," who talks
to Alcinous about the winds {75} pent up in bags, man-eaters, and
one-eyed Cyclops, wild men, creatures with many heads, several of
his companions turned into beasts by enchantment, and a thousand
things of this kind, which he related to the ignorant and credulous
Phaeacians.

These, notwithstanding, I cannot think much to blame for their
falsehoods, seeing that the custom has been sometimes authorised,
even by the pretenders to philosophy: I only wonder that they
should ever expect to be believed: being, however, myself incited,
by a ridiculous vanity, with the desire of transmitting something to
posterity, that I may not be the only man who doth not indulge
himself in the liberty of fiction, as I could not relate anything
true (for I know of nothing at present worthy to be recorded), I
turned my thoughts towards falsehood, a species of it, however, much
more excusable than that of others, as I shall at least say one
thing true, when I tell you that I lie, and shall hope to escape the
general censure, by acknowledging that I mean to speak not a word of
truth throughout. Know ye, therefore, that I am going to write
about what I never saw myself, nor experienced, nor so much as heard
from anybody else, and, what is more, of such things as neither are,
nor ever can be. I give my readers warning, therefore, not to
believe me.

* * * *

Once upon a time, {77} then, I set sail from the Pillars of
Hercules, and getting into the Western Ocean, set off with a
favourable wind; the cause of my peregrination was no more than a
certain impatience of mind and thirst after novelty, with a desire
of knowing where the sea ended, and what kind of men inhabited the
several shores of it; for this purpose I laid in a large stock of
provisions, and as much water as I thought necessary, taking along
with me fifty companions of the same mind as myself. I prepared
withal, a number of arms, with a skilful pilot, whom we hired at a
considerable expense, and made our ship (for it was a pinnace), as
tight as we