d to Charon's boat, and cling to the iron as miners do to
a rope that is let down when the light of their candle forbodes some
malignant exhalation.

The sea-ports, with which this country abounds more than any other, are
of no other use than to receive and take in such things as are edible,
which they have for their superfluous wool and hides: nor may the
inhabitants export anything that has the least relation to the palate.
You see nothing there but fruit-trees. They hate plains, limes, and
willows, as being idle and barren, and yielding nothing useful but their
shade. There are hops, pears, plums, and apples, in the hedge-rows, as
there is in all Ivronia; from whence the Lombards, and some counties in
the west of England, have learned their improvements. In ancient times,
Frugonia, or the Land of Frugality, took in this country as one of its
provinces; and histories tell us, that, in Saturn's time, the Frugonian
princes gave laws to all this part of the world, and had their palace
there; and that their country was called Fagonia, from the simplicity of
their diet, which consisted only in beech-mast. But that yoke has been
long ago shaken off; their manners are wholly changed, and, from the
universality of their food, they have obtained, in their own country
language, the title of Pamphagones.

CHAPTER III.

_The First Province of Pamphagonia._

Friviandy, or Tight-bittia (that we may take the provinces in their
order), were it not for a temperament peculiar to the place, is rather
of the hottest to produce those who are properly called good
trencher-men. Its utmost point, which other geographers call the
Promontory of the Terra Australis, is of the same latitude as the most
southerly parts of Castile, and is about forty-two degrees distant from
the equator. The inhabitants have curled hair and dusky complexions, and
regard more the delicacy than the largeness and number of their dishes.
In this very promontory, which we shall call the black one from its
colour (for it is a very smoky region, partly from the frequent vapours
of the place, partly from its vicinity to the Terra del Fogo, which, by
the common consent of geographers, lies on the right hand of it, but
rather nearer than they have placed it), is the city Lucina, whose
buildings are lofty, but apt to be smoky and offensive to the smell;
from whence a colony went, perhaps, as far as the Indies, where it
remains to this day by the name of Cochin-Ch