The old man told him to climb the high mountain which could be seen from where they were standing. "When you reach the top, jump into the hole and you will be thrown up to the other world." When Juan was about to go, the old man gave him a ring. "This ring," he said, "is powerful. You can conquer the fiercest demon on earth with the help of this ring. Ask from it anything, food, clothes, and other things, and you will have what you want. If you want to go to some place, you can reach it in a second. This ring will carry you to the top of the mountain."
When the old man was through giving the instructions, Juan found himself on the top of the mountain. Then he jumped into the hole. Suddenly he was blown up through the water and up in the air. He fell back on the water. He wished he were on land and instantly he was carried to a small village full of savages. Juan performed many miracles for the savages, so they elected him king.
One day they went hunting and soon they caught a deer. While they were taking off the hide, a big bird swooped and took the deer with it. Juan clung to the horns of the deer trying to take it from the bird, but in vain. The bird did not mind Juan for he was very small compared with it. It alighted on a very high cliff, left Juan and the dead deer there, and flew away. On the cliff was the bird's nest, and in it were three diamond-like round eggs which were about three feet in diameter.
Juan asked his magical ring to give him a very big basket. The basket came. Then he rolled the eggs into the basket. Juan seated himself between the eggs and asked his ring again to take him and the basket home. The basket was so heavy that the ring could not make it fly very fast. While they were sailing in the air, the bird came with its mate. They held the handle of the basket with their beaks and carried the basket back to the cliff. The power of the magical ring was helpless because the birds were very strong. Juan, then, wished to be clad in armor. So said, so done. But he had no sword, so he asked the ring to give him one. When the birds reached the cliff, they alighted. Juan stepped from the basket and drew his sword. Whenever the birds pecked him, he would strike them on their necks with his sword. After fighting with him for more than half a day, the birds fell helpless on the rock.
Then the victor, Juan, asked the ring again to take him and the basket to his old home. When he reached the place, the once flourishing village was gone. Only a few huts were left standing.—Facundo Esquivel.
II. The Imaginary Voyage with a Satiric or Instructive Purpose
To the class of marvelous tales belong also what are known in France as "Voyages Imaginaires." In so far as the adventurers meet with super-extraordinary beings, or ride on fleas of the dimensions of elephants, or have monstrous spiders weave for a field of battle a web between the moon and the morning star, or in so far as they sail on seas of milk to islands of cheese and altogether suspend the semblance of possibility—in so far are they heroes of absurd tales of wonder. But the narrators of the stories of imaginary voyages for the most part had primarily other objects than mere amusement in view; namely, ridicule of the extravagant narrative by means of imitation and exaggeration, or ridicule of political and philosophic tenets by absurd application; or the story-tellers had instruction to give in civic and social theories by presenting the ideal in contrast with the real.
Source of the type
The first example and perhaps the source of this whole species of narrative is the "True History" of Lucian, which, is professedly fabulous and satiric. Lucian says that by his seas of milk and islands of cheese and the like, he is ridiculing the extravagant relations of the old poets and historians who tell incredible tales. Hundreds of years after Lucian, Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville by their marvelous accounts of remote countries set themselves in the class Lucian satirized. But we will take them up later, since they were real travellers simply exaggerating what they had seen in order the more surely to please a perverted historical taste. We are dealing now with acknowledged imagination. There are many famous imaginary voyages professedly satiric besides Lucian's. Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac's "History of the States and Empires of the Moon" is a satire on the pedantry and scholastic disputations of his age, the early seventeenth century, concerning the uninhabitableness of the lunar world. To the moon Bergerac makes an excursion and settles matters for himself. "Niel Klim's Underground Journey," by Ludvig Holberg of Denmark, is another famous imaginary trip.