My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt, and the more, by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. For although, since my unfortunate exile from the Houyhnhnm country, I had compelled myself to tolerate the sight of yahoos, and to converse with Don Pedro de Mendez, yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted Houyhnhnms.
As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During the first year, I could not endure my wife and children in my presence; the smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two young horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them the groom is my greatest favorite; for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle and saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship to each other.
CHAPTER XII
THE AUTHOR’S VERACITY—HIS DESIGN IN PUBLISHING THIS WORK—HIS CENSURE OF THOSE TRAVELERS WHO SWERVE FROM THE TRUTH—THE AUTHOR CLEARS HIMSELF FROM ANY SINISTER ENDS IN WRITING—AN OBJECTION ANSWERED—THE METHOD OF PLANTING COLONIES—HIS NATIVE COUNTRY COMMENDED—THE RIGHT OF THE CROWN TO THOSE COUNTRIES DESCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR IS JUSTIFIED—THE DIFFICULTY OF CONQUERING THEM—THE AUTHOR TAKES HIS LAST LEAVE OF THE READER; PROPOSES HIS MANNER OF LIVING FOR THE FUTURE; GIVES GOOD ADVICE, AND CONCLUDES.
Thus gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months; wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as of truth. I could perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest manner and style, because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee.
It is easy for us to travel into remote countries, which are seldom visited by Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of wonderful animals both at sea and land. Whereas a traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good example, of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveler, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the lord high chancellor, that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader. I have perused several books of travels with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own observation, it has given me a great disgust against this part of reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind so impudently abused. Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to think my poor endeavors might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms of whom I had so long the honor to be a humble hearer.
... Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem
Finxit, vanum etiam, mendacemque improba finget.