I soon observed that this work was far from being displeasing to his majesty. He read it through with attention, and then recommended it to the senate with much ceremony. It was soon determined that I should be made use of to discover and make known whatever there was of interest throughout the planet. Truly! I expected some other reward for my sleepless nights and laborious days, than still greater burthens, still heavier travail. But I could only in silence sigh with the poet:
"Alas! that Virtue should be praised by all,—
Should warm, with its mild beams, all hearts:
Yet mock and freeze its owner."
However, as I have always had a great desire to see and hear every thing new, and expected, withal, a magnificent reward from the really kind-hearted king on my return, I set about this work with a kind of pleasure.
Although the planet Nazar is but about six hundred miles in circumference, it seems, to the trees, of vast extent, principally on account of their slow movement. No Potuan could go round it in less time than two years, whereas, I, with my long legs, could traverse it easily in two months.
I set out on this journey in the Poplar month.
Most of the things which I shall now relate, are so curious, that the reader may be easily brought to believe them to be written from mere whim, or at least to be poetical contrivance. The physical and moral diversities are so many and so great, on this planet, that a man who has only considered the difference between the antipodal nations of the earth, can form but a faint idea of the same. It must be observed that the nations of Nazar are divided by sounds and seas, and that this globe is a kind of Archipelago.
It would be wearisome to relate all my adventures, and I shall limit my remarks to those people who seemed to me the most remarkable.
The only things which I found in common with all, were figure and language. All were trees. But in customs, gestures, and sense, so great was the diversity, that each province appeared like a new world.
In Quamso, the province next to Potu, the inhabitants are entirely oak trees. They know not of bodily weakness or disease, but arrive in perfect and continued health to a very great age. They seem to be the most fortunate of all creatures; but I found, after some intercourse with them, that this assumption was a great mistake. Although I never saw any of them sad, yet none appeared to be happy. The purest heaven is never impressive, but after a storm; so happiness is not appreciated by these oaks, because it is never interrupted; they bless not health, because they are never sick. They spend their lives in tame and uninterrupted indifference. Possessed of little politeness and goodness of heart, their conversation is cold and cheerless; their manners stiff and haughty. Without passions, they are crimeless; without weakness, they are pitiless.
Those alone to whom pain and sickness bring the remembrance of their mortality, learn in their own sufferings, to sympathise with and compassionate the woes of others.