They Had
Horses And Greyhounds Adapted To Their Size.
They neither ate flesh
nor fish, but lived on milk diet, made up into messes with saffron.
They never
Took an oath, for they detested nothing so much as lies.
As often as they returned from our upper hemisphere, they reprobated
our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies; they had no form of
public worship, being strict lovers and reverers, as it seemed, of
truth.
The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way
he had first gone, sometimes by another: at first in company with
other persons, and afterwards alone, and made himself known only to
his mother, declaring to her the manners, nature, and state of that
people. Being desired by her to bring a present of gold, with which
that region abounded, he stole, while at play with the king's son,
the golden ball with which he used to divert himself, and brought it
to his mother in great haste; and when he reached the door of his
father's house, but not unpursued, and was entering it in a great
hurry, his foot stumbled on the threshold, and falling down into the
room where his mother was sitting, the two pigmies seized the ball
which had dropped from his hand, and departed, shewing the boy every
mark of contempt and derision. On recovering from his fall,
confounded with shame, and execrating the evil counsel of his
mother, he returned by the usual track to the subterraneous road,
but found no appearance of any passage, though he searched for it on
the banks of the river for nearly the space of a year.
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