I could force nothing on him but a footman’s tooth, which I observed him to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it.  He received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could deserve.  It was drawn by an unskillful surgeon, in a mistake, from one of Glumdalclitch’s men, who was afflicted with the toothache, but it was as sound as any in his head.  I got it cleaned, and put it into my cabinet.  It was about a foot long, and four inches in diameter.

The captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation I had given him, and said he hoped, when we returned to England, I would oblige the world by putting it in paper, and making it public.  My answer was that I thought we were already overstocked with books of travels; that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted some authors less consulted truth than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers; that my story could contain little besides common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees, birds, and other animals, or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound.  However, I thanked him for his good opinion, and promised to take the matter into my thoughts.

He said he wondered at one thing very much, which was to hear me speak so loud; asking me whether the king or queen of that country were thick of hearing.  I told him it was what I had been used to for above two years past, and that I admired as much at the voices of him and his men, who seemed to me only to whisper, and yet I could hear them well enough.  But, when I spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the street to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in any person’s hand.  I told him I had likewise observed another thing, that when I first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, I thought they were the most little, contemptible creatures I had ever beheld.  For, indeed, while I was in that prince’s country, I could never endure to look in a glass after mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself.  The captain said that while we were at supper he observed me to look at everything with a sort of wonder, and that I often seemed hardly able to contain my laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain.  I answered it was very true; and I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a silver three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nutshell; and so I went on, describing the rest of his household stuff and provisions after the same manner.  For, although the queen had ordered a little equipage of all things necessary while I was in her service, yet my ideas were wholly taken up with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked at