The higher the intelligence, the more faith, and the less credulity:  Gabriel rejects more than we, but out-believes us all.  The greatest marvels are first truths; and first truths the last unto which we attain.  Things nearest are furthest off.  Though your ear be next-door to your brain, it is forever removed from your sight.  Man has a more comprehensive view of the moon, than the man in the moon himself.  We know the moon is round; he only infers it.  It is because we ourselves are in ourselves, that we know ourselves not.  And it is only of our easy faith, that we are not infidels throughout; and only of our lack of faith, that we believe what we do.

In some universe-old truths, all mankind are disbelievers.  Do you believe that you lived three thousand years ago?  That you were at the taking of Tyre, were overwhelmed in Gomorrah?  No.  But for me, I was at the subsiding of the Deluge, and helped swab the ground, and build the first house.  With the Israelites, I fainted in the wilderness; was in court, when Solomon outdid all the judges before him.  I, it was, who suppressed the lost work of Manetho, on the Egyptian theology, as containing mysteries not to be revealed to posterity, and things at war with the canonical scriptures; I, who originated the conspiracy against that purple murderer, Domitian; I, who in the senate moved, that great and good Aurelian be emperor.  I instigated the abdication of Diocletian, and Charles the Fifth; I touched Isabella’s heart, that she hearkened to Columbus.  I am he, that from the king’s minions hid the Charter in the old oak at Hartford; I harbored Goffe and Whalley:  I am the leader of the Mohawk masks, who in the Old Commonwealth’s harbor, overboard threw the East India Company’s Souchong; I am the Vailed Persian Prophet; I, the man in the iron mask; I, Junius.

CHAPTER XCVIII The Tale Of A Traveler

It was Samoa, who told the incredible tale; and he told it as a traveler.  But stay-at-homes say travelers lie.  Yet a voyage to Ethiopia would cure them of that; for few skeptics are travelers; fewer travelers liars, though the proverb respecting them lies.  It is false, as some say, that Bruce was cousin-german to Baron Munchausen; but true, as Bruce said, that the Abysinnians cut live steaks from their cattle.  It was, in good part, his villainous transcribers, who made monstrosities of Mandeville’s travels.  And though all liars go to Gehenna; yet, assuming that Mandeville died before Dante; still, though Dante took the census of Hell, we find not Sir John, under the likeness of a roasted neat’s tongue, in that infernalest of infernos, The Inferno.

But let not the truth be postponed.  To the stand, Samoa, and through your interpreter, speak.

Once upon a time, during his endless sea-rovings, the Upoluan was called upon to cobble the head of a friend, grievously hurt in a desperate fight of slings.