first subterraneous and dark, into a most beautiful country, adorned
with rivers and meadows, woods and plains, but obscure, and not
illuminated with the full light of the sun. All the days were
cloudy, and the nights extremely dark, on account of the absence of
the moon and stars. The boy was brought before the king, and
introduced to him in the presence of the court; who, having examined
him for a long time, delivered him to his son, who was then a boy.
These men were of the smallest stature, but very well proportioned
in their make; they were all of a fair complexion, with luxuriant
hair falling over their shoulders like that of women. 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