Amazement stood in every countenance; their congratulations on my
returning in safety were repeated with an unaffected degree of pleasure,
and we passed the evening as we are doing now, every person present
paying the highest compliments to my COURAGE and VERACITY.





THE SECOND VOLUME



PREFACE

TO THE SECOND VOLUME

Baron Munchausen has certainly been productive of much benefit to the
literary world; the numbers of egregious travellers have been such,
that they demanded a very Gulliver to surpass them. If Baron de Tott
dauntlessly discharged an enormous piece of artillery, the Baron
Munchausen has done more; he has taken it and swam with it across the
sea. When travellers are solicitous to be the heroes of their own story,
surely they must admit to superiority, and blush at seeing themselves
out-done by the renowned Munchausen: I doubt whether any one hitherto,
Pantagruel, Gargantua, Captain Lemuel, or De Tott, has been able to
out-do our Baron in this species of excellence: and as at present our
curiosity seems much directed to the interior of Africa, it must be
edifying to have the real relation of Munchausen's adventures there
before any further intelligence arrives; for he seems to adapt himself