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insects, each of them as big as a Dunstable lark, hardly gave me
any rest while I sat at dinner, with their continual humming and
buzzing about mine ears. They would sometimes alight upon my
victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement, or spawn behind,
which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that
country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine, in viewing
smaller objects. Sometimes they would fix upon my nose, or
forehead, where they stung me to the quick, smelling very
offensively; and I could easily trace that viscous matter, which,
our naturalists tell us, enables those creatures to walk with their
feet upwards upon a ceiling. I had much ado to defend myself
against these detestable animals, and could not forbear starting
when they came on my face. It was the common practice of the
dwarf, to catch a number of these insects in his hand, as
schoolboys do among us, and let them out suddenly under my nose, on
purpose to frighten me, and divert the queen. My remedy was to cut
them in pieces with my knife, as they flew in the air, wherein my
dexterity was much admired.

I remember, one morning, when Glumdalclitch had set me in a box
upon a window, as she usually did in fair days to give me air (for
I durst not venture to let the box be hung on a nail out of the
window, as we do with cages in England), after I had lifted up one
of my sashes, and sat down at my table to eat a piece of sweet cake
for my breakfast, above twenty wasps, allured by the smell, came
flying into the room, humming louder than the drones of as many
bagpipes. Some of them seized my cake, and carried it piecemeal
away; others flew about my head and face, confounding me with the
noise, and putting me in the utmost terror of their stings.
However, I had the courage to rise and draw my hanger, and attack
them in the air. I dispatched four of them, but the rest got away,
and I presently shut my window. These insects were as large as
partridges: I took out their stings, found them an inch and a half
long, and as sharp as needles. I carefully preserved them all; and
having since shown them, with some other curiosities, in several
parts of Europe, upon my return to England I gave three of them to
Gresham College, and kept the fourth for myself.



CHAPTER IV.



[The country described. A proposal for correcting modern maps.
The king's palace; and some account of the metropolis. The
author's way of travelling. The chief temple described.]

I now intend to give the reader a short description of this
country, as far as I travelled in it, which was not above two
thousand miles round Lorbrulgrud, the metropolis. For the queen,
whom I always attended, never went farther when she accompanied the
king in his progresses, and there staid till his majesty returned
from viewing his frontiers. The whole extent of this prince's
dominions reaches about six thousand miles in length, and from
three to five in breadth: whence I cannot but conclude, that our

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