I do not wish you
to return to your country, until you will be enabled to make yourself
welcome and useful there, by what you may see in the lunar world. Take
courage, then, my friend; you have passed the worst; and, as the proverb
says, do not, when you have swallowed the ox, now choke at the tail.
Besides, although we made all possible haste in descending, we should,
ere we reached the surface, find ourselves to the west of your continent,
and be compelled then to choose between some part of Asia or the Pacific
Ocean."
"Let us then proceed," said I, mortified at the imputation on my courage,
and influenced yet more, perhaps, by the last argument. The Brahmin then
tried to soothe my disappointment, by his remarks on my native land.
"I have a great curiosity," said he, "to see a country where a man, by
his labour, can earn as much in a month as will procure him bread, and
meat too, for the whole year; in a week, as will pay his dues to the
government; and in one or two days, as will buy him an acre of good land:
where every man preaches whatever religion he pleases; where the priests
of the different sects never fight, and seldom quarrel; and, stranger
than all, where the authority of government derives no aid from an army,
and that of the priests no support from the law."
I told him, when he should see these things in operation with his
own eyes, as I trusted he would, if it pleased heaven to favour our
undertakings, they would appear less strange.
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