For skins of prodigious snakes, of which there are some threescore yards in length as is the skin of one that may be seen at his Majesty's Antiquary's where are also some rare flies, of amazing forms and colors, presented to 'em by myself some as big as my fist, some less and all of various excellencies, such as art cannot imitate. Then for little paraketoes, great parrots, mackaws, and a thousand other birds and beasts of wonderful and surprising forms, shapes, and colors.
The scene of the last part of his adventures lies in a colony in America, called Surinam, in the West Indies.īut before I give you the story of this gallant slave, 'tis fit I tell you the manner of bringing them to these new colonies those they make use of there not being natives of the place: for those we live with in perfect amity, without daring to command 'em but, on the contrary, caress 'em with all the brotherly and friendly affection in the world trading with them for their fish, venison, buffalo's skins, and little rarities as marmosets, a sort of monkey, as big as a rat or weasel, but of marvelous and delicate shape, having face and hands like a human creature and cousheries, a little beast in the form and fashion of a lion, as big as a kitten, but so exactly made in all parts like that noble beast that it is it in miniature. But we who were perfectly charmed with the character of this great man were curious to gather every circumstance of his life.
I was myself an eye-witness to a great part of what you will find here set down and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself, who gave us the whole transactions of his youth: and though I shall omit, for brevity's sake, a thousand little accidents of his life, which, however pleasant to us, where history was scarce and adventures very rare, yet might prove tedious and heavy to my reader, in a world where he finds diversions for every minute, new and strange.
I DO not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave, to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet's pleasure nor in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents but such as arrived in earnest to him: and it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues there being enough of reality to support it, and to render it diverting, without the addition of invention.
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