of villages. To satisfy my
curious reader, it may be sufficient to describe Lorbrulgrud. This city
stands upon almost two equal parts, on each side the river that passes
through. It contains above eighty thousand houses, and about six hundred
thousand inhabitants. It is in length three _glomglungs_ (which make
about fifty-four English miles,) and two and a half in breadth; as I
measured it myself in the royal map made by the king's order, which was
laid on the ground on purpose for me, and extended a hundred feet: I
paced the diameter and circumference several times barefoot, and,
computing by the scale, measured it pretty exactly.

The king's palace is no regular edifice, but a heap of buildings, about
seven miles round: the chief rooms are generally two hundred and forty
feet high, and broad and long in proportion. A coach was allowed to
Glumdalclitch and me, wherein her governess frequently took her out to
see the town, or go among the shops; and I was always of the party,
carried in my box; although the girl, at my own desire, would often take
me out, and hold me in her hand, that I might more conveniently view the
houses and the people, as we passed along the streets. I reckoned our
coach to be about a square of Westminster-hall, but not altogether so
high: however, I cannot be very exact. One day the governess ordered our
coachman to stop at several shops, where the beggars, watching their
opportunity, crowded to the sides of the coach, and gave me the most
horrible spectacle that ever a European eye beheld. There was a woman
with a cancer in her breast, swelled to a monstrous size, full of holes,
in two or three of which I could have easily crept, and covered my whole
body. There was a fellow with a wen in his neck, larger than five
wool-packs; and another, with a couple of wooden legs, each about twenty
feet high. But the most hateful sight of all, was the lice crawling on
their clothes. I could see distinctly the limbs of these vermin with my
naked eye, much better than those of a European louse through a
microscope, and their snouts with which they rooted like swine. They
were the first I had ever beheld, and I should have been curious enough
to dissect one of them, if I had had proper instruments, which I
unluckily left behind me in the ship, although, indeed, the sight was so
nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach.

Besides the large box in which I was usually carried, the queen ordered a