and wavering judgment, and in Martinia despised and commiserated for my
ignorance. True, indeed, is the old proverb; that among the blind the
one-eyed rules. I had now come to a land, where with little
understanding, I could raise myself to the highest dignities. There were
here the best opportunities to employ my talents, since this fruitful
land produced in abundance whatever subserved for pleasure and luxury as
well as usefulness and comfort. The inhabitants were not indocile nor
were they wanting in conception; but since they had been blessed with no
light without themselves, they groped in the thickest darkness. When I
told them of my birth, my native land, of the shipwreck I had suffered,
and of other occurrences in my voyages, not one would credit me. They
thought rather that I was an inhabitant of the sun, and had come down to
enlighten them, wherefore they called me Pikil-Su, that is the sun's
ambassador. For their religion, they believed in and acknowledged a God,
but cared not at all to prove his existence. They thought it enough for
them that their forefathers had believed the same; and this blind
submission to time-honored formulae was their simple and sole theology.
Of the moral law, they were ignorant of all commandments save this: Do
not unto others that which you would not have others do unto you. They
had no laws; the will of the emperor was their only rule. Of chronology
they had but a slight conception; their years were determined by the
eclipses of the sun by Nazar's intervention. Were one asked his age, he
would answer: that he had attained so many eclipses. Their knowledge of
natural science too, was very unsatisfactory and unreasonable; they
believed the sun to be a plate of gold, and the planet Nazar, a cheese.
Their property consisted in hogs, which, after marking, they drove into
the woods: the wealth of each was determined by the number of his swine.

I applied myself, with all the fervor imaginable, to refine and
enlighten this rude, yet promising people, so that shortly I came to be
regarded among them as a saint; their trust in my wisdom was so great,
that they thought nothing impossible with me. Therefore, when overtaken
by misfortune, they would hasten to my hut and pray for my assistance.
Once I found a peasant on his knees before my door, weeping, and
bitterly complaining over the unfruitfulness of his trees, and
beseeching me to use my authority, that his trees should bear fruit to
hi