On the eighteenth day after we had passed the Island of Otaheite, mentioned by Captain Cook as the place from whence they brought Omai, a hurricane blew our ship at least one thousand leagues above the surface of the water, and kept it at the height till a fresh gale arising filled the sails in every part, and onwards we travelled at a prodigious rate; thus we proceeded above the clouds for six weeks.  At last we discovered a great land in the sky, like a shining island, round and bright, where, coming into a convenient harbour, we went on shore, and soon found it was inhabited.  Below us we saw another earth, containing cities, trees, mountains, rivers, seas, &c., which we conjectured was this world which we had left.  Here we saw huge figures riding upon vultures of a prodigious size, and each of them having three heads.  To form some idea of the magnitude of these birds, I must inform you that each of their wings is as wide and six times the length of the main sheet of our vessel, which was about six hundred tons burthen.  Thus, instead of riding upon horses, as we do in this world, the inhabitants of the moon (for we now found we were in Madam Luna) fly about on these birds.  The king, we found, was engaged in a war with the sun, and he offered me a commission, but I declined the honour his majesty intended me.  Everything in this world is of extraordinary magnitude! a common flea being much larger than one of our sheep:  in making war, their principal weapons are radishes, which are used as darts:  those who are wounded by them die immediately.  Their shields are made of mushrooms, and their darts (when radishes are out of season) of the tops of asparagus.  Some of the natives of the dog-star are to be seen here; commerce tempts them to ramble; their faces are like large mastiffs’, with their eyes near the lower end or tip of their noses:  they have no eyelids, but cover their eyes with the end of their tongues when they go to sleep; they are generally twenty feet high.  As to the natives of the moon, none of them are less in stature than thirty-six feet:  they are not called the human species, but the cooking animals, for they all dress their food by fire, as we do, but lose not time at their meals, as they open their left side, and place the whole quantity at once in their stomach, then shut it again till the same day in the next month; for they never indulge themselves with food more than twelve times a year, or once a month.  All but gluttons and epicures must prefer this method to ours.

There is but one sex either of the cooking or any other animals in the moon; they are all produced from trees of various sizes and foliage; that which produces the cooking animal, or human species, is much more beautiful than any of the others; it has large straight boughs and flesh-coloured leaves, and the fruit it produces are nuts or pods, with hard shells at least two yards long; when they become ripe, which is known from their changing colour, they are gathered with great care, and laid by as long as they think proper:  when they choose to animate the seed of these nuts, they throw them into a large cauldron of boiling water, which opens the shells in a few hours, and out jumps the creature.