After much trouble and fatigue, I reach Jockmock, where stands the principal church of this
northern district, and where its pastor resides. Mr. Maiming, who is schoolmaster, and
Mr. Hogling, the curate, torment me with their consummate and most pertinacious ignorance.
The learned curate begins his conversation with remarks on the clouds in this country,
setting forth how they strike the mountains as they pass, carrying away stones, trees,
and cattle. I venture to suggest that such accidents are rather to be attributed to the force
of the wind, for clouds cannot of themselves lift, or carry away, anything. He laughs at me,
saying, surely I’ve never seen any clouds. For my part, it seems to me that he cannot have
ever been anywhere but in the clouds. I reply that whenever the weather is foggy
I walk in clouds, and when the fog is condensed, and no longer supported in the air,
it immediately rains beneath my feet. At all such reasoning, being above his comprehension,
he only laughs with a sardonic smile. Still less is he satisfied with my explanation of how
watery bubbles may be lifted up into the air, as he tells me clouds are solid bodies.
On my denying this, he reinforces his assertion with a text of scripture, silencing me
by authority, and then laughing at my ignorance. He next condescends to inform me that
after rain, a phlegm is always to be found on the mountains where the clouds have touched
them. Upon my replying that this phlegm is a vegetable called Nostoc, I am, like St. Paul,
judged to be mad, and that too much learning has turned my brain. This philosopher,
who is as fully persuaded of his own complete knowledge of nature as Sturmius was of
being able to fly by means of hollow globes, is pleased to be facetious at my expense.
At length, he graciously advises me to pay some regard to the opinions of people skilled in
these abstruse matters, and not, at my return home, to expose myself by publishing such
absurd and preposterous opinions as I have now advanced. The other, the pedagogue,
laments that people should bestow so much attention upon temporal vanities, and
consequently, alas! neglect their spiritual good; and he remarks that many a man has been
ruined by too great an application to study. Both these wise men concur in one thing.
They cannot conceal their wonder that the Royal Academy should expressly have appointed
a mere student for the purposes for which I have been sent, without considering there
are already as competent men resident in the country, who would have undertaken
the business and completed it assiduously, and with much more thought.
My head hurts.