Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 4/Chapter 10
from the Collection âGulliver's Travels. Part 4â
The division of this retelling into sections is editorial.
A contented life near the masterâs house
Gulliver had made a contented home in the country of the Houyhnhnms, the intelligent horses among whom he lived. His master had a room built for him a few yards from the house, and Gulliver furnished it with what he could make or gather.
Gulliver plastered the walls and floor with clay and covered them with mats of rushes. He made bedding from wild hemp and feathers, catching birds for both their feathers and their meat. He also made two chairs, with the harder work done by a sorrel horse who served the same master.
When Gulliverâs clothes wore out, he replaced them with skins, including those of rabbits and a small, soft-coated animal called the nnuhnoh. He made stockings and wooden soles for his shoes, later using dried Yahoo skins when the leather wore out. Yahoos were the humanlike creatures of the country. He found honey in hollow trees and ate it with bread or mixed it with water.
Gulliver believed his simple life proved that little was needed to satisfy nature and that necessity encouraged invention. He enjoyed good health and peace of mind, and contrasted his surroundings with the betrayals, fraud, political rivalries, punishments and other abuses he associated with human society.
Lessons from the Houyhnhnms
Gulliverâs Houyhnhnm master allowed him to listen when visitors came to the house and sometimes took him on visits to others. The master and his guests asked Gulliver questions, but he otherwise stayed silent, eager to learn from their conversation.
Gulliver admired the visitorsâ concise, courteous discussions. They did not interrupt or quarrel, and they believed that brief silences gave people time to develop fresh ideas. They spoke about friendship, kindness, household affairs, nature, old traditions, virtue, reason, poetry and questions for their next great assembly.
Gulliver himself often became a subject of discussion. His master told visitors about him and his country, and their conclusions about humanity were so unflattering that Gulliver chose not to repeat them. He was especially impressed that his master could infer human vices Gulliver had never described, simply by imagining what a Yahoo might do if given a little reason.
Gulliver credited these conversations and his masterâs instruction with almost all the knowledge he valued. He admired the Houyhnhnmsâ strength, beauty and speed as well as their virtues, and gradually came to feel the awe that other animals and Yahoos felt in their presence. He was grateful that they distinguished him from the other Yahoos.
Gulliver turns against his own kind
As Gulliverâs regard for the Houyhnhnms grew, his opinion of human beings deteriorated. He came to regard his family, friends and countrymen as Yahoos who could speak and were somewhat more civilised, but who used reason chiefly to increase their vices.
Even his own appearance came to disgust him. When he saw his reflection in a lake or fountain, he turned away, finding it harder to bear than the sight of an ordinary Yahoo. He also began imitating the Houyhnhnmsâ movements and way of speaking.
Looking back, Gulliver said that the imitation had become habitual. He welcomed his friendsâ mockery of his gait:
my friends often tell me in a blunt way, that I trot like a horse; which, however, I take for a great compliment.
He was equally untroubled when people ridiculed the horse-like sounds and manner he adopted in speech.
The assembly demands his departure
Gulliver believed he had settled among the Houyhnhnms for life. One morning, however, his master summoned him earlier than usual and, visibly troubled, explained a decision made at the latest general assembly.
The representatives had objected to the masterâs keeping a Yahoo almost as though he were a Houyhnhnm, and to his conversing with Gulliver as if he could gain pleasure or benefit from the company. They considered the arrangement contrary to reason and nature. They had therefore advised the master either to put Gulliver to work like the other Yahoos or to send him back across the sea.
Those Houyhnhnms who knew Gulliver rejected the first option. They feared that his limited reason, combined with what they regarded as the natural wickedness of Yahoos, might enable him to lead the animals into the woods and mountains and bring them back in bands to attack livestock.
The master said his neighbours were pressing him to act and that he could not delay much longer. Since Gulliver was unlikely to be able to swim to another country, he suggested building a vessel like those Gulliver had described. He offered help from his own servants and those of his neighbours.
For his own part, the master said he would have been content to keep Gulliver in service for life. Gulliver had, he thought, corrected some bad habits by trying to imitate the Houyhnhnms as far as his inferior nature allowed.
Gulliver explained that the assembly expressed its decisions as advice rather than commands. In his account, the Houyhnhnms could not conceive of forcing a rational creature to obey:
no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature.
Nevertheless, the assemblyâs advice and the neighboursâ pressure meant that Gulliver had to leave.
Grief and reluctant obedience
The news overwhelmed Gulliver. He fainted at his masterâs feet, and when he recovered, the master said he had thought him dead: Houyhnhnms, Gulliver explained, were not subject to such fainting fits.
Gulliver answered weakly that death would have been a happiness. Although he did not presume to condemn the assembly or the neighbours, he thought their decision unnecessarily severe. He could not swim far, believed the nearest land might be more than a hundred leagues away, and lacked many materials needed to build a vessel.
He promised to attempt the work out of obedience and gratitude, though he expected it to be impossible and considered himself doomed. Even the prospect of dying at sea distressed him less than the thought of surviving only to live again among human beings.
Gulliver told his master what he feared would happen if he returned to them:
how could I think with temper, of passing my days among Yahoos, and relapsing into my old corruptions, for want of examples to lead and keep me within the paths of virtue.
Still, Gulliver accepted that his arguments could not overturn what he regarded as the Houyhnhnmsâ sound reasoning. He thanked his master for the offer of assistance and asked for enough time to undertake the difficult work. If he reached England, he hoped he might benefit his own species by praising the Houyhnhnms and offering their virtues as an example.
The master answered kindly and gave him two months to finish a boat. At Gulliverâs request, he assigned the sorrel nag to follow his instructions: Gulliver thought the one helper sufficient and knew the nag felt tenderness toward him.
An island and a canoe
Gulliver and the sorrel nag went to the coast where Gulliverâs mutinous crew had previously put him ashore. From a height, Gulliver thought he saw a small island to the north-east. Using his pocket telescope, he made it out more clearly and estimated that it was about five leagues away.
The sorrel nag thought the distant shape was only a blue cloud. Gulliver attributed this to his companionâs lack of experience in looking for distant land: the nag had no conception of any country beyond his own. Gulliver nevertheless chose the island as the first destination of his exile, leaving whatever came afterward to chance.
Back at the house, Gulliver consulted the nag, and together they went to a small wood. Gulliver used his knife, while the nag used a sharpened flint fixed to a wooden handle. They cut slender oak poles and larger pieces for a boat.
In six weeks they completed a canoe, larger than the kind Gulliver associated with Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The sorrel nag did the heaviest labour. Gulliver covered the frame with Yahoo skins sewn together with hemp thread of his own making. He also made a sail from the skins of young Yahoos, because older skins were too thick and tough, and prepared four paddles.
For provisions he packed cooked rabbit and birds, along with one vessel of milk and another of water. He tested the canoe on a large pond near his masterâs house, corrected its defects and sealed its gaps with Yahoo fat until it was watertight and could carry both him and his supplies.
When the boat was ready, Yahoos pulled it carefully on a carriage to the shore, supervised by the sorrel nag and another servant.
Farewell at the shore
On the day of departure, Gulliver took a tearful leave of his master, his masterâs wife and the household. His master decided to see him into the canoe, partly, Gulliver thought, from curiosity and perhaps partly from kindness. Several neighbouring Houyhnhnms came along.
At the shore Gulliver waited more than an hour for the tide. When the wind was blowing favourably toward the island, he said goodbye to his master a second time. Gulliver began to prostrate himself to kiss the masterâs hoof, but the master gently raised it to his mouth.
Gulliver later defended this account against critics who thought such a distinguished Houyhnhnm unlikely to grant so great a favour to an inferior creature. He acknowledged that travellers sometimes boasted of exceptional treatment, but maintained that anyone who knew the Houyhnhnmsâ courtesy would believe him.
After paying his respects to the other Houyhnhnms present, Gulliver climbed into the canoe and pushed off from shore.