Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments.
Now, the Big-endian exiles have found so much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu's court, and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party here at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the two empires for six-and-thirty moons, with various success; during which time we have lost forty capital ships, and a much a greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best seamen and soldiers; and the damage received by the enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater than ours.
The Travels themselves constitute the meat between these two rather stodgy slices of bread: we read of struggles between adherents of short and long beards vaguely reminiscent of Swift's high-heels and
Big-Endians and their respective opponents (but rather more labored), Ibn Fudayl's relationship with the learned al-Homsi, and the latter's eventual fate brought about by means of "the corner of a voluminous book."