Some Travelers, journeying along the seashore, climbed to the summit of a tall cliff, and looking over the sea, saw in the distance what they thought was a large ship. They waited in the hope of seeing it enter the harbor, but as the object on which they looked was driven nearer to shore by the wind, they found that it could at the most be a small boat, and not a ship. When however it reached the beach, they discovered that it was only a large faggot of sticks, and one of them said to his companions, “We have waited for no purpose, for after all there is nothing to see but a load of wood.”
Credits
Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, believed to have lived around 620–564 BCE, whose fables have been retold across cultures for over two millennia. "The Seaside Travelers" is a compact moral tale that reflects one of Aesop's recurring themes: the danger of letting imagination outrun reality. Though Aesop himself may be a legendary rather than strictly historical figure, the sharp, observational wisdom of his fables has never lost its edge.
