To the practice of usury and of increasing money by interest, they are
strangers; and hence is found a better guard against it, than if it
were forbidden. They shift from land to land; and, still appropriating
a portion suitable to the number of hands for manuring, anon parcel out
the whole amongst particulars according to the condition and quality
of each. As the plains are very spacious, the allotments are easily
assigned. Every year they change, and cultivate a fresh soil; yet
still there is ground to spare. For they strive not to bestow labour
proportionable to the fertility and compass of their lands, by planting
orchards, by enclosing meadows, by watering gardens. From the earth,
corn only is extracted. Hence they quarter not the year into so many
seasons. Winter, Spring, and Summer, they understand; and for each
have proper appellations. Of the name and blessings of Autumn, they are
equally ignorant.
In performing their funerals, they show no state or vainglory. This only
is carefully observed, that with the corpses of their signal men certain
woods be burned. Upon the funeral pile they accumulate neither apparel
nor perfumes. Into the fire, are always thrown the arms of the dead, and
sometimes his horse. With sods of earth only the sepulchre is raised.
The pomp of tedious and elaborate monuments they contemn, as things
grievous to the deceased. Tears and wailings they soon dismiss: their
affliction and woe they long retain. In women, it is reckoned becoming
to bewail their loss; in men, to remember it. This is what in general
we have learned, in the original and customs of the whole people of
Germany. I shall now deduce the institutions and usages of the several
people, as far as they vary one from another; as also an account of what
nations from thence removed, to settle themselves in Gaul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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