However far we may pursue our researches into the early records of our forefathers, we cannot discover a period at which this organization was unknown. Whatever may have been the original condition of the German tribes, tradition and history alike represent them to us as living partly by agriculture, partly by the pasturing of cattle[58]. They had long emerged from the state of wandering herdsmen, hunters or fishers, when they first attracted the notice, and disputed or repelled the power, of Rome. The peculiar tendencies of various tribes may have introduced peculiar modes of placing or constructing their habitations; but of no German population is it stated, that they dwelt in tents like the Arab, in waggons like the Scythian, or in earth-dug caverns like the troglodytes of Wallachia: the same authority that tells of some who lived alone as the hill-side or the fresh spring pleased them[59], notices the villages, the houses and even the fortresses, of others. ----- Footnote 57: “Agri, pro numero cultorum, ab universis per vices occupantur, quos mox inter se, secundum dignationem, partiuntur; facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia praestant.” Tac. Germ. 26. Footnote 58: “Sola terrae seges imperatur,” they raise corn, but not fruits or vegetables. Tac. Germ. 26. “>Frumenti modum dominus, aut pecoris, aut vestis, ut colono, iniungit; et servus hactenus paret.” Ibid. 25. Hordeum, and frumentum. Ibid. 23. Footnote 59: “Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit. Vicos locant, non in nostrum morem, connexis et cohaerentibus aedificiis; suam quisque domum spatio circumdat.” Tac. Germ. 16. When Tacitus speaks of caverns dug in the earth, it is as granaries (which may to this day be seen in Hungary) or as places of refuge from sudden invasion. Without commerce, means of extended communication, or peaceful neighbours, the Germans cannot have cultivated their fields for the service of strangers: they must have been consumers, as they certainly were raisers, of bread-corn; early documents of the Anglosaxons prove that considerable quantities of wheat were devoted to this purpose. Even the serfs and domestic servants were entitled to an allowance of bread, in addition to the supply of flesh[60]; and the large quantities of ale and beer which we find enumerated among the dues payable from the land, or in gifts to religious establishments, presume a very copious supply of cereals for the purpose of malting[61]. But it is also certain that our forefathers depended very materially for subsistence upon the herds of oxen, sheep, and especially swine, which they could feed upon the unenclosed meadows, or in the wealds of oak and beech which covered a large proportion of the land. From the moment, in short, when we first learn anything of their domestic condition, all the German tribes appear to be settled upon arable land, surrounded with forest pastures, and having some kind of property in both.