More general are the references to the increase of wine-drinking in defiance of the prohibition of it by their religion; a habit which was bound to be noticed by the traveller, since the ambassadors' houses were used for the purpose principally, at first solely. One old gentleman in Busbecq's time tried to evade his conscience, too; he gave a great shout before each drink, to warn his soul to stow itself away in some far corner of his body lest it should be defiled by the wine he was about to enjoy and have hereafter to answer for his sin. Towards the end of the next century concealment was abandoned, and at a Greek village outside Adrianople, whither an Englishman went during plague-time, he found the population living by the sale of wine to Turks, who came in troops to get drunk: the parson did the biggest trade because he had the biggest warehouse—his church. It was frequently noticed, moreover, that their most capable workmen were mostly foreigners, and that two inventions which attracted everyone's notice—carrier-pigeons and incubation, both practised exclusively in Turkish territory and the latter on a scale which would qualify the proprietor for knighthood to-day—were not of Turkish origin. Nevertheless, the fact remained that many of the products of civilisation existed mainly, or at their best, in Turkish dominion alone; and this, and the prestige it implies, have to be recognised and remembered as two of the main facts in sixteenth-century history. It may be added that in no way can this be so satisfactorily ascertained as through travellers' narratives. Yet the Turks were deemed barbarians by the Frank; he and they practically never spoke each other's language, which put out of the question those casual conversations which pave the way to mutual understanding. Their faith remained to him a "filthy error"; and to the Christians, whose chief bond of unity had just been riven by the Reformation, the remaining one, that of a common literature, was all the more to be prized. No Turk, as one observer remarks, would write history because no Turk would believe it; it being unsafe to record the truth, and impracticable to ascertain it. Accordingly, the complete Livy which the Grand Signor was reputed to have inherited from the Byzantine Emperors had only its selling value to Christians for him. He had refused one offer of 5000 piastres (about £6500 now) for it, thinking that the offer proved it was worth more. But Della Valle knew better than to make offers to the Grand Signor: the way to buy his books was to bribe his librarian, and he only missed securing it for 10,000 crowns (say £12,500) through the librarian at Constantinople not being able to trace it.