charge and with less trouble. And even when they are so worn out that
they are no more fit for labour, they are good meat at last. They sow
no corn but that which is to be their bread; for they drink either
wine, cider or perry, and often water, sometimes boiled with honey or
liquorice, with which they abound; and though they know exactly how
much corn will serve every town and all that tract of country which
belongs to it, yet they sow much more and breed more cattle than are
necessary for their consumption, and they give that overplus of which
they make no use to their neighbours. When they want anything in the
country which it does not produce, they fetch that from the town,
without carrying anything in exchange for it. And the magistrates of
the town take care to see it given them; for they meet generally in the
town once a month, upon a festival day. When the time of harvest comes,
the magistrates in the country send to those in the towns and let them
know how many hands they will need for reaping the harvest; and the
number they call for being sent to them, they commonly despatch it all
in one day.
OF THEIR TOWNS, PARTICULARLY OF AMAUROT
“He that knows one of their towns knows them all—they are so like one
another, except where the situation makes some difference. I shall
therefore describe one of them, and none is so proper as Amaurot; for
as none is more eminent (all the rest yielding in precedence to this,
because it is the seat of their supreme council), so there was none of
them better known to me, I having lived five years all together in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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