Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/297
BOOK I, CHAPTER XXXI 077
some of our barns, the roofing whereof falls to the ground and serves for side and end walls.1 They have wood so hard that they cut with it and make swords of it, and gridirons for cooking their meat, Their beds are a cotton web, hung from the roof like those in our ships, each person having his own, for the women lie apart from their husbands. They rise with the sun and eat immediately after rising, for the whole day’s need; for they have no other meal than this. They do not drink then, (4) as Suidas? says of certain Orien- tal nations who drank when not eating; (a) they drink many times during the day, and a great deal. Their bever- age is made of some root, and is of the colour of our light wines; they drink it only luke-warm. This beverage will keep only two or three days; it is rather sharp in taste, not at all intoxicating, good for the stomach, and laxative for those who are not accustomed to it; it is a very pleasant drink for those wonted to it. Instead of bread they use a certain substance like preserved coriander. I have tasted it; its flavour is sweetish and rather insipid. The whole day is passed in dancing. The young men go hunting wild animals with bows. A part of the women employ themselves mean- while in warming their drink, which is their chief duty. Some one of the old men, in the morning, before they begin to eat, counsels the whole collected household,*? walking from end to end of the building and repeating the same phrase many times, until he has completed the turn (for the buildings are fully a hundred paces in length). He enjoins upon them only two things— valour against the enemy and friendship for their wives. And they never fail, by way of response, to note the obligation that it is their wives who keep their drink warm and well-seasoned for them. There can be seen in many places, and, among others, in my house, the fashion of their beds, of their twisted ropes, of their wooden swords and the wooden armlets with which they protect their wrists in battle, and of the long staves, open at one end, by the sound of which they mark time in their dancing. They are clean-shaven, and they shave much more
1 Sert de flang.
- A Byzantine lexicographer.
+ Presche en commun toute la grangée.