These husbandmen till the ground, breed cattle, hew wood and convey it to the towns either by land or water, as is most convenient. They breed an infinite multitude of chickens in a very curious manner: for the hens do not sit and hatch them, but a vast number of eggs are laid in a gentle and equal heat in order to be hatched; and they are no sooner out of the shell, and able to stir about, but they seem to consider those that feed them as their mothers, and follow them as other chickens do the hen that hatched them. They breed very few horses, but those they have are full of mettle, and are kept only for exercising their youth in the art of sitting and riding them; for they do not put them to any work, either of plowing or carriage, in which they employ oxen. For tho their horses are stronger, yet they find oxen can hold out longer; and as they are not subject to so many diseases, so they are kept upon a less charge and with less trouble. And even when they are so worn out that they are no more fit for labor, 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 licorice, with which they abound; and tho 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 neighbors.
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 dispatch it all in one day.
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.