To Their Bread, They Have Great Abundance Of Other Excellent Provisions,
As Butter And Cheese In Great Plenty, Made From The Milk Of Their
Numerous Cows, Sheep, And Goats.
They have likewise a large animal,
called a buffalo, having a thick smooth skin without hair, the females
of which give excellent milk.
Their flesh resembles beef, but is not so
sweet or wholesome. They have plenty of venison of several kinds, as red
and fallow deer, elks, and antelopes. These are not any where kept in
parks, the whole empire being as it were a forest, so that they are seen
every where in travelling through the country; and they are free game
for all men, except within a certain distance of where the king happens
to reside. They have also plenty of hares, with a variety of land and
water fowl, and abundance of fish, which it were too tedious to
enumerate. Of fowls, they have geese, ducks, pigeons, partridges,
quails, pheasants, and many other good sorts, all to be had at low
rates. I have seen a good sheep bought for about the value of our
shilling: four couple of hens for the same price; a hare for a penny;
three partridges for the same money; and so in proportion for other
things.
The cattle of this country differ from ours, in having a great bunch of
grisly flesh on the meeting of their shoulders. Their sheep have great
bob-tails of considerable weight, and their flesh is as good as our
English mutton, but their wool is very coarse. They have also abundance
of salt, and sugar is so plentiful, that it sells, when well refined,
for two-pence a pound, or less. Their fruits are numerous, excellent,
abundant, and cheap; as musk-melons, water-melons, pomegranates,
pomecitrons, lemons, oranges, dates, figs, grapes, plantains, which are
long round yellow fruits, which taste like our Norwich pears; mangoes,
in shape and colour like our apricots, but more luscious, and ananas or
pine-apples, to crown all, which taste like a pleasing compound of
strawberries, claret-wine, rose-water, and sugar. In the northern parts
of the empire, they have plenty of apples and pears. They have every
where abundance of excellent roots, as carrots, potatoes, and others;
also garlic and onions, and choice herbs for sallads. In the southern
parts, ginger grows almost every where.
I must here mention a pleasant clear liquor called taddy, which issues
from a spungy tree, growing straight and tall without boughs to the top,
and there spreads out in branches resembling our English colewarts. They
make their incisions, under which they hang small earthenware pots; and
the liquor which flows out in the night is as pleasant to the taste as
any white wine, if drank in the morning early, but it alters in the day
by the sun's heat, becoming heady, ill-tasted and unwholesome. It is a
most penetrating medicinal drink, if taken early and in moderation, as
some have experienced to their great happiness, by relieving them from
the tortures of the stone, that tyrant of maladies and opprobrium of
the doctors.
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