It Is Very Dangerous For A Person
On Horseback To Meet Those Animals:
They have such an aversion to
horses, that they will attack them with incredible fury, so as
even to tear them and their riders in pieces; and the best method
for avoiding this fate, is to clap spurs to your beast, and seek
your safety in flight.
I have been more than once obliged to fly
before them. They always give you warning, by raising a hideous
braying as soon as they perceive the horse at a distance. The
mules of Provence are not so mischievous, because they are more
used to the sight and society of horses: but those of Piedmont
are by far the largest and the strongest I have seen.
Some very feasible schemes for improving the commerce of Nice
have been presented to the ministry of Turin; but hitherto
without success. The English import annually between two and
three thousand bales of raw silk, the growth of Piedmont; and
this declaration would be held legal evidence. In some parts of
France, the cure of the parish, on All Souls' day, which is
called le jour des morts, says a libera domine for two sols, at
every grave in the burying-ground, for the release of the soul
whose body is there interred.
The artisans of Nice are very lazy, very needy, very aukward, and
void of all ingenuity. The price of their labour is very near as
high as at London or Paris. Rather than work for moderate profit,
arising from constant employment, which would comfortably
maintain them and their families, they choose to starve at home,
to lounge about the ramparts, bask themselves in the sun, or play
at bowls in the streets from morning 'till night.
The lowest class of people consists of fishermen, day labourers,
porters, and peasants: these last are distributed chiefly in the
small cassines in the neighbourhood of the city, and are said to
amount to twelve thousand. They are employed in labouring the
ground, and have all the outward signs of extreme misery. They
are all diminutive, meagre, withered, dirty, and half naked; in
their complexions, not barely swarthy, but as black as Moors; and
I believe many of them are descendants of that people. They are
very hard favoured; and their women in general have the coarsest
features I have ever seen: it must be owned, however, they have
the finest teeth in the world. The nourishment of those poor
creatures consists of the refuse of the garden, very coarse
bread, a kind of meal called polenta, made of Indian corn, which
is very nourishing and agreeable, and a little oil; but even in
these particulars, they seem to be stinted to very scanty meals.
I have known a peasant feed his family with the skins of boiled
beans. Their hogs are much better fed than their children. 'Tis
pity they have no cows, which would yield milk, butter, and
cheese, for the sustenance of their families.
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