The Mountains Of
This Country Produce The Sacre Falcon, The Lanner, The Goshawk, And The
Sparrowhawk, All Excellent In Their Kind, And Much Used By The Inhabitants
In The Chase, As They Are All Much Addicted To Hunting.
The soil of this
country produces excellent wheat, and barley without husks, and oil made of
nuts and mustard, which resembles the oil from lintseed, but is more
savoury than other oil.
The men of the country are excellent archers and
keen hunters, and are mostly clothed in the skins of beasts; while the
women contrive to put sixty or eighty yards of cotton cloth into the skirts
of their garments, as the bulkier they look they are esteemed the
handsomer. The plains of this country are large, and well watered with fine
rivers, but the hills are high and steep, and the passes very difficult of
access, by which the inhabitants are secured against invasions; and in
these mountains there are flocks of from four hundred to six hundred wild
sheep, which are very difficult to catch. If any one contracts an ague by
living in the moist plains, he is sure to recover his health by a few days
residence in the mountains, which I Marco experienced in my own person
after a whole years sickness.
The province Bascia, or Vash, on a river of that name which falls into the
Gihon, is ten days journey to the south of Balaxiam, and the country is
very hot, on which account the people are of a brown colour.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 464 of 810
Words from 126863 to 127119
of 222093
