on the opposite shore. If you try the nature of amber by
the application of fire, it kindles like a torch; and feeds a thick and
unctuous flame very high scented, and presently becomes glutinous like
pitch or rosin.

Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and, agreeing with them in
all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is
exercised by a woman. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from
a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage. Here end the
territories of the Suevians.

Whether amongst the Sarmatians or the Germans I ought to account the
Peucinians, the Venedians, and the Fennians, is what I cannot determine;
though the Peucinians, whom some call Basstarnians, speak the same
language with the Germans, use the same attire, build like them, and
live like them, in that dirtiness and sloth so common to all.
Somewhat they are corrupted into the fashion of the Sarmatians by the
inter-marriages of the principal sort with that nation: from whence
the Venedians have derived very many of their customs and a great
resemblance. For they are continually traversing and infesting with
robberies all the forests and mountains lying between the Peucinians
and Fennians. Yet they are rather reckoned amongst the Germans, for
that they have fixed houses, and carry shields, and prefer travelling
on foot, and excel in swiftness. Usages these, all widely differing from
those of the Sarmatians, who live on horseback and dwell in waggons.
In wonderful savageness live the nation of the Fennians, and in beastly
poverty, destitute of arms, of horses, and of homes; their food, the
common herbs; their apparel, skins; their bed, the earth; their only
hope in their arrows, which for want of iron they point with bones.
Their common support they have from the chase, women as well as men;
for with these the former wander up and down, and crave a portion of
the prey. Nor other shelter have they even for their babes, against the
violence of tempests and ravening beasts, than to cover them with the
branches of trees twisted together; this a reception for the old men,
and hither resort the young. Such a condition they judge more happy than
the painful occupation of cultivating the ground, than the labour of
rearing houses, than the agitations of hope and fear attending the
defence of their own property or the seizing that of others. Secure
against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the God