t that a man
can go on foot in one day from it to that which lies next it. Every city
sends three of their wisest senators once a year to Amaurot, to consult
about their common concerns; for that is the chief town of the island,
being situated near the centre of it, so that it is the most convenient
place for their assemblies. The jurisdiction of every city extends at
least twenty miles, and, where the towns lie wider, they have much more
ground. No town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the people consider
themselves rather as tenants than landlords. They have built, over all
the country, farmhouses for husbandmen, which are well contrived, and
furnished with all things necessary for country labour. Inhabitants are
sent, by turns, from the cities to dwell in them; no country family has
fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves. There is a
master and a mistress set over every family, and over thirty families
there is a magistrate. Every year twenty of this family come back to the
town after they have stayed two years in the country, and in their room
there are other twenty sent from the town, that they may learn country
work from those that have been already one year in the country, as they
must teach those that come to them the next from the town. By this means
such as dwell in those country farms are never ignorant of agriculture,
and so commit no errors which might otherwise be fatal and bring them
under a scarcity of corn. But though there is every year such a shifting
of the husbandmen to prevent any man being forced against his will to
follow that hard course of life too long, yet many among them take such
pleasure in it that they desire leave to continue in it many years. 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
ploug