men early grasped the lance, and under the direction of their elders
learned to fight on foot or on horseback; they broke the colts,
springing to the ground, and mounting again while the horse was running,
and they trained themselves to remain kneeling motionless on the horses'
backs with their arms free to wield the sword and shield.

In some villages the party was received with traditional hospitality,
and was welcomed even more affectionately on recognizing Alorcus, the
heir of Endovellicus, the respected chieftain of the tribes of Baraeco
which had pastured their flocks for centuries on the banks of the Jalon.
When night came they gave up to them their best beds of woven thongs
covered with fluffy dried grasses; they impaled a calf on a spit,
turning it before an enormous bonfire, for regaling the caravan, and
during the journey the women detained them at the entrance to their
huts, offering them in coarse earthen vessels the bitter beer brewed in
the valleys, and the bread made of acorn flour.

Alorcus explained the customs of his people to the Athenian. They
gathered acorns, their chief food, exposing them to the sun until well
dried. They husked and ground them, and stored the supply of flour for
six months. This bread, with game, and the milk of their animals,
constituted their principal food. At intervals pestilence robbed them of
their flocks, the crops failed, and hunger decimated the tribes; then
the strong devoured the weak. Alorcus remembered hearing this from the
elders of his tribe as having occurred in remote times when Neton,
Autubel, Nabi, and other divinities of the land, irritated against their
people, had sent upon them these fearful punishments.

The young Celtiberian continued telling of the customs. Some of the
women who worked in the fields with so much vigor had perhaps given
birth to a child the day before. As soon as born they immersed it in the
nearest river, so that by this act, which in many cases caused death, it
would grow vigorous and insensible to cold; and while the mother
resolutely arose and continued her work, the husband took her place in
the bed, lying down with the newly born child. The woman, still barely
convalescent, took care of the two, surrounding the hale and hearty
husband with comforts, as if in gratitude for the fruit he had given
her.

Several times the caravan on its march passed men lying rigid and
groaning on couches of herbs gathered by the wayside. Flies buz