which is
to be their bread: for they drink either wine, cider, or perry, and
often water, sometimes boiled with honey or licorice, with which they
abound; and tho they know exactly how much corn will serve every town
and all that tract of country which belongs to it, yet they sow much
more, and breed more cattle, than are necessary for their consumption,
and they give that overplus of which they make no use to their
neighbors.

When they want anything in the country which it does not produce, they
fetch that from the town, without carrying anything in exchange for
it. And the magistrates of the town take care to see it given them;
for they meet generally in the town once a month, upon a festival day.
When the time of harvest comes, the magistrates in the country send
to those in the towns, and let them know how many hands they will need
for reaping the harvest; and the number they call for being sent to
them, they commonly dispatch it all in one day.

He that knows one of their towns knows them all--they are so like one
another, except where the situation makes some difference. I shall
therefore describe one of them, and none is so proper as Amaurot; for
as none is more eminent (all the rest yielding in precedence to this,
because it is the seat of their supreme council), so there was none of
them better known to me, I having lived five years all together in it.

It lies upon the side of a hill, or rather a rising ground. Its figure
is almost square: for from the one side of it, which shoots up almost
to the top of the hill, it runs down, in a descent for two miles, to
the river Anider; but it is a little broader the other way that runs
along by the bank of that river. The Anider rises about eighty miles
above Amaurot, in a small spring at first. But other brooks falling
into it, of which two are more considerable than the rest, as it runs
by Amaurot it is grown half a mile broad; but it still grows larger
and larger, till after sixty miles' course below it, it is lost in the
ocean. Between the town and the sea, and for some miles above the
town, it ebbs and flows every six hours with a strong current. The
tide comes up about thirty miles so full that there is nothing but
salt water in the river, the fresh water being driven back with its
force; and above that, for some miles, the water is brackish; but a
little higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite fresh; and when
the tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to