to the princes, his vassals, is fire, which being
brought, all the old fire is put out, and the neighbouring
people are bound to fetch of the new, every one for
themselves, upon pain of high treason; where, when
the king, to betake himself wholly to devotion, retires
from his administration (which often falls out), his
next successor is obliged to do the same, and the right
of the kingdom devolves to the third in succession:
where they vary the form of government, according
to the seeming necessity of affairs: depose the
king when they think good, substituting certain elders
to govern in his stead, and sometimes transferring
it into the hands of the commonality: where men
and women are both circumcised and also baptized:
where the soldier, who in one or several engagements,
has been so fortunate as to present seven of the enemies’
heads to the king, is made noble: where they
live in that rare and unsociable opinion of the mortality
of the soul: where the women are delivered without
pain or fear: where the women wear copper leggings
upon both legs, and if a louse bite them, are bound
in magnanimity to bite them again, and dare not marry,
till first they have made their king a tender of their
virginity, if he please to accept it: where the
ordinary way of salutation is by putting a finger
down to the earth, and then pointing it up toward
heaven: where men carry burdens upon their heads,
and women on their shoulders; where the women make
water standing, and the men squatting: where
they send their blood in token of friendship, and offer
incense to the men they would honour, like gods:
where, not only to the fourth, but in any other remote
degree, kindred are not permitted to marry: where
the children are four years at nurse, and often twelve;
in which place, also, it is accounted mortal to give
the child suck the first day after it is born:
where the correction of the male children is peculiarly
designed to the fathers, and to the mothers of the
girls; the punishment being to hang them by the heels
in the smoke: where they circumcise the women:
where they eat all sorts of herbs, without other scruple
than of the badness of the smell: where all things
are open the finest houses, furnished in the richest
manner, without doors, windows, trunks, or chests
to lock, a thief being there punished double what they
are in other places: where they crack lice with
their teeth like monkeys, and abhor to see them killed
with one’s nails: where in all their lives
they neither cut their hair nor pare their nails;
and, in another place, pare those of the right hand
only, letting the left grow for ornament and bravery:
where they suffer the hair on the right side to grow
as long as it will, and shave the other; and in the
neighbouring provinces, some let their hair grow long
before, and some behind, shaving close the rest:
where parents let out their children, and husbands
their wives, to their guests to hire: where a
man may get his own mother with child, and fathers