CHAP. I.—COUNTRIES THAT HAVE NO TREES.
WE have given the precedence in this account to the fruit-trees and others which, by their delicious juices, first taught
man to give a relish to his food and the various aliments
requisite for his sustenance, whether it is that they spontaneously produce these delightful flavours, or whether we have
imparted them by the methods of adoption and intermarriage,
1
thus bestowing a favour, as it were, upon the very beasts and
birds. The next thing, then, would be to speak of the glandi-
ferous trees, the trees which proffered the earliest nutriment
to the appetite of man, and proved themselves his foster-
mothers in his forlorn and savage state—did I not feel myself
constrained on this occasion to make some mention of the surprise which I have felt on finding by actual experience what
is the life of mortals when they inhabit a country that is without either tree or shrub.
(1.) I have already stated
2 that in the East many nations
that dwell on the shores of the ocean are placed in this necessitous state; and I myself have personally witnessed the condition of the Chauci,
3 both the Greater and the Lesser, situate
in the regions of the far North. In those climates a vast tract
of land, invaded twice each day and night by the overflowing
waves of the ocean, opens a question that is eternally proposed
to us by Nature, whether these regions are to be looked upon
as belonging to the land, or whether as forming a portion of
the sea?
Here a wretched race is found, inhabiting either the more
elevated spots of land, or else eminences artificially constructed,
and of a height to which they know by experience that the
highest tides will never reach. Here they pitch their cabins;
and when the waves cover the surrounding country far and
wide, like so many mariners on board ship are they: when,
again, the tide recedes, their condition is that of so many
shipwrecked men, and around their cottages they pursue the
fishes as they make their escape with the receding tide. It is
not their lot, like the adjoining nations, to keep any flocks for
sustenance by their milk, nor even to maintain a warfare with
wild beasts, every shrub, even, being banished afar. With the
sedge
4 and the rushes of the marsh they make cords, and
with these they weave the nets employed in the capture of the
fish; they fashion the mud,
5 too, with their hands, and drying
it by the help of the winds more than of the sun, cook their
food by its aid, and so warm their entrails, frozen as they
are by the northern blasts; their only
6 drink, too, is rainwater, which they collect in holes dug at the entrance of their
abodes: and yet these nations, if this very day they were vanquished by the Roman people, would exclaim against being
reduced
7 to slavery! Be it so, then—Fortune is most kind to
many, just when she means to punish them.
8