untur_,
as Humphrey Llwyd confesseth, a Cambro-Briton himself, in his elegant
epistle to Abraham Ortelius, they live most on white meats: in Holland on
fish, roots, [1442]butter; and so at this day in Greece, as [1443]Bellonius
observes, they had much rather feed on fish than flesh. With us, _Maxima
pars victus in carne consistit_, we feed on flesh most part, saith
[1444]Polydore Virgil, as all northern countries do; and it would be very
offensive to us to live after their diet, or they to live after ours. We
drink beer, they wine; they use oil, we butter; we in the north are
[1445]great eaters; they most sparing in those hotter countries; and yet
they and we following our own customs are well pleased. An Ethiopian of old
seeing an European eat bread, wondered, _quomodo stercoribus vescentes
viverimus_, how we could eat such kind of meats: so much differed his
countrymen from ours in diet, that as mine [1446]author infers, _si quis
illorum victum apud nos aemulari vellet_; if any man should so feed with
us, it would be all one to nourish, as Cicuta, Aconitum, or Hellebore
itself. At this day in China the common people live in a manner altogether
on roots and herbs, and to the wealthiest, horse, ass, mule, dogs,
cat-flesh, is as delightsome as the rest, so [1447]Mat. Riccius the Jesuit
relates, who lived many years amongst them. The Tartars eat raw meat, and
most commonly [1448]horse-flesh, drink milk and blood, as the nomades of
old. _Et lac concretum cum sanguine potat equino_. They scoff at our
Europeans for eating bread, which they call tops of weeds, and horse meat,
not fit for men; and yet Scaliger accounts them a sound and witty nation,
living a hundred years; even in the civilest country of them they do thus,
as Benedict the Jesuit observed in his travels, from the great Mogul's
Court by land to Pekin, which Riccius contends to be the same with Cambulu
in Cataia. In Scandia their bread is usually dried fish, and so likewise in
the Shetland Isles; and their other fare, as in Iceland, saith
[1449]Dithmarus Bleskenius, butter, cheese, and fish; their drink water,
their lodging on the ground. In America in many places their bread is
roots, their meat palmettos, pinas, potatoes, &c., and such fruits. There
be of them too that familiarly drink [1450]salt seawater all their lives,
eat [1451]raw meat, grass, and that with delight. With some, fish,
serpents, spiders: and in divers places they [1452]eat man's flesh, raw and