![]() ![]() At every ten years' end they shift their houses by lots. Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord and there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. The streets are twenty feet broad there lie gardens behind all their houses these are large but enclosed with buildings that on all hands face the streets so that every house has both a door to the street, and a back door to the garden. Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are very convenient for all carriage, and are well sheltered from the winds. The town is cormpassed with a high and thick wall, in which there are many towers and forts there is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set thick with thorns, cast round three sides of the town, and the river is instead of a ditch on the fourth side. The inhabitants have fortified the fountain-head of this river, which springs a little without the town so that if they should happen to be besieged, the enemy might not be able to stop or divert the course of the water, nor poison it from thence it is carried in earthen pipes to the lower streets and for those places of the town to which the water of that shall river cannot be conveyed, they have great cisterns for receiving the rain-water, which supplies the want of the other. ![]() There is likewise another river that runs by it, which, though it is not great, yet it runs pleasantly, for it rises out of the same hill on which the town stands, and so runs down through it, and falls into the Anider. There is a bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone, consisting of many stately arches it lies at that part of the town which is farthest from the sea, so that ships without any hinderance lie all along the side of the town. The tide comes up for 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 the sea. 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 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. 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. ![]() 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 altogether in it. HE that knows one of their towns knows them all, they are so like one another, except where the situation makes some difference. ![]()
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