Seer aenmerkelyke reys-beschryving na Constantinopolen, en Egypten, gedaan in het jaar 1605, en vervolgen...

1605.

The fasting of the Turks.

The fasting of the Turks continued; during this time the Turks do not eat by day, but they feast throughout the entire night. I, at first ignorant of this, went to sleep early in the evening, thereby missing my meal, which caused me such hunger that I certainly would have taken to forbidden means if the good God had not graciously preserved me in a singular way. For, wanting to put my currycomb between the beams of the horse stable, I found a small paper in which four ducats gold coins were wrapped, which I took, exchanged, and bought food with.

Plague in Constantinople, of which more than 80,000 people have died.

A short time later, the plague began to rage in Constantinople to such an extent that it carried away more than 80,000 people in a short time. In the house of my Bassa alone, thirty people died, so that he, wishing to save us, was forced to move us outside the city to his estates. I had to keep watch at night in the Bassa’s vineyard two miles outside the city, so that the wolves or wild boars would do no damage there; but by day, it was my turn to thresh with the oxen, which happens in this way.

Threshing, how it is done.

The grain is laid on the field in a round circle so that the ears are turned inward, and two oxen are hitched to a square plank the size of a table. Below, this plank is covered with many sharp pebbles; one sits on this plank and, with a rope, leads the oxen around on the grain for so long until it is not only threshed from the ears but also cut as small as chopped straw. In one hand they have a wooden shovel, with which they keep the grain in order and move the threshed part to one side. The oxen eat as much as they want, and it is remarkable that these barbarians do not muzzle the threshing oxen at all.