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

1605.

The grain having been cleared in this way, as soon as a wind blows, it is thrown into the air with a shovel on the same spot and thus cleaned of its chaff.

Schmid, fetching water, brings along a frog in the water.

The Turks fear frogs.

During the threshing, the steward of my Bassa arrived, who feigned having great thirst; and he ordered me to get up from my threshing plank and go fetch water. This steward did this so that, when he would fill his sacks with grain, he would not be noticed by me. So I ran to the nearest stream and filled my jar with water, inadvertently putting a large frog into the jar. As soon as I had returned to the steward, he demanded the water; but, seeing the frog in the jar, he noticed it, upon which he became so angry that it almost came to him beating me very pitifully. For the Turks have an aversion to frogs, just as we do to toads, believing them to be poisonous.

An example of this.

He bound my hands behind my back, however, and brought me to my Bassa in Constantinople, complaining vehemently about my wickedness. Hereupon the Bassa had the interpreter called, who asked me in the Bassa’s presence for the reason for such audacity and wickedness. I, bowing very low and, according to the custom of the Turks, kissing the Bassa’s feet, answered that it had not happened to spite the steward, as he had complained, but because I had noticed that he wanted to fill his sacks with my master’s grain; therefore, I had put the frog in the jar to obtain an opportunity to make the Bassa aware of the infidelity of his steward. Because of this, the Bassa was very irate, dismissed the steward from his service, and gifted me fifty aspers small Turkish silver coins, at the same time pressing his thumb to my mouth (which the Turks always used to do when they are pleased by some pleasant service done for them) and saying, "You are my best."

Schmid

As soon as the plague in Constantinople had ceased,