190 LETTERS FROM PROFESSOR CARLYLE 



Lordship with a few observations I made relative to matters of this 

 kind in my late journey through Asia Minor, Palestine, part of the 

 Delta, and the most considerable of the islands in the Archipelago. 



Through all these countries I think I may affirm that I did not see 

 one field laid down for hay. A narrow fringe of natural grass skirted 

 the mouths of some of the rivers, but otherwise cultivation was en- 

 tirely directed to raise human food. 



After the harvest is gotten in, the straw is broken into small pieces, 

 by a kind of harrow, and cleaned and laid up as provender. The 

 working cattle, camels, &c. get little other food besides this. The 

 beeves pick up what they can, for a while, on fallow grounds, and are 

 then fattened by oil cakes. Horses, that do little, are fed with the 

 same straw, but always when they are hard ridden, with barley. Their 

 litter is composed entirely of their own dung, dried and sifted. The 

 beef in the East is undoubtedly by no means so fine as some of the 

 best that is sold in the London markets, but it is not very inferior to 

 the generality of what is met with in the country towns throughout 

 England ; and from its being fed and fattened in a manner that in- 

 duces little expence, it is bought for a smaller proportionate price 

 than almost any other article of consumable commodities. At this 

 place, while wheat is at six shillings or seven shillings per bushel, and 

 mutton fetches three-pence-halfpenny per pound, the best beef only 

 comes to two-pence farthing. The same relative difference in the 

 prices holds good in the interior parts of the country, though the 

 absolute amount of each article is not more than two-thirds of what 

 it reaches in Constantinople. That the mode of treatment I have 

 mentioned is not prejudicial to the horses in the East is sufficiently 

 clear from the character they maintain ; a character, to the justice of 

 which 1 can bear ample testimony, as out of near six hundred, which 

 our party used at different times in passing through Asia Minor, not 

 more than six stumbled and fell, though great part of our roads were 

 such as I should have imagined, if we had not travelled over them, to 

 have been impassable. I need scarce add, my Lord, that in all these 

 countries horses are almost solely appropriated to riding; all the 



