This one thing is principally worthy of notice in Samogithia, that while the men of the country are remarkably tall in stature, some of their children will also prove of great height, but others, by a sort of freak of nature, are extremely small, and decided dwarfs.
The people of Samogithia wear a mean-looking dress, mostly of an ash colour: they dwell in low, long-shaped cottages, in the middle of which they make their fires, and when the father of the family is seated at his fire-side, he sees all his cattle and household stuff around him, for it is their custom to have their flocks under the same roof with themselves, without any separation. The elders use buffalo horns for goblets.
The men are courageous and warlike: in battle they make use of coats of mail and various other kinds of armour, but their principal weapon is a rather short lance, like a hunting-spear. They have such small horses, that it is scarcely credible that they should prove equal to the great exertions which they undergo. Abroad they are used in battle, and at home in agriculture.
In ploughing the land, they do not use iron, but wood, which is the more remarkable, that the soil is not sandy, but so stiff that a fir tree will never grow in it. It is the custom of the ploughmen to carry out with them several pieces of wood to work the ground with, instead of a ploughshare, so that when one is broken they may have another at hand, that no time may be lost. One of the governors of the province, in order to relieve the peasants from the severity of their labour, introduced a considerable number of iron ploughshares; but as it happened, from the unfavourableness of the season in that and a few following years, that the crops did not answer the expectations of the husbandmen, the barrenness of their fields was ascribed by the common people to the iron ploughshare, for they could think of no other cause: and the governor, fearing an insurrection, took away the iron
