For The Further Supplies Of The Markets Of London With Poultry, Of
Which These Countries Particularly Abound, They Have Within
These
few years found it practicable to make the geese travel on foot
too, as well as the turkeys, and
A prodigious number are brought up
to London in droves from the farthest parts of Norfolk; even from
the fen country about Lynn, Downham, Wisbech, and the Washes; as
also from all the east side of Norfolk and Suffolk, of whom it is
very frequent now to meet droves with a thousand, sometimes two
thousand in a drove. They begin to drive them generally in August,
by which time the harvest is almost over, and the geese may feed in
the stubbles as they go. Thus they hold on to the end of October,
when the roads begin to be too stiff and deep for their broad feet
and short legs to march in.
Besides these methods of driving these creatures on foot, they have
of late also invented a new method of carriage, being carts formed
on purpose, with four stories or stages to put the creatures in one
above another, by which invention one cart will carry a very great
number; and for the smoother going they drive with two horses
abreast, like a coach, so quartering the road for the ease of the
gentry that thus ride. Changing horses, they travel night and day,
so that they bring the fowls seventy, eighty, or, one hundred miles
in two days and one night. The horses in this new-fashioned
voiture go two abreast, as above, but no perch below, as in a
coach, but they are fastened together by a piece of wood lying
crosswise upon their necks, by which they are kept even and
together, and the driver sits on the top of the cart like as in the
public carriages for the army, etc.
In this manner they hurry away the creatures alive, and infinite
numbers are thus carried to London every year. This method is also
particular for the carrying young turkeys or turkey poults in their
season, which are valuable, and yield a good price at market; as
also for live chickens in the dear seasons, of all which a very
great number are brought in this manner to London, and more
prodigiously out of this country than any other part of England,
which is the reason of my speaking of it here.
In this part, which we call High Suffolk, there are not so many
families of gentry or nobility placed as in the other side of the
country. But it is observed that though their seats are not so
frequent here, their estates are; and the pleasure of West Suffolk
is much of it supported by the wealth of High Suffolk, for the
richness of the lands and application of the people to all kinds of
improvement is scarce credible; also the farmers are so very
considerable and their farms and dairies so large that it is very
frequent for a farmer to have 1,000 pounds stock upon his farm in
cows only.
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