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Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

"Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series)"


The pasture of this island is according to the nature and bounty of
the soil, whereby in most places it is plentiful, very fine, batable,
and such as either fatteth our cattle with speed or yieldeth great
abundance of milk and cream whereof the yellowest butter and finest
cheese are made. But where the blue clay aboundeth (which hardly
drinketh up the winter's water in long season) there the grass is
speary, rough, and very apt for bushes: by which occasion it becometh
nothing so profitable unto the owner as the other. The best pasture
ground of all England is in Wales, and of all the pasture in Wales
that of Cardigan is the chief. I speak of the same which is to be
found in the mountains there, where the hundredth part of the grass
growing is not eaten, but suffered to rot on the ground, whereby the
soil becometh matted and divers bogs and quickmoors made withal in
long continuance: because all the cattle in the country are not able
to eat it down. If it be accounted good soil on which a man may lay a
wand over night and on the morrow find it hidden and overgrown with
grass, it is not hard to find plenty thereof in many places of this
land.


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