Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/126

 these superstitious and barbarous people imagine that they obtain especial favour in the eyes of God by giving alms even to irrational cattle, cats, dogs, fish, birds, and other live creatures; and, therefore, they consider it a great sin to kill and destroy captured birds, and prefer to ransom them with money, and release them into their previous state of freedom, that they may fly away. They also throw bread to fishes in the water for them to live upon. They have a custom of distributing bread, meat, and other victuals to cats and dogs, of which a very large number are found daily in the streets, at certain places, and definite times; and it is an undoubted truth that on the walls of these gardens the cats breakfast in good time in the morning, and assemble for the second time at the hour of the evening meal, in large bodies out of the whole city, and stand on the look out; for we went purposely to these walls, listened to their caterwauling, and, with greatlaughter, watched how they ran out of the houses and assembled. So, too, we several times saw Turkish matrons and old women buying pieces of meat on the spit from the kitchen-boys, or from the public kitchens, which are not far from this place, and handing them on a long stick or wand to the cats as they sit on the walls, muttering meanwhile a kind of Turkish prayers. Pieces of raw meat are also carried about the city on spits, which the Turks buy and throw up to the kites, which fly about in crowds, and catch them in their claws. We, too, bought some of this meat for fun, and threw it to the kites, and watched, with great merriment, how they tumbled over one another as they flew to seize the meat. A countless number of these kites fly over the city,