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Updated: June 7, 2025
Apart from the importation into countries, we have this certain proof to which special attention was drawn several years ago that cattle-dealers' farms, and public markets, constitute the busy centres of infection.
I felt disposed to lunch at the grandest hotel in Villefranche, and a good woman whom I consulted on the subject led me through throngs of bartering peasants and cattle-dealers, forests of horns, and by the upturned jaws of braying asses, until she stopped before an inn. There all was bustle and commotion.
In the street of the village you might see cattle-dealers with cows and oxen for sale, and pig-drovers with herds of squeaking swine, and farmers with cartloads of cabbages, turnips, onions, and all other produce of the soil. Now and then a farmer's red-faced wife trotted along on horseback, with butter and cheese in two large panniers.
One had to make arrangements months beforehand, and wait till the dealers in cloth, haberdashery, and spices were ready to set out with their wares for Eperies; these were then usually joined by a dozen or so of butchers and cattle-dealers from Lower Hungary, as many cattle-drovers, half a dozen strolling fiddlers, sundry Slovack linen and oil merchants, and some thirty students traveling homeward in vacation and provided with stout bludgeons; thereto were, of course, to be added the drivers of those who had to make the journey by horse or mule, or pay for the transport of their goods, so that the whole caravan generally numbered one hundred and fifty strong, and the robbers would think twice before venturing to attack so large a party.
Jack could not, however, help occasionally having suspicions with regard to the proceedings of the various persons who came to the farm. He himself was not trusted with their secrets, if secrets they had; nor did he wish to be so; but most of them were evidently far above the class of cattle-dealers.
Well, I needn't mind particulars, but, in short, he was murdered in Ballinasloe one night, when he was baitin' the whole town with a blackthorn stick he had; more by token, a piece of a scythe was stuck at the end of it, a nate weapon, and one he was mighty partial to; but those murdering thieves, the cattle-dealers, that never cared for diversion of any kind, fell on him and broke his skull.
My father took no notice of this at the time; but falling a little behind before coming to the top of a high hill, he contrived to unloose the mouths of the bags. The cattle-dealers always dismounted at the top of a hill, and walked down, either leading or driving their horses before them to the foot.
Well, four mortal summer months of hot sun and cloudless sky went over, and still we lingered in that vile village, the everlasting monotony of our days being marked by the same brief morning drill, the same blue-legged chicken dinner, the same smoky Loughrea whiskey, and the same evening stroll along the canal bank to watch for the Dublin packet-boat, with its never-varying cargo of cattle-dealers, priests, and peelers on their way to the west country, as though the demand for such colonial productions in these parts was insatiable.
"Three thousand camels," I murmured, recalling my dear mother's lessons; "all at one fell swoop; not to mention five hundred yoke of oxen, carried off by the Sabeans, then a leading firm of speculative cattle-dealers!" "Ah, well," Charles meditated aloud, shaking the ash from his cheroot into a Japanese tray fine antique bronze-work. "There were big transactions in live-stock even then!
This arrangement, however, was not at all to the liking of either the ladies or their escort. The latter was altogether disinclined to accept a seat between two fat cattle-dealers, being of no meagre dimensions himself. "We'll see about this!" he exclaimed, and left the compartment in quest of the station-master.
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