Chapter II: Part 2

In France, where there are not, as in America, large quantities of animals which are killed simply for the sake of their hides, it would be impossible to prepare or supply at a low price either the assayo or the meat biscuit; but the idea of using the blood of animals killed, which blood is at present wasted without profit, or, at best, is used as manure, might have occurred to some one. M. Brocchieri has conceived this idea. In treating the blood of our slaughter-houses by means which he has invented, and uniting to flour of the best quality, the albumen and fibrine which he extracts from it--he makes bread and biscuits which are easily preserved, and which may be employed to make very nutritious soups.

At the Great Exhibition, in 1851, he produced _bon-bons_ made of the blood of the ox, cow, sheep, and hog; biscuits and patties of the blood of the bull, and delicacies made of calves’ blood. I have specimens of these preserved in my private museum, although I have not ventured to taste them.

Generally speaking in England, we do not do much with the blood of animals, at least, in the shape of food--unless it be in those strings of black-puddings, with tempting little bits of fat stuck in them, which stare us in the face in some shops.

But M. Brocchieri has attempted to utilize the nutritious principles of the blood of animals killed for food, by reducing it to a concentrated and dried state, for preservation during long periods. The first step is to prepare a liquid, considered innocuous and antiseptic by the inventor, by which various bloods are kept fluid and apparently fresh. Samples of these were shown, and the series of specimens illustrated the solid parts forming the crassamentum or clot, in a dried and semi-crystalline state. These solid constituents, including the gelatine, albumen, and fibrine are next produced, combined with small proportions of flour, in the form of light, dry masses, like loaves, cakes, or biscuits. These are inodorous, almost flavourless, and may be made the bases of highly nutritious soups. They are very uniform in composition, containing half the nitrogen of dried blood, or forty-four per cent. of dry flesh, the equivalent of double the nutritive value of ordinary butcher’s meat. Both the bull’s and calf’s blood gave 6·6 per cent. of nitrogen, equal to forty-three per cent. of flesh-forming principles. Combined with sugar, the cakes have been made into _bon-bons_.

The evidence, as to the value of the process, in preserving the samples in an undecomposed state, is now satisfactorily arrived at. It was stated in 1851, that the preparations had been advantageously employed in long voyages. The samples I have in my collection have now been kept seven years, and have not shown any tendency to decay. Thus proving that the first attempt has been successful, in rendering available for food, and portable in form, the otherwise wasted blood of cattle.

This notice of blood recalls to my recollection a laughable story told in a French work, of the life of an unfortunate pig.

‘A French curé, exiled to a deserted part of our forests--and who, the whole year, except on a few rare occasions, lived only on fruit and vegetables--hit upon a most admirable expedient for providing an animal repast to set before the curés of the neighbourhood, when one or the other, two or three times during the year, ventured into those dreadful solitudes, with a view of assuring himself with his own eyes that his unfortunate colleague had not yet died of hunger. The curé in question possessed a pig, his whole fortune: and you will see the manner in which he used it. Immediately the bell announced a visitor, and that his cook had shown his clerical friend into the parlour, the master of the house, drawing himself up majestically, said to his housekeeper: ‘Brigitte, let there be a good dinner for myself and my friend.’ Brigitte, although she knew there were only stale crusts and dried peas in her larder, seemed in no degree embarrassed by this order; she summoned to her assistance ‘Toby the Carrot,’ so called because his head was as red as that of a native of West Galloway, and leaving the house together, they both went in search of the pig. This, after a short skirmish, was caught by Brigitte and her carroty assistant; and, notwithstanding his cries, his grunts, his gestures of despair, and supplication, the inhuman cook, seizing his head, opened a large vein in his throat, and relieved him of two pounds of blood; this, with the addition of garlic, shalots, mint, wild thyme, and parsley, was converted into a most savoury and delicious black-pudding for the curé and his friend, and being served to their reverences smoking hot on the summit of a pyramid of yellow cabbage, figured admirably as a small Vesuvius and a centre dish. The surgical operation over, Brigitte, whose qualifications as a seamstress were superior, darned up the hole in the neck of the unfortunate animal: and as he was then turned loose until a fresh supply of black-puddings should be required for a similar occasion, this wretched pig was never happy. How could he be so? Like Damocles of Syracuse, he lived in a state of perpetual fever; terror seized him directly he heard the curé’s bell, and seeing in imagination the uplifted knife already about to glide into his bosom, he invariably took to his heels before Brigitte was half-way to the door to answer it. If, as usual, the peal announced a diner-out, Brigitte and Gold-button were soon on his track, calling him by the most tender epithets, and promising that he should have something nice for his supper--skim-milk, &c.,--but the pig with his painful experience was not such a fool as to believe them. Hidden behind an old cask, some fagots, or lying in a deep ditch, he remained silent as the grave, and kept himself close as long as possible. Discovered, however, he was sure to be at last, when he would rush into the garden, and, running up and down like a mad creature, upset everything in his way. For several minutes it was a regular steeplechase--across the beds, now over the turnips, then through the gooseberry-bushes--in short, he was here, there, and everywhere; but, in spite of all his various stratagems to escape the fatal incision, the poor pig always finished by being seized, tied, thrown on the ground, and bled: the vein was then once more cleverly sewn up, and the inhuman operators quietly retired from the scene to make the curé’s far-famed black-pudding. Half-dead upon the spot where he was phlebotomized, the wretched animal was left to reflect under the shade of a tree on the cruelty of man, on their barbarous appetites; cursing with all his heart the poverty of Morvinian curates, their conceited hospitality, of which he was the victim, and their brutal affection for pig’s blood.’

Sir George Simpson, speaking of some of the northern tribes of Indians in America, says, the flexibility of their stomachs is surprising. At one time they will gorge themselves with food, and are then prepared to go without any for several days, if necessary.

Enter their tents; sit there if you can for a whole day, and not for an instant will you find the fire unoccupied by persons of all ages cooking. When not hunting or travelling, they are in fact always eating. Now it is a little roast, a partridge or rabbit perhaps; now a tit-bit, broiled under the ashes; anon a portly kettle, well filled with venison, swings over the fire; then comes a choice dish of curdled blood, followed by the sinews and marrow-bones of deer’s legs, singed on the embers. And so the grand business of life goes unceasingly round, interrupted only by sleep.

Dining within the arctic circle, when such a thing as dinner is to be had, is a much more serious matter than when one undergoes that pleasing ceremony at a first-rate eating house, hotel, or club.

In arctic banquets, the cheerful glass is often frozen to the lip, or the too ardent reveller splinters a tooth in attempting to gnaw through a lump of soup. We, in these temperate climes, have never had the pleasure of _eating_ ship’s rum, or _chewing_ brandy and water. It is not only necessary to ‘first catch your fish,’ but also essential to _thaw_ it; and there is no chance of the fish being limber, although it is not unusual for heat to bring them to life after they have been frozen stiff a couple of days. In the arctic circle even the very musquitoes, which, by the way, are frightfully large and numerous, become torpid with the intense cold, and are frozen into hard masses, which the heat of the sun, or fire, may restore to animation.

Dr. Sutherland, in his voyage in Baffin’s Bay, says--‘It was necessary to be very careful with our drinking cups. Tin never suited, for it always adhered to the lips, and took a portion of the skin along with it. A dog attempting to lick a little fat from an iron shovel stuck fast to it, and dragged it by means of his tongue, until by a sudden effort, he got clear, leaving several inches of the skin and adjacent tissue on the cold metal. One of the seamen, endeavouring to change the size of the eye of the splice in his tack-rope, put the marling spike, after the true sailor fashion, into his mouth; the result was that he lost a great portion of his lips and tongue.’

We hear frequent jokes of the partiality of the Russians for tallow candles, and, like all inhabitants of the polar regions, the Esquimaux are very fond of fat, the physiology of their craving for fat is now known to everybody. My esteemed friend, the late Mr. Hooper, one of the officers of H.M.S. _Plover_, in his account of his residence on the shores of Arctic America, states, that ‘one of the ladies who visited them was presented, as a jest, with a small tallow candle, called a purser’s dip. It was, notwithstanding, a very pleasant joke to the damsel, who deliberately munched it up with evident relish, and finally, drew the wick between her set teeth to clean off any remaining morsels of fat.’

He gives also in detail, the history of a Tuski repast of the most sumptuous nature, to which he and his companions were invited, and I must find room for some portion of it.

‘First was brought in, on a huge wooden tray, a number of small fish, uncooked, but intensely frozen. At these all the natives set to work, and we essayed, somewhat ruefully it must be confessed, to follow their example; but, being all unused to such gastronomic process, found ourselves, as might be expected, rather at a loss how to commence. From this dilemma, however, our host speedily extricated us, by practical demonstration of the correct mode of action; and, under his certainly very able tuition, we shortly became more expert. But, alas! a new difficulty was soon presented; our native companions, we presume, either made a hasty bolt of each morsel, or had, perhaps, a relish for the flavour of the viands now under consideration. Not so ourselves--it was sadly repugnant to our palates; for, aided by the newly-acquired knowledge that the fish were in the same condition as when taken from the water, uncleaned and unembowelled, we speedily discovered that we could neither bolt nor retain the fragments, which, by the primitive aid of teeth and nails, we had rashly detached for our piscatorial share. It was to no purpose that our host pressed us to ‘fall to;’ we could not manage the consumption of this favourite preparation (or rather lack thereof), and succeeded with difficulty in evading his earnest solicitations. The next course was a mess of green stuff, looking as if carefully chopped up, and this was also hard frozen. To it was added a lump of blubber, which the lady presiding, who did all the carving, dexterously cut into slices with a knife like a cheesemonger’s, and apportioned out at different quarters of the huge tray before mentioned, which was used throughout the meal, together with a modicum of the grass-like stuff, to the company; the only distinction in favour of the strangers and guests of high degree being, that their slices were cut much thinner than for the rest. We tasted this compound, and ... we didn’t like it: at this no one will wonder--the blubber speaks for itself; and the other stuff, which really was not very unpalatable, we discovered in after-times to be the unruminated food of reindeer which had been slaughtered--at least, so we were told: but I am not quite clear on this point. Our dislike to the dish had no offensive effect upon our host, who only seemed to be astonished at our strange want of taste, and, with the rest of the guests, soon cleared the board; the managing dame putting the finishing stroke by a rapid sweep of her not too scrupulously clean fingers over the dish, by way of clearing off the fragments to prepare for the reception of the next delicacy. After this interesting operation she conveyed her digits to her mouth, and, engulfing them for a brief period, withdrew them, quite in apple pie order once more. The board was now again replenished, this time with viands less repellent to our unnurtured tastes. Boiled seal and walrus flesh appeared, and our hospitable friends were greatly relieved when they beheld us assist in the consumption of these items, which, being utterly devoid of flavour, were distasteful only from their extreme toughness and mode of presentation; but we did not, of course, desire to appear too singular or squeamish. Next came a portion of whale’s flesh, or rather whale’s skin. This was perfectly ebony in hue, and we discovered some apprehensions respecting its fitness as an article of food; but our fears were groundless. It was cut and re-cut crosswise into diminutive cubes; venturing upon one of which we were agreeably surprised to find it possessing a cocoa-nut flavour, like which it also cut, ‘very short;’ indeed, so much astonished were we on this occasion, that we had consumed a very considerable number of these cubes, and with great relish too, before we recovered from our wonder. The dish was ever afterwards a favourite with me. On its disappearance, a very limited quantity of boiled reindeer meat, fresh and fat, was served up, to which we did ample justice; then came portions of the gum of the whale, in which the ends of the bone lay still embedded; and I do not hesitate to declare that this was perfectly delicious, its flavour being, as nearly as I can find a parallel, like that of cream cheese. This, which the Tuski call their sugar, was the wind-up to the repast and ourselves, and we were fain to admit that, after the rather unpleasant auspices with which our feast commenced, the finale was by no means to be contemned.’

A merchant at a banquet to which he was invited with several respectable Greenlanders, counted the following dishes:--Dried herrings; dried seal’s flesh; the same boiled; half-raw, or putrid seal’s flesh, called Mikiak; boiled auks; part of a whale’s tail in a half-putrid state, which was considered as a principal dish; dried salmon; dried reindeer venison; preserves of crow-berries mixed with the chyle from the maw of the reindeer; and lastly, the same enriched with train oil.

Dr. Kane, enumerating arctic delicacies, says, ‘Our journeys have taught us the wisdom of the Esquimaux appetite, and there are few among us who do not relish a slice of raw blubber or a chunk of frozen walrus-beef. The liver of a walrus (awuktanuk), eaten with little slices of his fat--of a verity it is a delicious morsel. Fire would ruin the curt, pithy expression of vitality which belongs to its uncooked juices. Charles Lamb’s roast pig was nothing to awuktanuk. I wonder that raw beef is not eaten at home. Deprived of extraneous fibre, it is neither indigestible nor difficult to masticate. With acids and condiments, it makes a salad which an educated palate cannot help relishing; and as a powerful and condensed heat-making and antiscorbutic food, it has no rival. I make this last broad assertion after carefully testing its truth. The natives of South Greenland prepare themselves for a long journey in the cold by a course of frozen seal. At Upernavik they do the same with the narwhal, which is thought more heat-making than the seal; while the bear, to use their own expression, is ‘stronger travel than all.’ In Smith’s Sound, where the use of raw meat seems almost inevitable from the modes of living of the people, walrus holds the first rank. Certainly this pachyderm, whose finely-condensed tissue and delicately-permeating fat--(oh! call it not blubber)--assimilate it to the ox, is beyond all others, and is the very best fuel a man can swallow. It became our constant companion whenever we could get it; and a frozen liver upon our sledge was valued far above the same weight of pemmican.’

Mr. Augustus Petermann, in a paper upon Animal Life in the Arctic Regions, read before the Royal Geographical Society, thus enumerates the food resources:--

‘Though several classes of the animal creation, as for example, the reptiles, are entirely wanting in this region, those of the mammals, birds, and fishes, at least, bear comparison both as to number and size with those of the Tropics: the lion, the elephant, the hippopotamus, and others not being more notable in the latter respect than the polar bear, the musk ox, the walrus, and, above all, the whale. Besides these, there are the moose, the reindeer, the wolf, the polar hare, the seal, and various smaller quadrupeds. The birds consist chiefly of an immense number of aquatic birds. Of fishes, the salmon, salmon trout, and herring, are the principal, the latter especially crowding in such myriads as to surpass everything of that kind found in tropical regions.

‘Nearly all these animals furnish wholesome food for men. They are, with few exceptions, distributed over the entire regions: their number, however, or the relative intensity of the individuals, is very different in different parts. Thus, on the American side, we find the animals decreasing in number from east to west. On the shores of Davis’ Straits, in Baffin’s Bay, Lancaster Sound, Regent Inlet, &c., much less in number are met with than in Boothia Felix, and Parry groups. The abundance of animal life in Melville Island and Victoria Channel, is probably not surpassed in any other part on the American side. Proceeding westward to the Russian possessions, we find considerable numbers of animals all round and within the sea of Kamtschatka, as also to the north of Behring’s Straits. The yearly produce of the Russian Fur Company, in America, is immense, and formerly it was much greater. Pribylon, when he discovered the small islands named after him, collected, within two years, 2,000 skins of sea otters, 40,000 sea bears, (ursine seals,) 6,000 dark sea foxes, and 1,000 walrus-teeth. Lütke, in his _Voyage_ _Round the World_, mentions that, in the year 1803, 800,000 skins of the ursine seal alone were accumulated in Unataski, one of the depôts of the Russian Fur Company, 700,000 of which were thrown into the sea, partly because they were badly prepared, and partly to keep up the prices. But in no other part of the arctic zoological region is animal life so abundant as in the northern parts of Siberia, especially between the Rivers Kolyma and Lena.

‘The first animals that make their appearance after the dreary winter, are large flights of swans, geese, ducks, and snipes; these are killed by old and young. Fish also begin to be taken in nets and baskets placed under the ice.

‘In June, however, when the river opens, the fish pour in in immense numbers. At the beginning of this century, several thousand geese were sometimes killed in one day at the mouth of the River Kolyma. About twenty years later, when Admiral Wrangel visited those regions, the numbers had somewhat decreased, and it was then called a good season when 1,000 geese, 5,000 ducks, and 200 swans were killed at that place. The reindeer chase forms the next occupation for the inhabitants. About the same time, the shoals of herrings begin to ascend the rivers, and the multitudes of these fish are often such that, in three or four days, 40,000 may be taken with a single net.

‘On the banks of the River Indejiska the number of swans and geese resorting there in the moulting season, is said to be much greater even than on the River Kolyma.’

The choicest dish of the Greenlanders is the flesh of the reindeer. But as those animals have now become extremely scarce, and several of them are soon consumed by a hunting party, they are indebted to the sea for their permanent sustenance, seals, fish, and sea-fowl. Hares and partridges are in no great estimation as delicacies. The head and fins of the seal are preserved under the grass in summer, and in winter a whole seal is frequently buried in the snow. The flesh, half frozen, half putrid, in which state the Greenlanders term it mikiak, is eaten with the keenest appetite. The ribs are dried in the air and laid up in store. The remaining parts of the seal, as well as birds and small fishes, are eaten, well boiled or stewed with a small quantity of sea-water. On the capture of a seal, the wound is immediately stopped up to preserve the blood, which is rolled into balls like forcemeat.

The intestines of small animals are eaten without any further preparation than that of pressing out the contents between the fingers.

They set a great value on what they find in the reindeer’s maw, making it into a dish which they call Nerukak (the eatable), and send presents of it to their friends. The entrails of the rypeu, mixed with fresh train oil and berries, compose another mess which they consider as a consummate delicacy. Their preserves for winter are composed of fresh, rotten and half-hatched eggs, crake berries, and angelica, thrown together into a sack of seal skin, filled up with train oil. They likewise suck out the fat from the skins of sea-fowls; and, in dressing seal skins, they scrape off the grease which could not well be separated in the skinning, to make a kind of pancake.

In the second voyage of Sir John Ross to the arctic regions, it is related of the steward, that he purchased a sledge of the Esquimaux, and on examining it, it was found to be made of salmon, with skins sewed over them; but the cross pieces were the leg bones of the reindeer. It was not an erroneous conjecture of some of the crew, that when these poor creatures are driven to extremity for food, they turn to and make a dainty meal of their sledges, as, with the exception of the reindeer bones, the whole of them is eatable. When we refer to the description which the late Sir John Franklin gives of the different articles of food by which he and his party were maintained, the component parts of the sledge of an Esquimaux would, under circumstances of extreme want, be considered a real dainty.

There cannot be any comparison between a meal of _tripe de roche_ and the stinking marrow of a reindeer bone, and a piece of dried salmon, which by its exposure to the frost has been kept from putridity; indeed, the epicures amongst the Esquimaux do not hesitate to declare, that the flavor of the salmon is rather enhanced by its long keeping, on the same principle we suppose that the flavour of game of this country rises in the estimation of the epicure in proportion as the bird or animal approaches to putridity. At all events, it must be a novel and curious exhibition, to observe a party of Esquimaux cutting up a sledge, and carving out pieces of salmon, according to their respective tastes, and seasoning them with some of the oil extracted from the blubber of the whale. The latter condiment is to the Esquimaux what Burgess’ anchovy is to the citizen of London; and instances are not rare, in which an Esquimaux has been known to devour four pounds of seal flesh, or of salmon, well soaked in whale oil, at one meal, with about half-a-gallon of water as the beverage.

Much of the animal food comes frozen to the markets of St. Petersburg. The sledges which bring it are used as stalls to sell it. The matting is thrown aside, and the poultry and frozen carcases are arranged so as to attract buyers. Whole sledge loads of snow-white hares find their way to the market. The little animals are usually frozen in a running position, with their ears pointed, and their legs stretched out before and behind, and when placed on the ground, look at a first glance as if they were in the act of escaping from the hunter.

Bear’s flesh is also sometimes offered for sale in the market, and here and there may be seen a frozen reindeer lying in the snow, by the side of a booth, its hairy snout stretched forth upon the ground, its knees doubled up under its body, and its antlers rising majestically into the air. It looks as if on our approaching it, it would spring up and dash away once more in search of its native forests.

The mighty elk is likewise no rare guest in this market, where it patiently presents its antlers as a perch for the pigeons that are fluttering about, till, little by little, the axe and the saw have left no fragment of the stately animal, but every part of the carcase has gone its way into the kitchens of the wealthy.

The geese are cut up, and the heads, necks, legs, and carcases sold separately by the dozen, or half dozen, strung upon small cords. Those who cannot afford to dine on the breast of a goose, purchase a string of frozen heads, or a few dozen of webbed feet, to boil down into soup. The frozen oxen, calves, and goats, stand around in rows. Sucking pigs are a favourite delicacy with the Russians. Hundreds of these, in their frozen state, are seen ranged about the sledges, mingled with large frozen hogs.

The bones and meat being all rendered equally hard by the frost, the animals are sawn up into a number of slices, of an inch or two in thickness, and by this operation a quantity of animal sawdust is scattered on the snow, and afterwards gathered up by poor children, who haunt the market for that purpose. Fish, which is offered for sale, is sawn and sold in the same frozen condition.[3]

‘If one is to judge from the _restaurants_ at Moscow,’ writes a correspondent of the _Times_, ‘there is no better place in the world to come to in order to try the temper. The best of them is dear and bad beyond comparison, and the only things good are the wine and the bread. It must be admitted that the latter is excellent, light, sweet, white, and wholesome, and our London bakers would do well if they came to Moscow for an apprenticeship in the art of making bread. It is very hard to have to pay 1_l._ for cabbage soup, _filet du cheval_, a bit of bad fish, one stewed pear, and a bottle of light French wine; but it is harder still to wait for twenty minutes between every dish, while leaden-eyed waiters are staring at you with a mixture of contempt and compassion because of your ignorance of the Russian tongue. Tired, cross, and dyspeptic, the stranger seeks a Russian dining room where the arts of French cookery have never been employed to render bad meat still worse. There, amid the odours of tobacco--for a Russian not being able to smoke in the streets makes up for it _chez lui_--you resign yourself to an unknown bill of fare and the caprices of your bearded attendant. It is fair to say of the said waiter, that he is clad in a milk-white and scrupulously clean robe, which descends in easy folds from his neck to his heels, so that he looks like a very high priest of the deity of gastronomy, and that you need not be as uneasy about his fingers and hands as you have good cause to be at the Russo-French _restaurants_. First you will be presented with a huge bowl of cabbage soup, a kind of _pot-au-feu_, which must be eaten, however, with several odd adjuncts, such as cakes stuffed with chopped vegetables, a dish of guelots, chopped fat, fried brown and crisp, and lastly a large ewer full of sour milk. Then comes a _vol-au-vent_ of fowl and toad-stools. Next, if you are alive, porosenok, or a boiled sucking pig, with tart sauce; then a very nasty little fish, much prized in Moscow, and called sterlet; a fid of roast beef and a dish of birds about the size of pigeons, called guillemots; a compote of fruit closes the meal. I have forgotten to say how it begins. Before dinner a tray is laid out with caviare, raw salt herrings, raw ham and sardines, bottles of brandy, vodka, anisette, and doppel kümmel, a sweet spirit with a flavour of mint. It is _de rigueur_ to eat some of this, and as the caviare is generally good, it is the best part of the dinner.’

The Governor of Cape Coast Castle, in his official report to the Colonial Office, in 1856, speaking of the food and cooking in the interior, remarks:--‘An officer of government, who has been about two years here, says, that he reckons he has eaten, during that time, 700 fowls, it being difficult at out-stations to cater in anything else but fowls.

‘In cooking, the natives seem to have almost a homeopathic prepossession for trituration. They pound and grind by hand labour, between stones, their maize, and bake it; so with their yams, and, I believe, cassada; they pound also their plantains and make soup of them.

‘Fish with a strong flavour and snails are favorites. The latter grow to a large, I had almost said formidable, size. I have in my possession the shell of one which I found buried about a foot in the ground, within a few yards of Government house, and which measures in length about five inches, and in circumference, in the widest part, about seven inches. A collection of these snails was once sent to me as a compliment, but I need hardly say, that I cannot speak of their taste from experience, though I do not know why I should not as well as I can of land crabs, which, when properly cooked, are, I think, general favorites with us. On the subject of cooking, I may observe, that the country cooked dishes (if of materials of a nature, and in a state, admitted in the category of our edibles) brought to table in the black native-made earthen pots in which they are cooked on the fire, are almost without exception favorites with the Europeans.’

The African Bushmen, who have few or no cattle, live upon what they can get. Hunger compels them to eat every thing, roots, bulbs, wild garlic, the core of aloes, the gum of acacias, berries, the larvæ of ants, lizards, locusts, and grasshoppers--all are devoured by these poor wanderers of the desert. Nothing comes amiss to them.

The principal diet of the Kaffir is milk, which he eats rather than drinks in a sour and curdled state. One good meal a day, taken in the evening, consisting of the curdled milk and a little millet, is almost all that he requires, and with this he is strong, vigorous, and robust, proving that large quantities of animal food are by no means necessary for the sustenance of the human frame.

Singularly enough a Kaffir, like a Jew, will never touch pork. To him it is unclean, though why he thinks so I suspect he cannot tell. Fish is likewise abstained from by him, as it is said to have been by the Egyptian priesthood. Yet with these antipathies he will eat the flesh of an ox, cooked or raw, when he can obtain it, not excepting portions of the animal from which one would imagine he would turn away with disgust.

To such tribes as the Shangalla negroes, occupying the wild tracts bordering on Abyssinia, roots are their daily food, and locusts and lizards their luxuries.

The Indians of Brazil do not reject any kind of food, and devour it almost without being cooked; rats and other small vermin, snakes, and alligators, are all accepted.

The aborigines of Australia live chiefly on the native animals they can procure--the kangaroo, the wallaby, bandicoot, kangaroo rat, opossum, and wombat; every bird and bird’s egg that can be procured; and in the case of tribes near the sea, cray-fish, and shell-fish, form the staple article of their diet.

Under the influence of Christianity, the fish, flesh, or fowl, which the Pacific Islanders previously regarded as incarnations of their gods, are now eaten without suspicion or alarm. One, for instance, saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard; and so on throughout all the fish of the sea, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. In some of the shell-fish, even, gods were supposed to be present. A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but the incarnation of his own particular god he would consider it death to injure or to eat. The god was supposed to avenge the insult by taking up his abode in that person’s body, and causing to generate diseases.

The Sonthal, or lowlander of Bengal, being unfettered by caste, eats without scruple his cow or buffalo beef, his kids, poultry, pork, or pigeons, and is not over particular as to whether the animals have been slain, have died a natural death, or have been torn by wild animals. When the more substantial good things of life, such as meat and poultry are scarce, he does not refuse to eat snakes, ants, frogs, and field rats.

In Eastern Tibet regular meals are not in vogue; the members of a family do not assemble to dine together, but ‘eat when they’re hungry, drink when they’re dry.’ ‘We remember,’ says a writer in _Blackwood_, ‘to have heard a graphic description of the Tibetan _cuisine_, from a humorous _shikaree_, or native Nimrod of our Himalayan provinces. The Bhoteea folk (he said) have a detestable way of eating. They take a large cooking pot full of water, and put in it meat, bread, rice, and what not, and set it on the fire, where it is always a-simmering. When hungry, they go and fish out a cupful of whatever comes uppermost, perhaps, six or seven times a day. Strangers are served in the same way. If a man gets hold of a bone, he picks it, wipes his hands on his dress, and chucks it back into the pot. So with all crumbs and scraps, back they go into the pot, and thus the never-ending still-beginning mess stews on.’

If we visit Burmah, we find there a rather indiscriminate use of all that can satiate the appetite, without much regard to selection. Immense quantities of pressed fish are prepared, called _gnapee_, which constitutes a main article of their diet. In some cases the fish is washed and pounded, and this description generally consists of prawns. In the coarser sorts the pieces of fish are entire, half putrid, half pickled. They are all fetid and offensive to Europeans.

A kind of red ant is eaten fried, or with their dried fish, and a worm, which in the lower provinces of Burmah is found in the heart of a shrub, is considered such a delicacy, that every month a great quantity is sent to the capital to be served up at the table of the emperor. It is eaten either fried or roasted.

According to Sir John Bowring, the Chinese have no prejudices whatever as regards food; they eat anything and everything from which they can derive nutrition. Dogs, especially puppies, are habitually sold as food. In the butchers’ shops large dogs skinned and hanging with their viscera, may be seen by the side of pigs and goats. Even to the flesh of monkeys and snakes they have no objection.

The sea slug is an aristocratic and costly delicacy, which is never wanting, any more than the edible birds-nests, at a feast where honour is intended to be done to the guests. These birds-nests are worth twice their weight in silver. They are glutinous compositions formed by a kind of swallow, in vast clusters, found in Java, Sumatra, and the rocky islets of the Indian Archipelago. Dried sharks’ fins and fish maws are also highly prized.

But while the rich fare sumptuously, the mass of the poor subsist on the veriest garbage. The heads of fowls, their entrails and fat, with every scrap of digestible animal matter, earth-worms, sea reptiles of all kinds, mice, and other vermin are greedily devoured. Lots of black frogs, in half dozens, tied together, are exposed for sale in shallow troughs of water. The hind-quarters of a horse will be seen hung up in a butcher’s shop, with the recommendation of a whole leg attached.

Unhatched ducks and chickens are a favorite dish. Nor do the early stages of putrefaction create any disgust. Rotten eggs are by no means condemned to perdition. Fish is the more acceptable when it has a strong fragrance and flavour to give more gusto to the rice, which forms the two meals of the population, morning and evening. In the shops, fat pork chops will be found dried and varnished to the colour of mahogany, suspended with dry pickled ducks’ gizzards, and strings of sausages cured by exposure to the sun.

In Hong Kong, rice with salt fish and fat pork is the principal article of Chinese diet; and for drink, tea and hot samshew, a spirit distilled from rice, and very unpalatable to Europeans.

Nearly all the beasts of the forest are eaten by the Dyaks of Borneo; even monkeys, alligators (if small), snakes, and other reptiles are esteemed. Like the French, they regard frogs as a delicate dish, and bestow considerable pains in procuring them.

The Greenlanders, although they do not usually eat their meat raw, have a superstitious custom, on every capture, of cutting out a piece of the raw flesh and drinking the warm blood. And the woman who skins the seal, gives a couple of pieces of the fat to each of the female spectators.

An European writer states, that he frequently followed the example of the Greenlanders in the chase, and assuaged his hunger by eating a piece of raw reindeer’s flesh; nor did he find it very hard of digestion, but it satisfied his appetite much less than cooked meat. The inhabitants of the high table-lands of Abyssinia, are also accustomed to eat raw flesh--the climate being as cold as that of the northern parts of Scotland. My friend, Mr. C. Johnston, in his travels in that country, thus puts in a plea for the practice by the Abyssinians.

In a country but poorly wooded, the chief supply of fuel being the dung of cattle, an instinctive feeling, dependent upon the pleasures of a state of warmth, has taught the Abyssinians that the flesh of animals eaten raw, is a source of great physical enjoyment, by the cordial and warming effects upon the system produced by its digestion, and to which I am convinced bon vivants more civilized than the Abyssinians would resort, if placed in their situation.

Travellers who have witnessed their _brunde_ feasts, can attest the intoxicating effects of this kind of food, and they must have been astonished at the immense quantities that can be eaten in the raw state, compared to that when the meat is cooked, and at the insensibility which it sometimes produces.

Eating raw meat, which among the Esquimaux is for the most part an absolute necessity, by the Abyssinians is considered a luxury, or in fact, as a kind of dissipation; for eating it in that state is only indulged in by them at festivals, and it is then taken as a means of enjoyment, and is not more barbarous or disgusting than getting tipsy upon strong drinks.[4]

Another writer on ‘Life in Abyssinia,’ thus describes the native mode of eating meat.--‘There is usually a piece of meat to every five or six persons, among whom arises some show of ceremony as to which of them shall first help himself; this being at length decided, the person chosen takes hold of the meat with his left hand, and with his sword or knife cuts a strip a foot or fifteen inches long, from the part which appears the nicest and tenderest. The others then help themselves in like manner. If I should fail in describing the scene which now follows, I must request the aid of the reader’s imagination. Let him picture to himself thirty or forty Abyssinians, stripped to their waists, squatting round the low tables, each with his sword, knife, or ‘shotel’ in his hand, some eating, some helping themselves, and some waiting their turn, but all bearing in their features the expression of that fierce gluttony which one attributes more to the lion or leopard than to the race of Adam. The imagination may be much assisted by the idea of the lumps of raw pink and blue flesh they are gloating over. But I have yet to describe how they eat the strip of meat which I have just made one of the party cut off. A quantity of ‘dillikh’ or ‘aou-a-zé’ being laid on his bread, he dips one end of the meat into it, and then, seizing it between his teeth, while he holds the other end in his left hand, he cuts a bit off close to his lips by an upward stroke of his sword, only just avoiding the tip of his nose, and so on till he has finished the whole strip.’

Australian delicacies are somewhat different to our own. The flying-fox (_Pteropus_), an animal of the bat family, which makes sad havoc at night among the fruit trees of the colonists, is in return shot down without mercy. Their flesh is delicate, and they are almost invariably very fat, but owing to the demoniac appearance of their black leathery wings, and to the prejudice which this appearance excites, they are seldom eaten by the settlers. Travellers in the wilderness, however, are frequently indebted for a hearty meal to their success in bringing down these creatures.

The burrowing wombat, or native pig, which feeds chiefly on roots, is not deemed bad food. When divested of its fur and tough skin, its flesh, although red and coarse in appearance, resembles that of a pig in flavour, and is usually cooked by the colonists like fresh pork would be. The flesh of the porcupine ant-eater somewhat resembles that of a young sucking pig, and is highly esteemed.

There are several other small quadrupeds, including a burrowing or prairie-rat, which, at particular seasons, and in certain localities in Australia, constitute the chief animal food of the natives. The flesh of the little short-legged bandicoot is very white and delicate. Cooked like a rabbit, it furnishes the sportsman’s table with a splendid dish.

Among quadrupeds, besides the ordinary domestic fed or wild animals commonly eaten as food, we find apes and monkeys, the spider monkey, the marmozet, bats, hedgehogs, bears, racoons, badgers, and dogs; many of the carnivorous animals, as foxes, lions and tigers, the puma, &c., are also eaten. Then again we have the seal and the walrus.

QUADRUMANA.

African epicures esteem as one of their greatest delicacies a tender young monkey, highly seasoned and spiced, and baked in a jar set in the earth, with a fire over it, in gipsy fashion. Monkeys are commonly sold with parrots and the paca, in the markets at Rio Janeiro. The Indians, many negroes, and some whites, in Trinidad, eat of the flesh of the great red monkey, and say it is delicious. This, however, seems a semi-cannibal kind of repast--for it is the most vociferous and untameable of the Simian tribe.

Several species of monkey are used as food by the aboriginal inhabitants of the Malayan peninsula. As all kinds of monkeys are very destructive to his rice fields, the Dyak of Borneo is equally their enemy; and as this people esteem their flesh as an article of food, no opportunity of destroying them is lost.

Mr. Hugh Low says, he once saw some Dyaks roasting a monkey, but did not stay to observe whether they did not boil it afterwards, as they generally partially roast these animals to free them from the hair.

Monkeys are eaten in Ceylon by some of the natives, and the Africans on the Gold Coast eat them, according to the report of Governor Connor, in his Dispatch to the Colonial Office, March 2, 1857.--_Reports on Colonial Possessions, transmitted with the Blue Book, for the year 1856._

In South America monkeys are ordinarily killed as game by the natives, for the sake of their flesh; but the appearance of these animals is so revolting to Europeans, that they can seldom force themselves to partake of such fare.

Mr. Wallace (_Travels on the Amazon_) says, ‘having often heard how good monkey was, I had it cut up and fried for breakfast; the meat somewhat resembled rabbit, without any peculiar or unpleasant flavour.’ The manner in which these animals are roasted by the natives, as described by Humboldt, further contributes to render their appearance disgusting.

‘A little grating or lattice of very hard wood is formed, and raised a foot from the ground. The monkey is skinned, and bent into a sitting posture, the head generally resting on the arms, which are meagre and long; but sometimes these are crossed behind the back. When it is tied on the grating, a very clear fire is kindled below; the monkey, enveloped in smoke and flame, is broiled and blackened at the same time. Roasted monkeys, particularly those that have a round head, display a hideous resemblance to a child; the Europeans, therefore, who are obliged to feed on them, prefer separating the head and hands, and serve only the rest of the animal at their tables. The flesh of monkeys is so dry and lean, that M. Bonpland has preserved, in his collection at Paris, an arm and hand, which had been broiled over the fire at Esmeralda, and no smell arises from them after a number of years.’

Sir Robert Schomburgk, in the Journal of his expedition to the Upper Corentyne, and interior of Guiana, when suffering the pangs of hunger, reports that at last their Indian hunter arrived, with heavy step, carrying on his shoulder a large, black, female spider monkey.

‘I glanced,’ he observes, ‘at Mr. Goodall, whose countenance depicted disappointment and disgust, but which sad necessity, and the large vacuum that two ounces of farinha must have left in his stomach, induced him to get the better of. He watched the preparations as the Indians proceeded step by step, first singeing off the hair from this human-like form, and then placing it in an upright position, with the arms crossed; when, the skin looking white now the hair was off, the sight proved too much for him, and I myself felt something like disgust at the meal before us. The sound of a heavy body falling on the ground drew my attention to a different direction, and to my great joy, I beheld a fine young forest deer, over which young Ammon stood, leaning on his gun with proud satisfaction. This was indeed, a happy turn in our affairs.

‘I have tasted the smaller kind of monkeys several times, but have never partaken of one which approached so nearly to the human form as this. The Indians were less scrupulous.’

The ateles, as well indeed as all other American quadrumanes, are esteemed as an article of food by the native Indians; and even Europeans, whom curiosity or necessity has induced to taste it, report their flesh to be white, juicy, and agreeable. Nor is it without being strongly disposed to question the nature of the act, that European sportsmen, unaccustomed to shooting monkeys, witness for the first time the dying struggles of these animals; without uttering a complaint, they silently watch the blood as it flows from the wound, from time to time turning their eyes upon the sportsman with an expression of reproach, which cannot be misinterpreted. Some travellers even go so far as to assert that the companions of the wounded individual will not only assist him to climb beyond the reach of further danger, but will even chew leaves and apply them to the wound, for the purpose of stopping the hemorrhage.

One of the spider monkeys, the marimonda (_Ateles belzebuth_, Desm.), is termed _aru_ by the Indians of the Rio Guiana, and is a favourite article of food with the natives of the borders of the Cassiquiare, the higher Orinoco, and other rivers, and its boiled limbs are commonly to be seen in their huts.

The howling monkeys (_Mycetes_), which are of larger size, and fatter than some of the other species, are in great request with the Indians as food. Mr. Gosse states that the flavour of their flesh is like that of kid. The Aturian Indians, as well as those of Esmeralda, eat many kinds of monkeys at certain seasons of the year, and especially the couxio, or jacketed monkey (_Pithecia sagulati_, Traill).

Mr. Grant in his _History of Brazil_ states, that apes and monkeys are esteemed good food by the natives.

The negroes and natives of New Granada, according to Bonnycastle, also eat the monkey.

To prepare this dish, the body is scalded in order to remove the hair, and after this operation has been performed, it has the exact appearance of a young dead child, and is so disgusting, that no one, excepting those pressed by hunger, could partake of the repast. It is not at all improbable that many savage nations who have been accused of cannibalism, have been very unjustly charged with it, for, according to Ulloa, the appearance of the monkey of Panama, when ready to be cooked, is precisely that of a human body.

CHEIROPTERA, OR HAND-WINGED ANIMALS.

The fox monkey or flying lemur (_Galeopithecus volans_) diffuses a rank disagreeable odour, yet the flesh is eaten by the natives of the islands of the Indian Archipelago.

The Dutch, when in the island of Mauritius are said to have been fond of the flesh of bats, preferring it to the finest game, but I have never heard the opinion corroborated there by others. The Indians of Malabar and other parts of the East Indies, are said to eat the flesh of bats.

The flesh of most bats is eaten in the Eastern Archipelago, and by some esteemed, being compared to that of hare or partridge in flavour. The flesh of the largest and most common, the black-bellied roussette (_Pteropus edulis_, Geoff.), has a musky odour, but is esteemed by the natives. They catch them in bags at the end of a pole.

Fancy a great frightful animal like a weasel, with wings two feet in length, being served up at table. Still they must be palatable, since one species has thus been named by naturalists, ‘the eatable’ bat. The flesh is stated to be white, delicate, and remarkably tender, and is regarded by the inhabitants of Timor as a dainty. The body is ten inches long, covered with close and shining black hair, and the extended wings are about four feet.

CARNIVORA.

Carnivorous animals,--the terrible wild hunters of the forests and deserts,--are themselves preyed upon by man.

The low Arabs do not object to the flesh of the hyena, although the smell of the carcase is so rank and offensive, that even dogs leave it with disgust, yet their own voracious kindred obligingly gobble them up.