Swiss Family Robinson

by Johann David Wyss

With the utmost caution I entered the cave, and rejoiced to find that the tongue and eyes only of the bears had been devoured: a little later and we should have had the handsome skins pecked and torn to rags, and all chance of steaks and bears'-paws gone.

On measuring the wings of the large bird from tip to tip, I found the length exceeded eleven feet, and concluded it to be a condor; it was evidently the mate of the `Watcher', as Fritz called the first we saw.

To work we now went on the bears, and no slight affair we found it to skin and cut them up, but by dint of perseverance we at last succeeded in our object.

Determining to smoke the meat on the spot, we cut magnificent hams, and took off the rest of the meat in slices after the manner of the buccaneers in the West Indies, preserving the paws entire to be cooked as a delicacy, and obtaining from the two bears together a prodigious supply of lard, which my wife gladly undertook to melt and prepare for keeping.

The bones and offal we drew to some distance with the help of our cattle, and made the birds of the air most welcome to feast upon it. This, with the assistance of all sorts of insects, they did so effectually that before we left the place the skulls were picked perfectly clean, the sun had dried them, and they were ready for us to carry off to our museum.

The skins had to be very carefully scraped, washed, salted, cleansed with ashes and dried, which occupied fully two days.

I was lamenting our distance from the rascusara* tree, the leaves of which had flavoured our roast peccary so nicely, when I observed among the brushwood which the boys had brought from the thickets around us, a climbing plant, whose leaves had a very strong smell; the stem resembled a vine, and the fruit grew in clusters like currants. Some were red, and some of a green colour, which I supposed to denote various degrees of ripeness. They were hard, and the outer skin was quite thin. I recognized in this the pepper plant, a discovery particularly agreeable at this moment.

* Previously he called it ravensara.

The boys soon gathered a large supply; the red berries were soaked in salt and water for several days, then washed and rubbed, and finally, becoming perfectly white, were dried in the sun. The treatment of the green berries was simple; they were merely exposed to the sun's heat for a day or two, and then stored: in this way we obtained enough, both of black and white pepper, to last us a very long time.

I took also a number of young plants, that we might have pepper growing at Rockburg and our various settlements. Some roots of another plant were also taken, which, from the pods, appeared to be a kind of bean.