[In this estimate the ‘Fame’ is reckoned for 250 boys.]
THE ROB ROY CUISINE.
This has been designed after numerous experiments with the various portable cooking-machines which I could procure for trial, and, as it succeeds better than any of them, and has been approved by trial in five of my own voyages, and in another to Iceland, besides shorter trips, and in the Abyssinian campaign, &c., &c., it may be of some use to describe the contrivance here.
The object proposed was to provide a light but strong apparatus which could speedily boil water and heat or fry other materials even in wet and windy weather, and with fuel enough carried in itself for several days’ use.
Fig. 1 is a section of the Rob Roy cuisine as it is made up for carrying. There is first a strong waterproof bag about one foot high, and closed at the top by a running cord. At the bottom is the cuisine itself, a, which occupies a space of only six inches by three inches (when of smaller size), and has the various parts packed inside, except the drinking cup b.
Provisions, such as bread and cold meat or eggs, may bestowed in the bag above the cuisine, and if the string of it be then attached to a nail fixed in the boat, the whole will be kept steady.
For use, when it is desired to boil water, the cuisine being opened, the lower part is a copper pan, c, fig. 2, with a handle, e, which can be fixed either into a socket in the side of the pan, or another socket in the side of the lid, as represented in figs. 2 and 6.
Three iron legs also fix into sockets and support the pan over the spirit-lamp, f, by which the pan, two-thirds full of liquid, will be boiled in five minutes.
The lamp is the main feature of the apparatus, and it is represented in section in fig. 3. It consists of two cylinders, one within the other. The space between these (shaded dark) is closed at top and bottom, and a tube b, fixed through the bottom, rises with one open end inside, and another (a small nozzle) curved upwards in the open internal cylinder. Another tube, h, opens into the annular chamber between the cylinders, and it has a funnel-shaped mouth at the outer end, through which the chamber may be filled, while a screw in the inside allows a handle, fig. 4 (in section), to have its end, i, screwed in. A small hole in the upper surface is closed by a little cork, which will be expelled if the pressure within is so high as to require escape by this safety-valve. The hole may be in any part of the annular cover (but is not shown in the sketch), and in such case the hole shown in the handle is omitted.
The outer cylinder of the lamp, being larger than the inner one, has a bottom, k, fig. 3, which forms a circular tray of about two inches wide and half an inch deep.