In Spain, in those damp swamps near Valencia, where the poor are old before forty and die before forty-five, the best rice sells at eleven farthings, the poorest at eight farthings per pound. This, cooked with the ground dust of pimientos, or capsicums, is the foundation of every stew in the south of Spain. It is of a rich brick-dust hue, and is full of fire and flavour. Into this stew the cook puts the "reptiles of the sea" known as "spotted cats," "toads" and other oily fish, sold at two pence a pound, or the vogar, a silvery fish, or the gallina, a coarse fish, chick peas, garlic, pork, and sausages. If rich she will make an olla podrida with bacon, fresh meat, potatoes, cabbages, and she will pour off the soup, calling it caldo, then the lumps of meat and bacon, called cocida, will be served next. Then the cigarette is smoked. If you are a king she will add a quince and an apple to the stew.
Of puddings and pies they know nothing; but what fruit they have!—watermelons weighing fifteen pounds apiece; lemon pippins called perillons; crimson, yellow, and purple plums; purple and green figs; tomatoes by the million; carob beans, on which half the nation lives; small cucumbers and gourds; large black grapes, very sweet; white grapes and quinces; peaches in abundance; and all the chestnuts and filberts in the world. In the summer they eat goat's flesh; and on All Saints' Day they eat pork and chestnuts and sweet babatas of Malaga. In exile, in Mexico and Florida, the Spaniard eats alligator, which could scarcely be called a game bird; but the flesh of young alligators' tails is very fair, and tastes like chicken if the tail is cut off immediately after death, and stewed.
The frost fish of the Adirondacks is seldom tasted, except by those who have spent a winter in the North Woods. They are delicious when fried. There is a European fish as little known as this, the Marena, caught in Lake Moris in the province of Pomerania, also in one lake in southern Italy, which is very good.
There are two birds known in Prussia, the bustard, and the kammel, the former a species of small ostrich, once considered very fine eating, the latter very tough, except under unusual conditions.
The Chinese enjoy themselves by night. All their feasts and festivals are kept then, generally by moonlight. When a Chinaman is poor he can live on a farthing's worth of rice a day; when he gets rich he becomes the most luxurious of sybarites, indulges freely in the most recherché delicacies of the table, and becomes, like any Roman voluptuary, corpulent and phlegmatic. A lady thus describes a Chinese dinner:—
"The hour was eleven A. M., the locale a boat. Having heard much of the obnoxious stuff I was to eat, I adopted the prescription of a friend. 'Eat very little of any dish, and be a long time about it.'
"We commenced with tea, and finished with soup. Some of the intermediate dishes were shark's-fin; birds' nests brought from Borneo, costing nearly a guinea a mouthful, fricassee of poodle, a little dog almost a pig; the fish of the conch-shell, a substance like wax or india rubber, which you might masticate but never mash; peacock's liver, very fine and recherché; putrid eggs, nevertheless very good; rice, of course, salted shrimps, baked almonds, cabbage in a variety of forms, green ginger, stewed fungi, fresh fish of a dozen kinds, onions ad libitum, salt duck cured like ham, and pig in every form, roast, boiled, and fried, Foo-Chow ham which seemed to me equal to Wiltshire. In fact, the Chinese excel in pork, though the English there never touch it, under the supposition that the pigs are fed on little babies.
"But this is a libel. Of course a pig would eat a baby, as it would a rattlesnake if it came across one; but the Chinese are very particular about their swine and keep them penned up, rivalling the Dutch in their scrubbing and washing. They grow whole fields of taro and herbs for their pigs. And I do not believe that one porker in a million ever tastes a baby."
This traveller's sympathies appear to be with the pig.
"About two o'clock we arose from the table, walked about, looked out of the window. Large brass bowls were brought with water and towels. Each one proceeded to perform ablutions, the Chinese washing their heads; after which refreshing operation we resumed our seats and re-commenced with another description of tea.