"Seven different sorts of Samchou we partook of, made from rice, from peas, from mangoes, cocoa-nut, all fermented liquors, and the mystery remained,—I was not inebriated. The Samchou was drunk warm in tiny cups, during the whole course of the dinner.
"The whole was cooked without salt and tasted very insipid to me. The bird's-nest seemed like glue or isinglass, but the coxcombs were palatable. The dog-meat was like some very delicate gizzards well-stewed, and of a short, close fibre. The dish which I most fancied turned out to be rat. Upon taking a second help, after the first taste I got the head, which made me rather sick; but I consoled myself that when in California we ate ground squirrels which are first cousins to the flat-tailed rats; and travellers who would know the world must go in for manners and customs. We had tortoise and frogs,—a curry of the latter was superior to chicken; we had fowls' hearts, and the brains of some birds, snipe, I think. We had a chow-chow of mangoes, rambustan preserved, salted cucumber, sweet potatoes, yams, taro, all sorts of sweets made of rice sugar, and cocoa-nuts; and the soup which terminated the entertainment was certainly boiled tripe or some other internal arrangement; and I wished I had halted some little time before. The whole was eaten with chop-sticks or a spoon like a small spade or shovel. The sticks are made into a kind of fork, being held crosswise between the fingers. It is not the custom for the sexes to meet at meals; I dined with the ladies."
This dinner has one suggestion for our hostesses,—it was in a boat, on a river, by torchlight. We can, however, give a better one on a yacht at Newport, or at New London, or down on the Florida coast; but it would be a pretty fancy to give it on our river. It is curious to see what varieties there are in the art of entertaining; and it is useful to remember, when in Florida, "that alligators' tails are as good, when stewed, as chicken."
The eating of the past included, under the Romans, the ass, the dog, the snail, hedge-hogs, oysters, asparagus, venison, wild-boar, sea-nettles. In England, in 1272, the hostess offered strange dishes: mallards, herons, swans, crane, and peacock. The peacock was, of old, a right royal bird which figured splendidly at the banquets of the great, and this is how the mediæval cooks dished up the dainty:—
"Flay off the skin, with the feathers, tail, neck, and head thereon. Then take the skin and all the feathers and lay it on the table, strewing thereon ground cumin; then take the peacock and roast him, and baste him with raw yolks of eggs, and when he is roasted take him off and let him cool awhile. Then sew him in his skin, and gild his comb, and so send him forth for the last course."
Our Saxon ancestors were very fond, like the Spaniards, of putting everything into the same pot; and we read of stews that make the blood boil. Travellers tell us of dining with the Esquimaux, on a field of ice, when tallow candles were considered delicious, or they found their plates loaded with liver of the walrus. They vary their dinners by helping themselves to a lump of whale-meat, red and coarse and rancid, but very toothsome to an Esquimau, notwithstanding.
If they should sit down to a Greenlander's table they would find it groaning under a dish of half-putrid whale's tail, which has been lauded as a savoury matter, not unlike cream cheese; and the liver of a porpoise makes the mouth water. They may finish their repast with a slice of reindeer, or roasted rat, and drink to their host in a bumper of train oil.
In South America the tongue of a sea-lion is esteemed a great delicacy. Fashion in Siam prescribes a curry of ants' eggs as necessary to every well-ordered banquet. The eggs are not larger than grains of pepper, and to an unaccustomed palate have no particular flavour. Besides being curried, they are brought to table rolled in green leaves mingled with shreds or very fine slices of pork.
The Mexicans make a species of bread of the eggs of insects which frequent the fresh water of the lagoons. The natives cultivate in the lagoon of Chalco a sort of carex called tonte, on which the insects deposit their eggs very freely. This carex is made into bundles and is soon covered. The eggs are disengaged, beaten, dried, and pounded into flour.
Penguins' eggs, cormorants' eggs, gulls' eggs, the eggs of the albatross, turtles' eggs are all made subservient to the table. The mother turtle deposits her eggs, about a hundred at a time, in the dry sand, and leaves them to be hatched by the genial sun. The Indian tribes who live on the banks of the Orinoco procure from them a sweet and limpid oil which is their substitute for butter. Lizards' eggs are regarded as a bonne bouche in the South Sea Islands, and the eggs of the guana, a species of lizard, are much favoured by West Indians. Alligators' eggs are eaten in the Antilles and resemble hens' eggs in size and shape.