Ostrich’s eggs have often been treated of, and every traveller speaks of them according to his particular experience. Probably, when a party of half-a-dozen men have plenty of bread and every other necessary for a good meal, they will find that one egg is quite enough for them; while a stout fellow, destitute of everything but a keen appetite, would find an ostrich’s egg not more than enough to satisfy himself. The capacity of a good-sized one is about 2½ pints, the taste is rich, and sometimes a trifle strong; in fact, we could never eat much of one unless it were in some way diluted, say mixed with flour and made into a cake. The readiest way of cooking them is to break one end of the shell, set the other end into the embers on the ground, and so cook and serve the contents in their own shell. We prefer, however, to start the egg into an earthen pot, and add nearly an equal quantity of flour or meal, making cakes or fritters, seasoned or not according to taste.
Various foods.
Indeed, we should think that, if eggs in plenty could be obtained, this would be a very economical and effective way of provisioning a small party for a journey where everything must be carried, and where the means of carriage was scant or perhaps altogether wanting; but, in this case, the eggs would have to be mixed with as much flour as they would take up, and the cakes baked as dry as possible without burning any part of them. A nautical friend has told us of a plan adopted on surveying expeditions, when boats are sent for several days from the ship. A rough grater is made by punching holes in a sheet of tin, and a junk of salt meat grated down tolerably fine; the meat powder is then mixed with flour with very little water, rolled up into small balls or cakes, and dried in the galley. When wanted, a portion is broken off, kneaded with a little water, enveloped in a crust of flour and water, tied up in a cloth, and boiled in the boat’s copper as a meat pudding.
The North Australian expedition was abundantly supplied with preserved fresh meat, but the tins in which it was packed could not conveniently be carried in bags on pack horses, and therefore, in preparation for an extensive inland journey, estimating the quantity required, we took out of store equal weights of preserved beef and flour; then taking the contents of a 6lb. tin of beef and 6lb. of flour, he kneaded them together, divided the mass into forty-eight parts of ¼lb. each, and baked them in an oven built of clay and the schooner’s pig ballast for the purpose. Nearly 3lb. weight were lost by the evaporation of the moisture in the process of baking, so that the forty-eight cakes representing 12lb. of meat and flour, and forming six days’ rations for one man, could be carried at a weight of 9lb.; the rations of sugar and other groceries making the total weight only about 10½lb. or at most 11lb. As long as the biscuits remained whole four of them were considered equivalent to 1lb.; but when they were broken up into dust a pannikin about three-quarters full was reckoned an equivalent. In either case, the best way of using it was to mix it with water and warm it up as a thick soup. This compound has been adopted by other travellers in Australia, and found to answer the purpose exceedingly well.
We should think that where fresh and really good fruit is plentiful it might be treated with flour nearly in the same manner, and would form a very agreeable variation in the diet. Dried fruit may be had in many countries, such as Cape Colony, where dried peaches, raisins, &c. are constantly in the market, and these stewed with the meat are not to be despised; but in some form or other vegetable matter, as acid as possible, is absolutely necessary; for no one who has not been compelled to live for weeks together upon meat alone can imagine how utterly disgusting the smell and taste of even the freshest and most savoury joints become when unvaried by any vegetable, to say nothing of the injury to health that such a diet must cause. In Australia we have gathered the young shoots of the wild vine and made what our cook called rhubarb tarts of them; and when these failed, a small succulent herb called “portulac,” or more popularly “potluck,” which could be eaten as a salad, supplied their place. In Africa we have found unspeakable relief from a bundle of dry tamarinds brought from a distant tribe; and when recrossing the desert during the rainy season, we found abundant supplies of wild grapes growing luxuriantly along our path. No matter that they were not ripe; the more tart and sour they were the better; and by the time we had got well within the desert border, and were beginning to find that the intense sourness, which had already served its purpose as a corrective, was beginning to set our teeth on edge, we also began to find riper clusters on the bushes as we advanced; they were, of course, not equal to the cultivated varieties, but were by no means a bad substitute.
We also gathered daily large quantities of the beer berry, or “ovúmbapoov,” about the size of a cranberry, but nearly filled with a hard stone or kernel; these were of a pleasant, sweetish, acid taste, and could be eaten as we gathered them and walked along, or when we halted could be pounded with water in a “halwe stamp block,” or modern mortar, into a very pleasant pulp; the only drawback was the small quantity of food in proportion to the amount of kernel, and the difficulty of getting rid of the latter. Sometimes we would collect a quantity, pour boiling water upon them, let it stand to extract the juices, and then put it aside to ferment. The liquor thus obtained was not unpleasant, it was something between inferior beer and second-rate cider. Once we boiled the juice down to a thick syrup, which was so sweet that a spoonful of it served instead of sugar to our tea, but the quantity produced was so small in proportion to the trouble that we never repeated the process. Many other fruits, roots, and vegetables might be named; but if the traveller makes friends of the natives they will find whatever the country produces for him, and they will never refuse to share what they pick up either with him or with their hungry comrades. Indeed their language supplies no title of contempt equivalent to that of “the man who eats alone,” or who saves anything for the morrow.
We cannot omit, however, to mention the fruit of the Baobab or “Adansonia,” which both in Africa and in Australia we have found extremely valuable. The tree will at once be known by its enormous size. We have generally seen young, well-conditioned trees 30ft. in circumference, while others have been 50ft. or 60ft., and the largest we know of was actually 101ft.; its height, however, is by no means proportionate, it being seldom more than 60ft., or at most 70ft. or 80ft. The fruit is generally about the size of an ostrich’s egg, though we have seen it much larger; the rind is about as thick as the egg-shell, and easily broken; the interior is occupied by seeds imbedded in a pleasant sub-acid pulp, of a white colour, which when dry resembles cream of tartar, and has caused the Dutch Africans to bestow upon it the name of “krem tart boom,” or cream-of-tartar tree. This pulp the Bushmen pound up with a little water, and sometimes mix with it a little meal of grass seeds, to thicken it, or by adding more water make a very pleasant drink.
In Australia we found even the soft wood so succulent that we could cut out a junk with the axe, and chew it for the moisture it contained like a wet sponge; while the fruit of the Gouty-stem tree (Adansonia Gregorii), when boiled up with a little sugar, acted as a powerful antiscorbutic among the sailors of our little schooner, completely curing the disease, and leaving only the unavoidable weakness, from which, with the advantage of better food, they gradually recovered. Millet of various kinds, known under the general denomination of Kafir corn, can be purchased from most of the Kafir and Bechuana tribes. It may be eaten boiled with meat, but should be previously husked in a wooden mortar, and would be better and more digestible if it were also bruised. We have ground it to a kind of rough meal in a coffee-mill, but found that it would not knead up into cakes without a little European or colonial flour to bind it. Sometimes the native women bruise it to meal in their wooden mortars, and in times of scarcity gather the seeds of several wild grasses, which they treat in the same manner.
This meal will not make bread in our sense of the word, but it will make a very good mess, something between bread and pap or porridge, called “maassa.” An earthen pot with water is set upon the fire, and when the water boils a little meal is dropped in and stirred, more and more is then gradually added and stirred until the mess thickens, and is served up like a very dense paste. A very little soup or meat gravy makes it agreeable enough.
Maize or Indian corn is very extensively grown in Africa, and most other warm countries, and nothing can be more delicious than the young ears, either boiled or roasted in their sheath, the leaves of which everyone strips off for himself when it comes to table, spreading a little butter on the ear according to taste; it is perfect etiquette in this case to take the ear up in both hands just as you would pick a bone, and bite the grains off; indeed, the young corn cannot be properly eaten in any other manner.