In Africa Part 23

Boil three large cupfuls of milk. Mix a tablespoonful of corn flour with a little cold milk just to make it into a paste. Add four eggs well beaten and mix together with three tablespoonfuls of sugar. Put into the boiled milk and stir until it thickens, but don't let it boil. When taken off add one teaspoonful of vanilla essence. Cut up ten bananas and put in a dish. Pour custard on when cool.

PRUNE SHAPE (A LA TARLTON)

Stew one-half pound prunes until quite soft. Remove stones and cut prunes small. Dissolve one-half ounce gelatin and add to one-quarter pound sugar, prunes, and kernels. Pour into wetted mold to cool, first adding one-half gla.s.s of sherry. Must be served with banana cream (the Newland).

The third occasion made memorable by a delicious epoch-making dish I shall not specify, as we have dined with many friends during the last nine months. Let it be sufficient if I say that it was at one of these dinners or luncheons.

In our varied gastronomical experiences we found that the cooking on the English ships was usually bad, while that on the German ships was good, excepting the ship that took us from Naples to Mombasa. The Dutch ships were the best of all and the Dutch hotels in Java were the best we struck outside of Paris and London. In comparison with the Hotel des Indes, in Batavia, all the rest of the hotels of the Orient can be mentioned only in a furtive way. It was a revelation of excellence, in perfect keeping with the charm and beauty of Java as a whole.

But we were speaking of things to eat.

At the Hotel des Indes they served us a modest little dish called rice tafel, or "rijs-tafel." You have to go to luncheon early in order to eat it before dinner time. It was served by twenty-four waiters, marching in single file, the line extending from the kitchen to the table and then returning by a different line of march to the kitchen. It was fifteen minutes pa.s.sing a given point. Each waiter carried a dish containing one of the fifty-seven ingredients of the grand total of the rice tafel. You helped yourself with one arm until that got tired, then used the other.

When you were all ready to begin your plate looked like a rice-covered bunker on a golf course.

[Drawing: _The Rice Tafel in Java_]

Rice tafel is a famous dish in Java. It is served at tiffin, and after you have eaten it you waddle to your room in a congested state and sleep it off. After my first rice tafel I dreamed I was a log jam and that lumber jacks with cant hooks were trying to pry me apart.

As the recipe for rice tafel is not to be found in any cook book on account of its length, we give it here even if you won't believe it. To a large heap of rice add the following:

MEAT AND FISH

Spiced beef, deviled soup meat, both fried with cocoanut shreds.

Minced pork, baked.

Fried fish, soused fish, and baked fish.

Fried oysters and whitebait.

SPICES

Red fish.

Deviled shrimps, chutney.

Deviled pistachio nuts.

Deviled onions sliced with pimentos.

Deviled chicken giblets.

Deviled banana tuft.

Pickled cuc.u.mbers.

Cuc.u.mber plain (to cool the palate after hot ingredients).

FOWL, FRUIT, ETC.

Roast chicken, plain.

Steamed chicken with chilis.

Monkey nuts fried in paste.

Flour chips with fish lime (called grapak and kripak).

Fried brinjals without the seeds.

Fried bananas.

JUICES

Yellow--(One) of curry powder with chicken giblets and bouillon.

Brown--(Two) of celery, haricot beans, leeks and young cabbage.

One quart of American pale ale to drink during the "rice tafel."

Our cook Abdullah was not the only interesting type in our _safari_.

Among our dusky colleagues there were thirteen different tribes represented. It was a congress of nations and a babel of tongues. Some of the porters became conspicuous figures early in the march, while some were so lacking in individuality that they seemed like new-comers even after four months out.

[Drawing: _The "Chantecler" of Our Safari_]

Of this latter cla.s.s Ha.s.san Mohammed was not one.

Ha.s.san was my chief gunbearer, and for pious devotion to the Mohammedan faith he was second to none. He was the "Chantecler" of our outfit.

Every morning at four o'clock, regardless of the weather, he would crawl out of his tent, drape himself in a white sheet, and cry out his prayers to Mecca. It was his voice that woke the camp, and the immediate answer to his prayers was sometimes quite irreverent, especially from the Wakamba porters, who were accustomed to sit up nearly all night gambling.

Ha.s.san was a Somali, strictly honest and faithful. He had the Somali's love of a rupee, and there was no danger or hardship that he would not undergo in the hope of backsheesh. It is the African custom to backsheesh everybody when a lion is killed, so consequently the Somalis were always looking for lions. Perhaps he also prayed for them each morning.

When we started we had four Somali gunbearers, each of whom rose at dawn to pray. As we got up in the high alt.i.tudes, where the mornings were bitter cold, the number of suppliants dwindled down to one, and Ha.s.san was the sole survivor. No cold or rain or early rising could cool the fierce religious ardor that burned within him.

Long before daybreak we would hear his voice raised in a singsong prayer full of strange runs and weird minors. The lions that roared and grunted near the camp would pause in wonder and then steal away as the sound of Ha.s.san's devotions rang out through the chilly, dew-laden dawn. And as if fifteen minutes of morning prayer was not enough to keep him even with his religious obligations, he went through two more long recitals in the afternoon and at night.

I sometimes thought that behind his fervent ardor there was a considerable pride in his voice, for he introduced many interesting by-products of harmony that sounded more or less extraneous to both music and prayer. Nevertheless, Ha.s.san was consistent. He never lied, he never stole, and it was part of his personal creed of honor to stand by his master in case of danger. Somali gunbearers are a good deal of a nuisance about a camp, partly because they are the aristocrats of Africa and demand large salaries, but chiefly because they require certain kinds of food that their religion requires them to eat. This is often difficult to secure when far from sources of supplies, and in consequence the equilibrium of camp harmony is sorely disturbed.

They are avaricious and money loving to a deplorable degree, but there is one thing that can be said for the Somali. He will never desert in time of danger and will cheerfully sacrifice himself for his master. He has the stamina of a higher type of civilization, and in comparison to him the lately reclaimed savage is not nearly so dependable in a crisis.

I sometimes suspected that Ha.s.san was not really a gunbearer, but was merely a "camel man" who was tempted from his flocks by the high pay that African gunbearers receive. Notwithstanding this, he was courageous, faithful, willing, honest, good at skinning, and personally an agreeable companion during the months that we were together. I got to like him and often during our rests after long hours afield we would talk of our travels and adventures.

[Photograph: Jumma, the Tent Boy]

[Photograph: Abdullah, the Cook]