The Art of Travel Part 18

Fish-roe is another kind of portable food. The chemists declare its composition to be nearly identical with that of ordinary eggs. (Pereira.) Caviare is made out of any kind of fish-roe; but the recherche sort, only from that of the sturgeon. Long narrow bags of strong linen, and a strong brine, are prepared. The bags are half-filled with the roe, and are then quite filled with the brine, which is allowed to ooze through slowly.

This being done, the men wring the bags strongly with their hands, and the roe is allowed to dry. Roe-broth is a good dish.

Honey, to find, when Bees are seen.--Dredge as many bees as you can, with flour from a pepper-box; or else catch one of them, tie a feather or a straw to his leg, which can easily be done (natives thrust it up into his body), throw him into the air, and follow him as he flies slowly to his hive; or catch two bees, and turning them loose at some distance apart, search the place towards which their flights converge. But if bees are too scarce for either of these methods, choose an open place, and lay in it a plate of syrup as a bait for the bees; after one has fed and flown away again, remove the plate 200 yards in the direction in which he flew; and proceed in the same sort of way, until the nest is found.

Honey-bird.--The instinct of the honey-bird is well-known, which induces him to lead men to hives, that he may share in the plunder. The stories that are told of the apparent malice of the bird, in sometimes tricking a man, and leading him to the lair of wild animals, instead of to the bees'

nest, are well authenticated.

Revolting Food, that may save the Lives of Starving Men.--Suspicion of Poison.--If any meat that you may find, or if the water of any pool at which you encamp, is under suspicion of being poisoned, let one of your dogs eat or drink before you do, and wait an hour to watch the effect of it upon him.

Carrion is not noxious to Starving Men.--In reading the accounts of travellers who have suffered severely from want of food, a striking fact is common to all, namely, that, under those circ.u.mstances, carrion and garbage of every kind can be eaten without the stomach rejecting it. Life can certainly be maintained on a revolting diet, that would cause a dangerous illness to a man who was not compelled to adopt it by the pangs of hunger. There is, moreover, a great difference in the power that different people possess of eating rank food without being made ill by it. It appears that no flesh, and very few fish, are poisonous to man; but vegetables are frequently poisonous.

Dead Animals, to find.--The converging flight of crows, and gorged vultures sitting on trees, show where dead game is lying; but it is often very difficult to find the carcase; for animals usually crawl under some bush or other hiding-place, to die. Jackal-tracks, etc., are often the only guide. It may be advisable, after an unsuccessful search, to remove to some distance, and watch patiently throughout the day, until the birds return to their food, and mark them down.

Rank Birds.--When rank birds are shot, they should be skinned, not plucked; for much of the rankness lies in their skin; or, if unskinned, they should be buried for some hours, because earth absorbs the oil that makes them rank. Their breast and wings are the least objectionable parts, and, if there be abundance of food, should alone be cooked. Rank sea-birds, when caught, put in a coop, and fed with corn, were found by Captain Bligh to become fat and well-tasted.

Skins.--All old hides or skins of any kind that are not tanned are fit and good for food; they improve soup by being mixed with it; or they may be toasted and hammered. Long boiling would make glue or gelatine of them. Many a hungry person has cooked and eaten his sandals or skin clothing.

Bones contain a great deal of nourishment, which is got at by boiling them, pounding their ends between two stones, and sucking them. There is a revolting account in French history, of a beseiged garrison of Sancerre, in the time of Charles IX., and again subsequently at Paris, and it may be elsewhere, digging up the graveyards for bones as sustenance.

Blood from Live Animals.--The Aliab tribe, who have great herds of cattle on the White Nile, "not only milk their cows, but they bleed their cattle periodically, and boil the blood for food. Driving a lance into a vein in the neck, they bleed the animal copiously, which operation is repeated about once a month." (Sir S. Baker.)

Flesh from Live Animals.--The truth of Bruce's well-known tale of the Abyssinians and others occasionally slicing out a piece of a live ox for food is sufficiently confirmed. Thus Dr. Beke observes, "There could be no doubt of the fact. He had questioned hundreds of natives on the subject, and though at first they positively declared the statement to be a lie, many, on being more closely questioned, admitted the possibility of its truth, for they could not deny that cattle are frequently attacked by hyaenas, whose practice is to leap on the animals from behind and at once begin devouring the hind quarters; and yet, if driven off in time, the cattle have still lived."--Times, Jan. 167.

It is reasonable enough that a small worn-out party should adopt this plan, when they are travelling in a desert where the absence of water makes it impossible to delay, and when they are sinking for want of food.

If the ox were killed outright there would be material for one meal only, because a worn-out party would be incapable of carrying a load of flesh.

By the Abyssinian plan the wounded beast continues to travel with the party, carrying his carcase that is destined to be turned into butcher's meat for their use at a further stage. Of course the idea is very revolting, for the animal must suffer as much as the average of the tens or hundreds of wounded hares and pheasants that are always left among the bushes after an ordinary English battue. To be sure, the Abyssinian plan should only be adopted to save human life.

When I travelled in South-West Africa, at one part of my journey a plague of bush-ticks attacked the roots of my oxen's tails. Their bites made festering sores, which ended in some of the tails dropping bodily off. I heard such accidents were not at all uncommon. The animals did not travel the worse for it. Now ox-tail soup is proverbially nutritious.

Insects.--Most kinds of creeping things are eatable, and are used by the Chinese. Locusts and gra.s.shoppers are not at all bad. To prepare them, pull off the legs and wings and roast them with a little grease in an iron dish, like coffee. Even the gnats that swarm on the Shire River are collected by the natives and pressed into cakes.

Wholesome and poisonous Plants.--No certain rule can be given to distinguish wholesome plants from poisonous ones; but it has been observed that much the same thing suits the digestion of a bird that suits that of a man; and, therefore, that a traveller, who otherwise would make trials at haphazard, ought to examine the contents of those birds' crops that he may catch or shoot, to give a clue to his experiments. The rule has notable exceptions, but in the absence of any other guide it is a very useful one.

The only general rules that botany can give are vague and full of exceptions: they are, that a great many wholesome plants are found among the Cruciferae, or those whose petals are arranged like a Maltese cross, and that many poisonous ones are found amongst the Umbelliferae.

Nettle and Fern.--There are two moderately nutritious plants--nettle and fern--that are found wild in very many countries: and, therefore, the following extract from Messrs. Hue and Gabet's 'Travels in Thibet' may be of service:--"When the young stems of ferns are gathered, quite tender, before they are covered with down, and while the first leaves are bent and rolled up in themselves, you have only to boil them in pure water to realise a dish of delicious asparagus. We would also recommend the nettle, which, in our opinion, might be made an advantageous subst.i.tute for spinach; indeed more than once we proved this by our own experience.

The nettle should be gathered quite young, when the leaves are perfectly tender. The plant should be pulled up whole, with a portion of the root.

In order to preserve your hands from the sharp biting liquid which issues from the points, you should wrap them in linen of close texture. When once the nettle is boiled, it is perfectly innocuous; and this vegetable, so rough in its exterior, becomes a very delicate dish. We were able to enjoy this delightful variety of esculents for more than a month. Then the little tubercles of the fern became hollow and h.o.r.n.y, and the stems themselves grew as hard as wood while the nettle, armed with a long white beard, p 203 presented only a menacing and awful aspect." The roots of many kinds of ferns, perhaps of all of them, are edible. Our poor in England will eat neither fern nor nettle: they say the first is innutritious, and the second acrid. I like them both.

Seaweed.--Several kinds of seaweed, such as Laver and Irish moss, are eatable.

Cooking Utensils.--Cookery books.--A book on cooking is of no use at all in the rougher kinds of travel, for all its recipes consist of phrases such as "Take a pound of so-and-so, half a pound of something else, a pinch of this, and a handful of that." Now in the bush a man has probably none of these things--he certainly has not all of them--and, therefore, the recipe is worthless.

Pots and Kettles.--Cooking apparatus of any degree of complexity, and of very portable shapes, can be bought at all military outfitters'; but for the bush, and travelling roughly, nothing is better than a light roomy iron pot and a large strong tin kettle. It is disagreeable to make tea in the same pot that meat is boiled in; besides, if you have only one vessel, it takes a longer time to prepare meals. If possible, take a second small tin kettle, both as a reserve against accidents and for the convenience of the thing. An iron pot, whose lid is the size of the crown of a hat, cooks amply enough for three persons at a time, and can, without much inconvenience, be made to do double duty; and, therefore, the above articles would do for six men. An iron pot should have very short legs, or some blow will break one of them off and leave a hole.

Iron kettles far outwear tin ones, but the comparative difficulty of making them boil, and their great weight, are very objectionable. A good tin kettle, carefully cherished (and it is the interest of the whole party to watch over its safety), lasts many months in the bush. Copper is dangerous; but the recipe is given, further on, for tinning copper vessels when they require it. Have the handle of the kettle notched or bored near the place where it joins the body of the kettle, so as to give a holding by which the lid may be tied tightly down; then, if you stuff a wisp of gra.s.s into the spout, the kettle will carry water for a journey.

Damaged Pots.--A pot or kettle with a large hole in its bottom, filled up with a piece of wood, has been made to boil water by burying it a little way in the earth and making the fire round it. A hole in the side of a pot can be botched up with clay or wood, so as not to leave it altogether useless.

Subst.i.tutes for Pots and Kettles.--It is possible to boil water over a slow fire in many kinds of vessels that would be destroyed by a greater degree of heat. In bark, wooden, skin, and even paper vessels, it is quite possible to boil water. The ruder tribes of the Indian Archipelago use a bamboo to boil their rice: "The green cane resisting the fire sufficiently long for the cooking of one ma.s.s of rice." (Crawfurd.) If, however, you have no vessel that you choose to expose to the risk of burning, you must heat stones and drop them into the water it contains; but sandstones, especially are apt to shiver and make grit. The Dacota Indians, and very probably other tribes also, used to boil animals in their own hide. The description runs thus: "They stuck four stakes in the ground, and tied the four corners of the hide up to them, leaving a hollow in the middle; three or four gallons of water, and the meat cut up very fine, were then put in; three or four hot stones, each the size of a 6-lb. cannon-shot, cooked the whole into a good soup." To a fastidious palate, the soot, dirt, and ashes that are usually mixed up with the soup, are objectionable; but these may be avoided by a careful cook, who dusts and wipes the stones before dropping them in. The specific heat of stone is much less than that of water, so that the heating power of a measure of stone is only about one-half of that of an equal measure of equally hot water.

Graters are wanted to grate jerked meat. A piece of tin, punched through with holes, then bent a little, and nailed to a piece of wood, makes a good one.

Sieves.--Stretch parchment (which see) on a wooden hoop, exactly as on a drum-head; let it dry, and p.r.i.c.k it with a red-hot iron, else punch it full of small holes.

Plates, to carry.--I have travelled much with plates, knives, forks, etc., for three persons, carried in a flat leather case like a portfolio, which hung from the side of the cook's saddle, and I found it very convenient. It was simply a square piece of leather, with a large pocket for the metal plates, and other smaller ones for the rest of the things; it had a flap to tie over it, which was kept down with a b.u.t.ton.

Cups.--Each of the men, on a riding expedition, should carry his own tin mug, either tied to his waist or to his saddle. A wooden bowl is the best vessel for tea, and even for soup, if you have means of frequently washing it: tin mugs burn the lips too much. Wooden bowls are always used in Thibet; they are cut out of the knots that are found in timber.

Spoons.--It is easy to replace a lost spoon by cutting a new one out of hard wood, or by making one of horn. (See "Horn.")

Fireplaces for Cooking.--The most elementary fireplace consists of three stones in a triangle, to support the pot. If stones are not procurable, three piles of mud, or three stakes or green-wood driven into the earth, are an equivalent. Small recesses neatly cut in a bank, one for each fireplace, are much used, when the fuel is dry and well prepared. A more elaborate plan is to excavate a shallow saucer-like hole in the ground, a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, and kneading the soil so excavated into a circular wall, with a doorway in the windward side: the upper surface is curved, so as to leave three pointed turrets, upon which the cooking-vessel rests, as in the sketch. Thus the wind enters at the doorway, and the flames issue through the curved depressions at the top, and lick round the cooking-vessel placed above. The wall is sometimes built of stones.

Trenches and Holes.--In cooking for a large party with a small supply of fuel, either dig a narrow trench, above which all the pots and kettles may stand in a row, and in which the fire is made--the mouth being open to the wind, and a small chimney built at the other end;--or else dig a round hole, one foot deep, and place the pots in a ring on its edge, half resting on the earth, and half overlapping the hole. A s.p.a.ce will remain in the middle of them, and through this the fire must be fed.

Esquimaux Lamp.--The cooking of the Esquimaux is wholly effected by stone lamps, with wicks made of moss, which are so carefully arranged that the flame gives little or no smoke. Their lamps vary in size from one foot and a half long to six inches. Each of the bits of moss gives a small but very bright flame. The lamp is all in all to the Esquimaux; it dries their clothes, and melts the snow for their drinking-water; its construction is very ingenious; without it they could not have inhabited the arctic regions.

Ovens.--Bedouin Oven.--Dig a hole in the ground; wall and roof it with stones, leaving small apertures in the top. They make a roaring fire in and about the oven (the roof having been temporarily removed for the purpose), and when the stones (including those of the roof) have become very hot, sweep away the ashes and strew the inside of the oven with gra.s.s, or leaves, taking care that whatever is used, has no disagreeable taste, else it would be communicated to the flesh. Then put in the meat: it is a common plan to sew it up in its own skin, which shields it from dust and at the same time retains its juices from evaporating. Now replace the roof, a matter of some difficulty, on account of the stones being hot, and therefore requiring previous rehearsal. Lastly, make the fire again over the oven and let the baking continue for some hours. An entire sheep can be baked easily in this way. The same process is used for baking vegetables, except with the addition of pouring occasionally boiling water upon them, through the roof.

Gold-digger's Oven.--The figure represents a section of the oven. A hole or deep notch is dug into the side of a bank, and two flat stones are slid horizontally, like shelves, into grooves made in the sides of the hole, as shown in the figure; where it will be observed that the uppermost stone does not quite reach to the face of the bank, and that the lower-most stone does not quite reach to the back of the hole. A fire of red-hot embers is placed on the floor of the hole; and the bread about to be baked is laid upon the lowermost stone. Lastly, another flat stone is used to close the mouth of the oven: it is set with its edge on the floor of the hole: it leans forward with the middle of its face resting against the front edge of the lowermost stone, a narrow interval being left between its top and the edge of the uppermost stone. This interval serves as a vent to the hot air from the embers, which takes the course shown in the figure. The oven should be thoroughly heated before the bread is put in.

Baking between two stones.--For baking slices of meat or thin cakes, it is sufficient to lay one large stone above another with a few pebbles between, to prevent them from touching. Next make a large fire about the stones until they are thoroughly hot; then sweep away the embers, and insert the slices.

Ant hills as Ovens.--Where there are no stones of which ovens may be built, and where there are old white-ant hills, the natives commonly dig holes in the sides of the ant hills and use them for that purpose.

Clay Ovens.--I have heard of a very neat construction, built with clay, in which gra.s.s had been kneaded. A fire was lit inside, to dry the work as it progressed; while the builder placed rings of clay, in tiers, one above the other, until a complete dome was made without mould or framework. Time was allowed for each ring to dry sufficiently, before the next one was added.

Baking beneath a camp fire.--A small piece of meat, enough for four or five people, can be baked by simply sc.r.a.ping a tolerably deep hole under the bivouac fire; putting in the meat rolled in the skin to which it is attached, and covering it with earth and fire. It is a slow process of cooking, for it requires many hours; but the meat, when done, is soft and juicy, and the skin gelatinous and excellent.

"Meat, previously wrapped up in paper or cloth, may be baked in a clay case, in any sort of pit or oven, well covered over, and with good economy." ('Handbook of Field Service.')

Baking in Pots.--A capital oven is improvised by means of two earthen or metal cooking-pots, of which one is placed on the fire, and in it the article to be baked; the other pot is put upon its top, as a cover, and in it a shovelful of red-hot embers.

Bush Cookery.--Tough Meat.--Hammer it well between two stones before putting it on the fire, and again when it is half cooked, to separate the fibres. I have often seen people save themselves much painful mastication, by hammering at each separate piece of meat, before putting it in their mouths.

Rank Meat.--I have spoken of this, in another section, p. 200.

Kabobs.--Broil the rib-bones, or skewer your iron ramrod through a dozen small lumps of meat and roast them. This is the promptest way of cooking meat; but men on hard work are not satisfied with a diet of nothing else but tough roasted flesh, they crave for succulent food, such as boiled or baked meat.

Salt Meat, to prepare hurriedly.--Warm it slightly on both sides--this makes the salt draw to the outside--then rinse it well in a pannikin of water. This process extracts a large part of the salt, and leaves the meat more fit for cooking.

Haggis.--Hearne, the North American traveller, recommends a "haggis made with blood, a good quant.i.ty of fat shred small, some of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs, cut or town into small skivers; all of which is put into the stomach, and roasted by being suspended before the fire with a string. Care must be taken that it does not get too much heat at first, or it will burst. It is a most delicious morsel, even without pepper, salt, or any seasoning."

Theory of Tea-making.--I have made a number of experiments on the art of making good tea. We constantly hear that some people are good and others bad tea-makers; that it takes a long time to understand the behaviour of a new tea=pot, and so forth; and lastly, that good tea cannot be made except with boiling water. Now, this latter a.s.sertion is a.s.suredly untrue, because, if tea be actually boiled in water, an emetic and partly poisonous drink is the certain result. I had a tin lid made to my teapot, a short tube pa.s.sed through the lid, and in the tube was a cork, through a hole in which a thermometer was fitted, that enabled me to learn the temperature of the water in the teapot, at each moment. Thus provided, I continued to make my tea as usual, and to note down what I observed. In the first place after warming the teapot in the ordinary way, the fresh boiling water that was poured into it, sank invariably to under 200 degrees Fahr. It was usually 180 degrees, so great was the amount of heat abstracted by the teapot. I also found that my teapot--it was a crockery one--allowed the water within it to cool down at the rate of about 2 degrees per minute. When the pot was filled afresh, of course the temperature of its contents rose afresh, and by the addition of water two or three times repeated, I obtained a perfect mastery over the temperature of the pot, within reasonable limits. Now, after numerous days in which I made tea according to my usual method, but measuring strictly the quant.i.ty of leaves, and recording the times and the temperature, and noting the character of tea produced; then, taking as my type of excellence, tea that was full bodied, full tasted, and in no way bitter or flat, I found that this was only produced when the water in the teapot had remained between 180 and 190 degrees Fahr., and had stood eight minutes on the leaves. It was only necessary for me to add water once to the tea, to ensure this temperature. Bitterness was the certain result of greater heat or of longer standing, and flatness was the result of colder water. If the tea did not stand for so long a time as eight minutes, it was not ripe; it was not full bodied enough. The palate becomes far less fastidious about the quality of the second cup. Other people may like tea of a different character from that which I do myself; but, be that as it may, all people can, I maintain, ensure uniformity of good tea, such as they best like, by attending to the principle of making it--that is to say, to time, and quant.i.ties, and temperature. There is no other mystery in the teapot.

Tea made in the kettle.--Where there are no cups or teapot put the leaves in the pot or kettle, and drink through a reed with a wisp of gra.s.s in it, as they do in Paraguay. If there are cups and no teapot, the leaves may be put into the pot, previously enclosed in a loose gauze or muslin bag to prevent their floating about. A contrivance is sold in the shops for this purpose; it is made of metal gauze, and shaped like an egg. A purse made of metal rings would be better, for it would pack flat; but the advantage of muslin over metal apparatus is that you may throw away bag and all, and avoid the trouble of cleaning.