286 



INDIAN CORN. 



the new food of mankind, had to terminate 

 here. My molendiary resources (as you 

 who read my name will laughingly admit) 

 were small ; my individual need of meal 

 was small ; in fine, my stock of patience 

 too was done. 



" This being the condition under which 

 Indian meal is hitherto known to the Bri- 

 tish population, no wonder they have little 

 love for it, no wonder it has got a bad 

 name among them ! ' Soot-and-sawdust 

 meal, with the admixture of brayed flint ;' 

 this is not a thing to fall in love with; 

 nothing but starvation can reconcile a man 

 to this. The starving Irish paupers, we 

 accordingly find, do but eat and curse ; 

 complain loudly that their meal is unwhole- 

 some ; that it is bad and bitter; that it is 

 this and that — to all which there is little 

 heed paid, and the official person has to 

 answer with a shrug of the shoulders. In 

 the unwholesomeness, except, perhaps for 

 defect of boiling, I do not at all believe ; 

 but as to the bitter, uncooked unpaiatability, 

 my evidence is complete. 



" Well, three days ago, I received, di- 

 rect from the barn of an American friend, 

 as it was stowed there last autumn, a 

 small barrel of Indian corn in the natural 

 state ; large ears or cobs of corn merely 

 stript of its loose leaves. On each ear, 

 which is of obelisk shape, about the size 

 of a large, thick, truncated carrot, there 

 are, perhap, about five-hundred grains ar- 

 ranged in close order in their eight co- 

 lumns ; the color gold yellow, or, in some 

 cases, with a flecker of blood-red. These 

 grains need to be rubbed off, and ground 

 by some rational miller, whose millstones 

 are hard enough for the work ; that is 

 all the secret of preparing them. And 

 here comes the important point. This 

 grain, I now for the first time find, is sweet, 

 among the sweetest ; with an excellent 

 rich tasts, something like that of nuts; in- 

 deed, it seems to me, probably from novel- 

 ty in part decidedly sweeter than wheat or 

 any other grain I have ever tasted. So that 

 it would appear that all our experiments 

 hitherto on Indian meal have been vitiated 

 to the heart by a deadly original sin, or 

 fundamental falsity to start with ; as if ex- 

 perimenting on Westphalia ham, all the 

 ham hitherto presented us for trial had been 



in a rancid state. The difference between 

 ham and rancid ham, M. Soyerwell known, 

 is considerable ! This is the difference, 

 however, this highly considerable one, we 

 have encountered hitherto in all our experi- 

 ences of Indian meal. Ground by a rea- 

 sonable miller, who grinds only it, and not 

 his millstones along with it, this grain, I 

 can already promise, will make cleanly, 

 wholesome and palatable eating ; and be 

 fit for the cook's art under all manner of 

 conditions ; ready to combine with whatever 

 judicious condiment, and reward well what- 

 ever wise treatment he applies to it; and, 

 indeed, on the whole, I should say, a more 

 promising article could not well be submit- 

 ted to him if his art is really a useful one, 



" These facts, in a time of potato fail- 

 ures, apprehension of want, and occasional 

 fits of wide spread, too-authentic want and 

 famine, when M. Soyer has to set about 

 concocting miraculously cheap soup, and the 

 Government to make enormous grants and 

 rates-in-aid, seem to me of a decidedly com- 

 fortable kind ; well deserving practical in- 

 vestigation by the European Soyer, govern- 

 ment, mendicity societies, poor : law boards,, 

 friends of distressed needle-women and 

 friends of the human species who are often 

 sadly in alarm as to the ''food prospects'' 

 and who have here, if they will clear the 

 entrance, a most extensive harbor of refuge. 



Practical English enterprise, independent 

 of benevolence, might now find, and will 

 by and by have to find, in reference to 

 this foreign article of food, an immense 

 development. And as for specially be- 

 nevolent bodies of men, whose grand text 

 is the ' food prospects,' they. I must declare, 

 are wandering in darkness with broad day 

 beside them, till they teach us to get Indian 

 meal, such as our American cousins get, 

 that we may eat it with thanks to heaven 

 as they do. — New food, whole continents 

 of food ; and not rancid ham, but the ac- 

 tual sound Westphalia! To this consum- 

 mation we must come ; there is no other 

 harbor of refuge for hungry human popu- 

 lation ; but all the distressed population 

 fleets and disconsolate Malthusian of the 

 world may ride there ; and surely it is 

 great pity the entrance were not cleared a 

 little, and a few buoys set up and sound- 

 ings taken by competent persons. C. 



