492- Voyage of the Novara. 



ivory, ebony, or bamboo, borders on the marvellous. In their 

 hands, held between their fingers, they become like a pair of 

 pincers, with which they can pick up the smallest objects, 

 and can eat rice-grains, beans, or peas as easily as they can 

 separate the flakes of a fish from its skin, or remove the shell 

 of a hard-boiled Q^g. 



As to the ingredients of the dishes presented, we must 

 frankly avow that by far the greater number were utterly un- 

 known to us, for the Chinese cuisine, oddly enough, sets great 

 store on making the materials unrecognizable, and altering 

 their natural flavour by various recipes and culinary mysteries. 

 According to the inquiries which we made of our carver, our 

 host seemed so anxious to fulfil to the letter his promise to 

 give us a real Chinese repast, that he had resolved on not 

 sparing us a single one of the rarer dainties of Chinese epi- 

 cures. Thus we not only had swallows' nests, lapwings' eggs, 

 and steamed frogs, but also roasted silkworms, shark-fins, stag 

 and buff'alo tendons, biche-de-mar, bamboo roots, sea-weed, 

 half-fledged chickens, and various other natural delicacies. 

 The table was supplied at least three times with fresh delica- 

 cies, and we believe we do not exaggerate when we estimate 

 the number of different dishes at not less than half a hundred. 

 Meat of all sorts was at a discount, and was served up in 

 small morsels ready carved; * on the other hand, rice and veget- 



* The Chinese find it not less inexphcable that we use such murderous-looking 

 instruments to divide and convey our food to our mouths, with which they think 

 we must every moment be in danger of wounding our lips or putting our eyes out, 



