SUPPEE. 253 



was hissing away before the heat as musically as if in a 

 Dutch oven. 



Mike had, in the meanwhile, plucked a pair of young 

 black ducks, fastening their wings to their bodies with 

 little sassafras skewers so they should not get burned, 

 and tying them by their legs to long strings, hung them 

 near the fire on high sticks. They looked like bales of 

 cotton, or like horses when they are suspended by tackles 

 to be hoisted on shipboard. The strings being then 

 tightly twisted, gave a rotary motion to the birds that 

 presented every side equally to the fire, and prevented 

 them from burning. A few fragrant leaves, and a dozen 

 oysters being stuffed in each one, answered in the place 

 of dressing. 



Lou Jackson prepared the corn-bread as only a South- 

 woman can, and it was laid on a flat stone that had been 

 carefully selected, and had served for this purpose for 

 several previous dinners, and it would have been a plea- 

 sant amusement to see the white dough gradually becom- 

 ing mahogany brown before the fire, had we not each 

 been busy with the more delicate duties of the 

 kitchen. 



I made the boys cut some long wooden skewers, and 

 Rose, having cut a deer's liver in small square pieces, an 

 inch in diameter, we impaled a half dozen of these little 

 cubes on each skewer, and stuck them up before the fire 

 at a safe distance from the coals. A piece of bear's fat of 

 the same size as the piece of liver was stuck on the top 

 of each skewer, so that as the heat of the fire gradually 



