FULTON MARKET. 41 



not so fine as in England ; vegetables and fruit excellent ; 

 the mutton very middling, and the fowls nothing like so 

 fat or large as those in the Old World. As to the venison, 

 from the common deer of the country, it was killed without 

 care as to sex, age, or condition, and I saw none that in 

 England we should call fat, and none ever came to table 

 with what fat there had been on them, for in cooking it was 

 all roasted off. In addition to this, they kill the bucks 

 too late, or when " the rut" is coming on, which of 

 course militates against both fat and flavour. The meat 

 of the deer is fine in grain and good to the taste, and, if 

 fat, I have no doubt but that the venison would be 

 excellent. As to fish, the market (if I may judge from 

 what I saw at the hotel as well as on private tables) was 

 badly supplied ; the only good sea-fish I ate there, and 

 that was but once, was called the " Spanish mackerel." 

 It seemed in flavour, size, and hue to be much the same 

 as those caught on the coasts of England. The best 

 fresh- water fish that I tasted was " the bass," which is, 

 in fact, the American perch, and I believe grows to 41b. 

 and 51b. weight, and occasionally more. They have a 

 less fish, that they call the " black perch," which is by 

 no means a delicacy; and also a fish they call the 

 " crappee," shaped something like the English bream, 

 which has very little to recommend it. The catfish, which 

 some of the Americans are very fond of, when dressed 

 resembles a bad eel. Excellent sport can be had in the 

 spring and fall of the year, by spinning a minnow for 

 the bass and crappee fish in the tributaries or back 

 waters of the Missouri and Mississippi, and the black 

 bass will rise freely at a fly. In the lakes of America 

 there are the trout and what they call the lake salmon, 

 and the common pike and other fish ; so that the 



