THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 231 



other viands, were incomparably better cooked than in corresponding 

 places in England, and the variety was greater than is common in 

 many middle-class houses. The ordinary supper of the "roughs" 

 above named was of three courses : first a minestra, i. e., a soup of 

 some kind, continually varied, or a savory dish of macaroni ; then a 

 ragout or savory stew of vegetables and meat, followed by an excel- 

 lent salad ; the beverage a flask of thin but genuine wine. When I 

 come to the subject of cheese, I will describe their mode of cooking 

 and using it. 



My first walk through Italy extended from the Alps to Naples, and 

 from Messina to Syracuse. I thus spent nearly a year in Italy, during 

 a season of great abundance, and never saw a drunken Italian. A few 

 years after this I walked through a part of Lombardy, and found the 

 little osterias as bad as English beer-shops or low public-houses. It 

 was a period of scarcity and trouble ; " the three plagues," as they 

 called them — the potato-disease, the silk-worm fungus, and the grape- 

 disease — had brought about general privation. There was no wine at 

 all ; potato-spirit and coarse beer had taken its place. Monotonous 

 polenta, a sort of paste or porridge made from Indian-corn meal, to 

 which they give the contemptuous name of miserahile, was then the 

 general food, and much drunkenness was the natural, consequence. 



XIX. 



Referring to No. 17 of this series (November " Monthly "), a cor- 

 respondent who has just returned from Norway, where he followed the 

 route of my last trip there, reminds me of the marvelous congregation 

 of sea-birds that assembles on some of the headlands of the Arctic 

 Ocean, and suggests that egg-oil might be obtained in large quantities 

 there. He quotes from the work of P. L. Simmonds on " Waste Prod- 

 ucts " the following : " In the Exhibition of 1862 the Russian Com- 

 mission showed egg-oil in large quantities and of various qualities, the 

 best so fine as to far excel olive-oil for cooking purposes " ; but it was 

 not suflSciently cheap for general use. 



Among the places indicated by Mr. Grimwood Taylor, the most 

 remarkable is Sverholt Klubben, a grand headland between the North 

 Cape and Nord Kyn, rising precipitously from the sea to a height of 

 above one thousand feet. The face of the rock weathers perpendicu- 

 larly, forming a number of ledges about two or three feet above each 

 other, and extending laterally for more than a mile. On the two 

 occasions when I passed it, the whole of this amphitheatre was occu- 

 pied by a species of gull, the " kittiwake," perched on the ledges, their 

 white breasts showing like the shirt-fronts of an audience of a million 

 or two of male pygmies in evening dress. On blowing the steam- 

 whistle, the rock appeared to advance, and presently the sky was dark- 

 ened by a living cloud, and every other sound was extinguished by a 

 roar of wings and the harsh, wailing screams of a number of birds that 



