238 WILD SPORTS OF THE WEST. 



scholarly of the matSriel of a plum-pudding — ^and I 

 once had the misfortune to fall into a shooting party 

 afflicted with such a personage — I would consort no more 

 upon the heath than I would shoot with a cook or draw 

 a cover with a confectioner. And yet, with these 

 antipathies, I recommend the neophyte to make himself 

 in everything as independent as he can. A few practical 

 lessons are worth a world of precept : one week's 

 cooking on the moors will render him for life an adept ; 

 and if gun and angle fail him not, he will be able to 

 command a dinner, without owing to the devil the 

 compliment of a bad cook. 



Did I wish to elucidate my opinions, I would stake 

 them upon two items in our bills of fare. The soldier 

 compounded the soup — and such soup ! — and yet it 

 was the simple extract of a mountain hare, and five 

 broken birds, which had been too much injured to 

 permit their being sent away. Shade of Kitchener ! 

 one spoonful of that exquisite potage would have made 

 thee abandon half thy theories, and throw thy 

 " cunningest devices " to the winds ! 



The Priest superintended the fish — ^an eight-pound 

 salmon, crimped, split, sub-divided, and roasted upon 

 bog-deal skewers before a clear turf-fire. All the 

 sauces that Lazenby ever fabricated could not produce 

 that soup or emulate this broil. Let him, whose jaded 

 palate a club-house cook cannot accommodate, try 

 the cuisinerie of our cabin. He shall walk to the mountain 

 lake, and on his return, the Colonel will compose a soup, 

 and the Priest supply a salmon : if eating like a plough- 

 man be to him a pleasure — 



" If these won't make him, 

 The devil take him ! " 



