114 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



Corn-starch is a remarkable edible, supplying the 

 greatest variety possible, never seeming to result in 

 the same production, and furnishing a subject of un- 

 tiring wonder as to what form it will take next. 

 On some days it would be beautiful, transparent, 

 bluish jelly, then it would be a solid, opaque white, 

 and again a dusky brown semi-liquid substance ; 

 frequently it resembled pap, and now and then 

 would be full of doughy lumps, as though endeavor- 

 ing to effect an experimental pot-pie ; sometimes it 

 tasted of liquorice, at others it seemed flavored with 

 molasses; but generally it had not the slightest 

 particle of taste. I never could calculate on a result ; 

 if I tried to obtain jelly, I made, pap ; if pap was my 

 purpose, pot-pie would be the product. 



Don eat it daily in a state of bewilderment bor- 

 dering on idiocy, inquiring regularly after the first 

 taste : " What have we here, now ?" But once, 

 when brown instead of white sugar was used, and 

 effectually obliterated all other flavor, he made what 

 young ladies call a face. The inventor of corn- 

 starch must be a wonderful man, but it is to be 

 desired that he would reduce his bantling to a little 

 better state of subjection, and put on his labels 

 directions more applicable to the woods, where 

 milk and moulds and flavoring extracts are not to 

 be had, and ice-creams are a reminiscence of the 

 past. 



Monotony is the drawback to life in the woods, 

 and corn-starch is doubly welcome on that account. 

 It is nutritious, being composed of the essential 



