INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 9 



other small scraps, are buried in the earth by the natives 

 until putrid, and then eaten cooked or raw. These sub- 

 stances produce a horrible stench when exposed to the 

 air. The Chippewa Indians are said to indulge in this 

 diet. 



The Sioux prepare a favourite dish, used at great 

 feasts, called " washen-ena," consisting of dried meat 

 pulverised and mixed with marrow, and a preparation 

 of cherries, pounded and sun-dried. This mixture, when 

 e^ten raw or cooked, has an agreeable vinous taste. 



The Emperor Napoleon once partook of an African 

 dinner, with tortoise broth for turtle soup, porcupine, 

 gazelle, and loin of the wild boar for pieces de resistance, 

 salmis of Carthaginian hens, antelope cutlets, and 

 bustards for entries, an ostrich for a roast, and for side 

 dishes ostrich eggs in the shell, pomegranate jelly, and 

 all manner of sweetmeats with unpronounceable names 

 like " scerakboracs." Ostrich, by way of roast chicken, 

 is however rather tough eating; and we wonder the 

 Governor, who was his host, did not add a slice or two 

 of lion to the entries, and pickled rhinoceros' foot to the 

 side dishes. They certainly would digest much better 

 than Arab sweetmeats, which, with the exception of 

 "hulwah" are abominable. . 



The late Marquis of Compiegne, writing on the tribes of 

 Equatorial Africa, states that some of them will eat any 

 substance, however putrid, and he relates that they took 

 from the river the floating body of a kind of flying squir- 

 rel (Anoma larus), which had evidently been dead ten or 

 twelve days and was green and horribly swollen, and 

 the skin gone. And yet they roasted and ate this dis- 

 gusting viand, without even disembowelling it,, and con- 

 sidered it an exquisite repast. 



Arabs often eat raw sheep's liver or kidney, seasoned 

 only with salt ; some tribes of Bedouins consume other 

 parts of the sheep in an uncooked state. Others eat 

 gazelles and horseflesh, but this latter is never an article 

 of diet of the northern Bedouins.,-'' 



In Sweden roast reindeer steaks and game are dressed 



