Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 399, January 1849Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 399, January 1849
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Dr Fischer and Pruner, helped to consume, in Kahira, a roasted
fragment of Clot Bey's beautiful giraffe, which had eaten too much
white clover. The meat was very tender, and of tolerably fine grain.
The tongue was quite a delicacy. On the other hand, I never could
stomach the coarse-grained flesh of camels, even of the young ones."
Africa is the land of strong stomachs. The Arabs, when on short
rations, eat locusts; and some of the negro tribes devour the fruit
of the elephant-tree, an abominable species of pumpkin, coveted by
elephants, but rejected even by Arabs, and which Mr Werne found
wholly impracticable, although his general rule was to try all the
productions of the country. His gastronomical experiments are often
connected with curious details of the animals upon which he tried
his teeth. On the 12th January, whilst suffering from an attack of
Nile-fever, which left him scarcely strength enough to post up his
journal, he heard a shot, and was informed that Soliman Kaschef had
killed with a single bullet a large crocodile, as it lay basking on
a sandy promontory of the bank. The Circassian made a present of the
skin to M. Arnaud, an excellent excuse for an hour's pause, that
the Frenchman might get possession of the scaly trophy. Upon such
trifling pretexts was the valuable time of the expedition frittered
away. "Having enough of other meat at that moment, the people
neglected cutting off the tail for food. My servants, however, who
knew that I had already tasted that sort of meat at Chartum, and
that at Taka I had eaten part of a snake, prepared for me by a
dervish, brought me a slice of the crocodile. Even had I been in
health, I could not have touched it, on account of the strong smell
of musk it exhaled; but, ill as I was, they were obliged to throw
it overboard immediately. When first I was in crocodile countries,
it was incomprehensible to me how the boatmen scented from afar
the presence of these creatures; but on my journey from Kahira to
Sennaar, when they offered me in Korusko a young one for sale, I
found my own olfactories had become very sensitive to the peculiar
odour. When we entered the Blue Stream, I could smell the crocodiles
six hundred paces off, before I had seen them. The glands,
containing a secretion resembling musk, are situated in the hinder
part of the animal, as in the civet cats of Bellet Sudan, which are
kept in cages for the collection of the perfume."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account