Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884
Various
Science -- Periodicals
The question, "What is the principal food of the people who live on
these mountains?" has been asked by me several hundred times. The
almost invariable answer has been, "Corn bread, bacon, and coffee."
Occasionally biscuits and game have been mentioned in the answers. All
food is eaten hot. Coffee is usually an accompaniment of all three
meals, and is drunk without cream and often without sugar. Some families
eat beef and mutton for one or two of the colder months in the year on
rare occasions, though beef is commonly considered "onfit to go
upon," as I was told upon several occasions, and mutton sustains less
reputation. Chickens are used for food while they are young and tender
enough to fry, on occasions of quarterly meetings, visits of "kinfolks"
or the "preachers" and the traveling doctors. Fat young lambs are plenty
in many settlements from March to October, and can be had at fifty cents
each, but I could not learn that one was ever eaten.
A large majority of the adult population use tobacco in some shape--the
men by chewing or smoking, the women by smoking or dipping snuff. They
never have dyspepsia, nor do they ever get flesh, after they pass out of
childhood, though nearly all the children are ruddy in appearance, and
well rounded with fat.
One physical type prevails among the people in middle life, and carries
along into old age but little change; and old age is common there.
Nearly every house has its old man or old woman, or both. Everybody,
father and mother, and frequently grandfather and grandmother, is still
on hand, looking as brisk and moving about as lively as the newer
generations. After they pass their forty years, they never seem to
grow any older for the next twenty or thirty, and the grandfathers and
grandmothers can scarcely be selected, by comparison, from their own
children and grandchildren. The men are taller than the average, and
the women, relatively, taller than the men. They are all thin featured,
bright eyed, long haired, sharp looking people, with every appearance of
strength and power of endurance.
I think the men who live on Walden's Ridge can safely challenge the
world as walkers--aborigines and all; and unless the challenge should be
accepted by their own women folks, I feel quite sure they would "win the
boots." They go everywhere on foot, and never seem to tire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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