Out of a little pine box which contained our telegraphic instruments, Viushin had improvised a rude, legless mess-table, which he was engaged in covering with cakes of hardbread, slices of raw bacon, and tumblers of steaming tea. These were the luxuries of civilisation, and beside them on the ground, in a long wooden trough and a huge bowl of the same material, were the corresponding delicacies of barbarism. As to their nature and composition we could, of course, give only a wild conjecture; but the appetites of weary travellers are not very discriminating, and we seated ourselves, like cross-legged Turks, on the ground, between the trough and the instrument-box, determined to prove our appreciation of Korak hospitality by eating everything which offered itself. The bowl with its strange-looking contents arrested, of course, the attention of the observant Dodd, and, poking it inquiringly with a long-handled spoon, he turned to Viushin, who, as _chef-de-cuisine_, was supposed to know all about it, and demanded: "What's this you've got?" "That?" answered Viushin, promptly, "that's _kasha_" (hasty pudding made of rice). "_Kasha_!" exclaimed Dodd, contemptuously. "It looks more like the stuff that the children of Israel made bricks of. They don't seem to have wanted for straw, either," he added, as he fished up several stems of dried grass. "What is it, anyhow?" "That," said Viushin again, with a comical assumption of learning, "is the celebrated 'Jamuk chi a la Poosteretsk,' the national dish of the Koraks, made from the original recipe of His High Excellency Oollcot Ootkoo Minyegeetkin, Grand Hereditary Taiyon and Vwisokee Prevoskhodeetelstvo--" "Hold on!" exclaimed Dodd, with a deprecating gesture, "that's enough, I'll eat it"; and taking out a halfspoonful of the dark viscid mass, he put it to his lips. "Well," said we expectantly, after a moment's pause, "what does it taste like?" "Like the mud pies of infancy!" he replied sententiously. "A little salt, pepper, and butter, and a good deal of meat and flour, with a few well selected vegetables, would probably improve it; but it isn't particularly bad as it is." Upon the strength of this rather equivocal recommendation I tasted it. Aside from a peculiar earthy flavour, it had nothing about it which was either pleasant or disagreeable. Its qualities were all negative except its grassiness, which alone gave character and consistency to the mass.