The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
When flour, and preserved vegetables, and fresh meat were served out,
and there were coffee-mills all through the camp, the men were still
unable to benefit by the change as their allies did. They could grind
and make their coffee; but they were still without good fresh bread and
soup. They despised the preserved vegetables, not believing that those
little cakes could do them any good. When they learned at last how two
ounces of those little cakes were equal, when well cooked, to eight
ounces of fresh vegetables, and just as profitable for a stew or with
their meat, they duly prized them, and during the final healthy period
those pressed vegetables were regarded in the camp as a necessary of
life. By that time, Soyer's zeal had introduced good cookery into the
camp. Roads were made by which supplies were continually arriving. Fresh
meat abounded; and it was brought in on its own legs, so that it was
certain that beef was beef, and mutton mutton, instead of goat's flesh
being substituted, as in Bulgaria. By that time it was discovered that
the most lavish orders at home and the profusest expenditure by the
commissariat will not feed and clothe an army in a foreign country,
unless there is some agency, working between the commissariat and the
soldiers, to take care that the food is actually in their hands in an
eatable form, and the clothes on their backs.
It is for American soldiers to judge how much of this applies to their
case. The great majority of the volunteers must be handy, self-helping
men; and bands of citizens from the same towns or villages must be
disposed and accustomed to concerted action; but cooking is probably the
last thing they have any of them turned their hand to. Much depends on
the source of their food-supply. I fear they live on the country they
are in,--at least, when in the enemy's country. This is very easy
living, certainly. To shoot pigs or fowls in road or yard is one way of
getting fresh meat, as ravaging gardens is a short way of feasting on
vegetables. But supposing the forces fed from a regular commissariat
department, is there anything to be learned from the Crimean campaigns?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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