The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 1 (of 2)Paltock, Robert
Science
The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 1 (of 2)
Paltock, Robert
Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction
I stood some time admiring this shrub, and then cutting up one of them,
I found it weighed about two pounds; they had a tough green rind or
covering, very smooth, and the inside full of a stringy pulp, quite
white. In short, I made divers other trials of berries, roots, herbs,
and what else I could find, but received little satisfaction from any
of them for fear of bad qualities. I returned back ruminating on what
things I had seen, resolving to take my cart the next walk, and bring
it home loaded with different kinds of them, in order to make my trials
thereof at leisure: but my cart being too flat and wanting sides, I
considered it would carry very little, and that what it would otherwise
bear, on that account, must tumble and roll off, so I made a fire and
turned smith; for with a great deal to do breaking off the wards of a
large key I had, and making it red-hot, I by degrees fashioned it into a
kind of spindle, and therewith making holes quite round the bottom of my
cart, in them I stuck up sticks about two feet high that I had tapered
at the end to fit them.
Having thus qualified my cart for a load, I proceeded with it to the
wood, and cutting a small quantity of each species of green, berry,
fruit, and flower that I could find, and packing them severally in
parcels, I returned at night heavy-laden, and held a council with myself
what use they could most properly be applied to.
I had amongst my goods, as I said, a copper-kettle which held about a
gallon: this I set over my fire and boiled something by turns of every
sort in it, watching all the while, and with a stick stirring and
raising up one thing and then another, to feel when they were boiled
tender: but of upwards of twenty greens which I thus dressed, only one
proved eatable, all the rest becoming more stringy, tough, and
insipid for the cooking. The one I have excepted was a round, thick,
woolly-leafed plant, which boiled tender and tasted as well as spinach;
I therefore preserved some leaves of this to know it again by; and for
distinction called it by the name of that herb.
I then began upon my fruits of the pear and quince kind, at least eight
different sorts; but I found I could make nothing of them, for they were
most of them as rough and crabbed after stewing as before, so I laid
them all aside. Lastly, I boiled my ram's-horn and cream-cheese, as I
called them, together. Upon tasting the latter of these, it was become
so watery and insipid, I laid it aside as useless. I then cut the other
and tasted the juice, which proved so exceeding pleasant that I took a
large gulp or two of it, and tossed it into the kettle again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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