In France, for some reason, Normandy seems to have made foreigners more comfortable than elsewhere, yet Picardy, so little distant, was just the opposite. Picardy, however, at this time was stamped with the character of border-country more disastrously than any other district of France. Nothing remained, indeed, to the country as a whole, as regards cooking, but a reputation for entrées, or, as they were called then, "quelques-choses." "A hard bed and an empty kitchen" was a common experience in different districts; one party arrived at Antibes, on the Riviera, in 1606, to find one melon constituting all the provisions of the only inn. Comparison of the fare in the various countries of Europe shows no more striking inequalities of supply than is the case with butter: in Poland so plentiful as to be used for greasing cart-wheels; in France so scarce and so bad that English ambassadors used to import theirs from home; in Spain still scarcer, except in cow-breeding Estremadura. A German, when he wanted to buy butter, was directed to an apothecary, who produced a little, and that much rancid, preserved in a she-goat's bladder for use as an ingredient in salves, telling him there was not such another quantity in all Castile. It was not merely on account of the sleeping accommodation that those who had been to Spain thanked God for their return and wondered at it. The wine, they said, was undrinkable, owing to the flavour imparted to it by the skins that held it; and as for eatables, all had to be bought separately by the traveller and cooked by him when he was tired. A still greater trouble was to find any to buy. One complains that his stomach roared for want of victuals and had to be answered with nothing but roast onions; and so on. But here again can be traced the effects of their buying their experience in the north: what the south thought of the north may be guessed from the Andalusian hero of a picaresque tale recollecting how the food of a Catalan acquaintance of his consisted of hard bread once every three days. The force of prejudice may be exemplified by a note or two from the journal of a courtier[96] who followed after Prince Charles when the latter went incognito to Madrid. His chief complaints as to food are: At the first stopping-place past Santander, whither notice of their coming had been sent a fortnight earlier, they had a plank instead of a table, a few eggs, half a kid burnt black, and no table linen. At a tavern in a wood, the woman laid a cloth on a stool by way of a table, and placed two loaves on it while she fried eggs and bacon for them: enter, from the wood, two black swine who knock the stool over and depart with a loaf each. And yet, although he has noted having enjoyed a good fat turkey at one place and very good hens at another, when he lands at Weymouth he says that there was more meat on the table than he had seen in two hundred miles riding in Spain.