CHAPTER XII.

THE HISTORY OF MUFFINS.--THE ORIGIN OF BUTTER.--THE

ENGLISH BREAKFAST.

The day we landed at Rabat we heard a little tinkling bell through

the street, just like the four o’clock muffin-bell in London. One of

the party asked if it were tea-time amongst the Moors, and the others

laughed, thinking it a good joke:--there was no joke in the case. These

cockney cakes are just as common here as within the sound of Bow bells,

and served for breakfast in Barbary when Queen Elizabeth’s maids of

honour had for theirs beefsteaks and ale, or herrings and bread and

cheese. They are a little larger than those in London, and exactly the

_peiklets_ of the midland counties.

To find muffins and crumpets here is, indeed, in the language of modern

philosophy, a “great and a twofold fact.”[118] It is, however, one

which great men have overlooked; because, although a cook must be a

philosopher, it is not required that a philosopher should be a cook.

The incident set me upon considering the nature of the muffin, and

opened to me a large field of speculation, culinary and historical. I

first perceived that there were combined in the greasy accompaniment

of our tea-tables characters so diverse, that it must have a history,

and an eventful one; that it must have undergone vicissitude and

persecution in the course of its wide career, the range of which in

space and time could not be doubtful, from the place in which I found

it.

Let me dispose first of the word _crumpet_: it is clearly a recent one.

Peiklet is still used in the interior of England, and one name is given

to both by Moors and Jews, _sfen_; I shall, therefore, equally employ

for both the word “muffin.”[119]

The muffin is _bread_, _cake_, and _dish_:[120] like the first, it

is fermented; like the second, baked or toasted on a griddle; like

the third, it requires to be cooked before it is eaten. Our method

of cooking, by toasting first and then softening by butter, appears

at the first glance the travestie of some lost method. The use of

the toasting-fork could not have preceded coal-fires and grates with

upright bars, an invention not earlier than the Georges; nor could it

have preceded the use of butter, which cannot be traced beyond the

Dutch stadtholder. In America, they do not toast and butter muffins,

but eat them hot, as baked. They were, therefore, originally a part

of the regular cookery of the country, and, indeed, could not belong,

as at present, to “breakfast” and “tea,” which meals are of recent

invention. Morocco presents the original practice: here they are

simmered in oil or butter, and then dipped in honey. I did not see

them used in dressed dishes; but Marmol, writing two centuries ago,

describes them as employed in this manner. He says, “In Morocco, there

are two ways of making bread--baking in an oven, as we do in Europe,

and preparing it in pans to be eaten hot with honey and butter, or with

oil. These cakes are sometimes stewed with the flesh of goats, for that

of sheep is difficult to be got at, and that of cattle they do not

consider wholesome.”[121]

The Moors and the Jews cook them differently, the former using butter,

the latter oil: they thus connect baking and cooking, and illustrate

differences between Judaism and Islam, or, perhaps, between Jew and

Gentile. With these data it may be worth while to endeavour to find

traces of them in ancient times.

Baking in Greece had attained to the highest perfection, as exhibited

in separating or bolling the flour,[122] and in kneading the

dough.[123] The art of baking, as connected with religious festivals,

possessed an importance which, to us, is inconceivable. Among the Greek

states, Athens was most distinguished for its bread; yet there were

there foreign bakers--and these Lydians.[124] There was bread known by

the name of Cappadocian, and the Phœnicians were held bakers of first

repute. This people was said to possess as many kinds of bread as there

were days in the year: their merit, however, does not seem to have

consisted in baking, properly so called, but in combining preparations

of flour with other viands; and in the Old Testament we have constant

references to the mixtures of flour with oil and honey, all which

approach to the Moorish sfen.

The names of only three out of the three hundred and sixty-five kinds

of Phœnician bread have been handed down: the three resemble one

another. This must have been the kind of bread for which Phœnicia was

celebrated, and the descriptions apply to the muffin and the sfen,

still preserved in countries which they colonized. The three kinds are

_lackmar_, _chebrodlapson_, and _maphula_: lackmar is evidently derived

from lackma, to swallow (whence _lick_), and must have been remarkably

soft. Athenæus calls it “ἄρτον ἁπαλόν [arton hapalon].” It was prepared

with milk and oil: the Syrians were celebrated for making it. That it

was known to the Jews is proved by the word _lachmanigoth_, which

occurs in the Talmud.[125] It was known to the Arabs, and is described

by Mininski as a fritter of flour, dried grapes, oil, and fresh wine:

of chebrodlapson, we only know that it was prepared with honey. How

these were baked is not stated; but the third, maphula, was not

fired in the oven, but on the hearth, or on a griddle. In the three

collectively, we have all the ingredients and the methods at present in

use in Morocco,[126] viz. flour, milk, oil, honey, and a griddle for

firing them.

In maphula, we have the word employed in England. Taking away the

final vowel added by the Greeks, and changing _l_ for its cognate _n_,

maphula or mufula becomes mufu_n_.[127]

These names have puzzled the most learned. Bochart avows his

perplexity; Casaubon avers that “we ought not to be ashamed of

confessing our ignorance of what we do not know, and, _ipso facto_,

confesses his own.” Their difficulties disappear, as usual, before the

knowledge of habits. Flour, milk, oil, and honey mixed up together

would, indeed, form a sorry dish; as the critics, not being cooks,

could not devise the process by which they could be converted into a

palatable one. Bochart, with his usual sagacity, has detected the union

of cooking and baking, and also that the Jews and Arabs cooked the

muffin differently. He has, however, mistaken the distinction; he makes

the Jews use oil _or_ butter, the Arabs fat: the Jews cook it in oil

only, the Arabs prefer butter.

The griddle on which muffins are baked in London,[128] is precisely

the same as that used in the East, and fixed in the same manner over

the fire. It serves for a variety of other dishes and preparations of

flour.[129] On it is made the pastry of the East, which all travellers

have tasted, which many have pronounced exquisite, and yet which none

have described, or suspected, perhaps, to be different from that of

Europe.

The secret of French pastry consists in bringing the butter and the

dough to exactly the same consistency: this is effected by temperature

for the butter, by water for the dough, cooling down the one or

softening the other. When so adjusted, the butter in one mass is

covered in;[130] it then spreads under the rolling-pin equally as the

dough spreads, each in its own plane. Folded over and over again, the

two keep distinct, and thus are obtained the flakes.

The butter of the East is fluid, and runs like oil; how, then, can

they have flake-pastry? It was this difficulty which spurred their

invention, and produced the unrivalled method which I shall now

describe.

Wheat is steeped till it sprouts; it is then rubbed down, or pounded

in a mortar, till it acquires the consistency of cream. In this

state it is poured in ladles on the griddle, rubbed with butter.

Instantly hardening, it is tossed off, sheet after sheet: the name is

_youfka_.[131] It is then strung, and hung up: when wanted, a bundle of

it is laid into the dish, or _taien_,[132] for the under-crust; the

contents, sweet or savoury, of the pastry, are then put in, and the

upper-crust in the same manner laid on. By this process are attained,

in the highest degree, all the objects of French pastry--fineness of

flour with a certain _agro dolce_ flavour, softness in the substance,

fineness and equality in the flake. It has the advantage, also, over

our pastry, of facility and economy of time.

Old Arabic writers mention two kinds of food prepared by making

_Khebes_, which are compared to the banana and _Neïdeh_ described by

Abd Allatib, as follows: “Wheat is soaked until it sprouts; it is then

boiled until its whole substance passes into the water; the water is

then clarified, and boiled down until it gets thick; at this point a

little flour is thrown in, and it sets; it is then taken from the fire,

and sold at the price of bread.” This is _Neïdeh Albousch_; but when no

flour is added, and it is boiled until it coagulates, it is better and

sells for a higher price, and is called _Neïdeh Makoudeh_.[133]

Soyonti speaks of it as one of the things in high estimation in Egypt,

and quotes an old writer, who says that it was discovered by the Virgin

Mary. Being without milk, she was inspired with the idea of preparing

it for the Infant Jesus. P. Sicard saw this dish at Meuschieh, and thus

describes it: “The grain is steeped for several days till it sprouts;

it is then dried, pounded or ground, and boiled for use. A sweet and

agreeable confection is then made without sugar, and the people of the

country esteem it much, and are very fond of it.”[134] In the time of

Sonnini it had disappeared from Meuschieh. Here we have the steeping

of the grain, the grinding, and the diluting of it in water, as in the

present Eastern pastry. Although we have not the toasting of it on the

griddle, more cannot be wanted to carry this process back to ancient

times, and to those celebrated baker-cooks of Tyre and Sidon.

The neïdeh is still preserved in Britain under the name of _Frumenty_

or _Furmity_. The method of preparing it is now in the hands of a

few persons only, and has become a secret; and, probably, in another

generation it too will have died out, under the crushing roller of

subdivision of labour. Where still used, it is only on one occasion

in the year, _Mid Lent Sunday_. When brought to market it is of the

consistence of thick gum. Those who have eaten it describe it as an

excellent dish. The festival when it is used may have some connexion

with the Arab tradition concerning Mary’s milk.[135]

In the Highlands there is at once the neïdeh, the cadaëf, and the

youfka; not, however, by malting, but by fermentation. Oat seeds are

steeped for ten days till they ferment, the water is then boiled till

it thickens. This is _sowans_;[136] or it is poured on the griddle and

made into _scons_,[137] which are used on festal occasions, but chiefly

at Christmas.[138] That the Highlanders understood malting is shown in

their whiskey, which they did not wait for Paracelsus to teach them to

distil.

The first step in preparing flour or meal for food, is the ashes

on the griddle; the next and last is, the oven. The peculiarity of

bread resides in the baking in the oven; fermentation is called in as

an auxiliary: the process is elaborate and complicated. When first

invented, the oven and its produce, the baking and the bread, would be

known by the same name. In early times words had to do severe duty. A

soft flat roll, resembling the common bread of Barbary, is called in

Scotland, _bake_. If so called because it is baked, it must have been

so at the origin of baking. “Bake” would thus belong to the earliest

ages, and go back to the first discovery of an oven, which, by one

peculiar and horrid ceremony, we can trace to Sabæa.[139]

Now, this very word is written in a book two thousand three hundred

years ago, and then as an old one--as one of the oldest in use among

men.[140] There we learn that the Phrygian name for bread was _bake_;

bake was, therefore, asked for three thousand years ago, by Pelethite

or Cerethian at Escalon or Gorja, just as to-day by the barefooted

callant of Paisley or Linlithgow. It may be objected that the word,

if in use in Canaan, would not have been mentioned as Phrygian; but

the colony may have retained an ancient word which the metropolis

had lost,[141] or the metropolis may, without losing the one, have

introduced new names for new inventions. The Phœnician words which have

been preserved are of that description. Lackmar, Chebrodlapson, are

fine terms, such as would strike strangers more than the homely one

in common use. The Egyptians, besides, were not given to travel; and

with shoals of travellers and clouds of books, see how difficult--nay,

impossible, it is to get at the simple things of any country.

However, “bake” and “muffin” do not stand alone: they are accompanied

by a goodly array of emigrants from the Holy Land. I adduce them, not

to prove any affinity of Hebrew and Celtic, or of Indo-Germanic and

Semitic, but to establish the intercourse of our forefathers with those

countries. Thus have come to us _cake_,[142] _bun_,[143] _scon_,[144]

_sowans_,[145] _bread_,[146] _broth_, _bear_[147] (old Teutonic for

grain), _beer_, _barley_, and I may, perhaps, add _ham_[148] and

_meat_,[149] which, with those given before, make a baker’s dozen.

I will now leave it to the antiquarian to determine whether sfen came

hither with the “diggers” for tin, or with those later “Afers,” whose

persons and wares increased in the eyes of William the Norman, as the

author of “Harold” narrates, the attraction of the capital of England.

But anyhow, this remains certain, that muffins and crumpets were served

at Hiram’s table.

A stranger from Europe is little surprised to find _butter_ in Morocco.

I had spent years in the East, and never had seen butter. I had myself

introduced it both in Greece and Turkey; what, then, was my surprise to

find it here. You may see in a boy’s hand a roll sliced--yes, sliced

bread in a Mussulman’s hand, with a lump of butter inside for his

breakfast, just as in England. It is pale, sweet, cowslip-flavoured,

and smelling of the country[150]--I mean the country of England. To us

butter comes so naturally--it is so necessary--that we cannot imagine

ourselves without it, nor call up the difficulties in the way of its

first discovery, which is one of the latest of uncivilized articles

among the barbarous.

We read of butter in ancient times, but it was _gee_. The merit of ours

is its being made from cream thrown up cold. The milk of kine alone has

that property; and that milk during many centuries was unknown to man

as food.

The great event of primeval society was the employment of cattle in

tillage. To preserve and increase the breed was the first care of

legislators: this they effected by consecrating the cow,[151] and its

milk was surrendered to its own offspring. The practice outlived the

occasion; and it was not till horses came to be substituted for oxen

in the flat lands of the north that cows’ milk returned into general

use,[152] as it had originally been among nomade tribes. Cream was

unknown to all antiquity. There is not even the word in any ancient

language. This statement will appear extraordinary, and may, perhaps,

be set down as contrary to reason and unfounded in fact, for reference

to cream in so many authors will immediately recur. The fact is, that

none of those who have illustrated ancient manners and language have

noticed this point, and they and travellers have not been conversant

with the dairy; consequently they have transferred their own ideas to

the languages they translated, the usages they described, or even the

very things before their eyes.[153]

Up to the time of this discovery the diet consisted, as in the East,

of a repetition of the same meal twice in the day. The breakfast

differed not from the dinner, except that it was a smaller meal--the

dishes were the same. Butter revolutionized the kitchen. About the

same time two remarkable adjuncts to our diet were introduced from

China and Arabia, tea and coffee. In their native countries they were

no part of the people’s food, and furnished forth no meal; they were

only used as a slight refreshment. In our adaptation of them they lost

their flavour,[154] and no longer served their original purpose. Our

coarse preparation required to be mellowed by cream or milk, and sugar.

With the aid of butter, they assumed the consistency of a refection,

and with eggs, in the shell,[155] of a meal. This did not, however,

suffice as a substitute for both meals. Beef ruled the evening repast:

the road diverged; two distinct meals came into existence, and the

“English breakfast” assumed its dignified station in the domestic

world. It has spread far and near, but only where preceded by the

discovery of cream, and accompanied by the manufacture of butter.

Morocco having butter, has the two descriptions of meals.

They make their butter without churn or cream. A goat’s-skin, with the

hairy side in, is filled two thirds with milk; four poles or reeds, six

feet long, are set up like a triangle. The skin is slung between them,

a leg stretched out to each reed. A woman, seated on the ground, pushes

and swings it, and presently the butter is churned. This is the simple

imitation of what accident first taught; and in the desert the butter

is, to this day, churned by the camel, not by the dairy-maid.[156]

The variety of its forms is wonderful. It _sours_, it _ferments_, it

becomes _sugar_--it may be distilled into _alcohol_. It changes to

_curd_; it becomes _cheese_; it hardens to _stone_,[157] or acquires

the tenacity of _cement_;[158] it leavens into _yourt_; it dries into

_paste_;[159] it is separated by heat into _caimah_; by greater heat

into _gee_; by repose it gives you _cream_, by agitation _butter_.

The peculiarity of the compound resides in the mode of mixture of the

oil and water. These are not chemically united, for the oil is obtained

without a reagent. Globules, as in the blood, have been detected. These

by agitation cohere, probably by atomic polarity. Heat causes oil

to appear, by bursting them. This is the difference between gee and

butter. The globules being congested in a granular state, in butter

and cheese, these when melted cannot be restored, like wax or lard,

to their original condition. The cases of these globules are the part

contributed by the animal; and, generated in the udder, must be the

caseine, which is acted upon by the rennet, and becomes curd. However,

as these compounds are not to be imitated by art, so have they not been

as yet explained by science.

From this diet of milk has sprung the invention of butter. In the

Zahara the animals are milked once a-day. All the kinds of milk are

poured in together, and the distribution is made round and round to

a family in the same cup or bowl. This is the whole meal.[160] What

remains over is left for the old men, and poured into a skin, and

put on the camel’s back, that it may be given to them at the next

encampment. On their arrival it is churned, and thus butter becomes

their perquisite, and is forbidden fruit to the younger portion of the

community.

There is no mention of butter in Homer. Herodotus[161] and Hippocrates

mention it as a Scythian word. But it is not satisfactory to

me that butter is meant. The most particular description is by

Hippocrates.[162] He introduces it as an analogy, to show the effect of

disturbance on the humours of the body. He makes in that case the bile,

as the lightest, rise to the top; the blood remains in the middle, and

the phlegm falls below, just as the Scythians, by agitating mare’s

milk, get three substances-the βούτηρον [boutêron], on the top, the

ὀῤῥὸς [orrhos], in the middle, and the ἵππακα [hippaka], at the bottom.

Milk is never so treated, and produces no such substances. We accept

the description, because of the manner of treating it, which resembles

churnin and the word butter. That butter should have been used among

the primitive Scythians, while yet pastoral, would concur with what

we see elsewhere, but it is not proved by the passages in question.

The word butter may have been known to the Greeks, as used by some

barbarians, and therefore used for all oily preparations from milk, on

this occasion. The agitation, or churning, is the chief link; but this

again becomes very slight, when we know that the Tartars to this day

employ that process in preparing milk for distillation,[163] and get

from it their kermis.

In the domestic economy of the Zahara, milk assumes an importance

which to us is scarcely credible. Periodically throughout that vast

region--and among some of its tribes constantly--[164] it constitutes

the sole and entire food of the population. “Impossible!” the animal

chemist will exclaim. “Man requires a pound of nutriment; milk contains

seven per cent., or say one ounce to the pound. He would have to drink

sixteen pounds of milk, that is, two gallons, for the supply of mere

waste of muscle. But milk does not supply the chemical ingredients for

the animal laboratory. We want carbon for the great furnace of the

lungs to supply heat and life.” I can only allege the fact. I have

myself lived for months almost entirely on milk, curds, and cheese, and

have not found the animal heat decay. On this diet the frame is able to

support labour and privation, and to last long.

If we are to credit a fraction of the tales that are told of the age

to which the Galactofagi attain, we should have to set it down as the

perfection of food.[165] Nor are the effects of this diet confined to

our species: milk is provender for cattle. It is given to horses where

grain cannot be procured, and, together with dates, is the ordinary

food of those fabulous steeds, the “Breath of the Desert.”

Milk contains nothing that is superfluous, to impose toil on the

digestive organs, or to produce disturbance in the animal laboratory.

It is, properly, neither an animal nor a vegetable substance. It is not

dead flesh, of which we make our stomachs the sepulchre; nor is it the

cold vegetation of the earth, for the decomposition of which we make

them a trough. It is generated in the body of one animal, in order to

be adapted for the food of another. It is drawn from the blood, and

undergoes a change, which brings it near to chyle, so as to fit it

to pass readily again into blood.[166] It is a food prepared, and a

dish cooked, by Nature’s own hand, and served, if not hot, warm. It

is adapted to the stomach before it can bear anything else, being the

first transition from the blood circulated into the animal without the

intervention of its own organs, and conveying into the body all that is

requisite for its growth and development.[167] Like death, it equalises

all ranks, all races, nay, even brings to the same level different

orders of creation. It is the only food which the prince and the

beggar, the tiger and the lamb, the Jew and Gentile, have in common;

and, in common with other special favours, of which we are the objects,

we least appreciate where we are most indebted.

Men may accustom themselves to a fetid atmosphere, and even to

poisonous food, and they are then unable to appreciate what they lose,

or what they suffer; but the simplest pabulum must best serve the

purposes of life, and in proportion as any other is substituted, must

there be a dissipation of vital power, and a consequent curtailment of

existence;[168] and thus it is that, amongst the Koords and Zaharans

life is sustained by an amount of nutriment which, according to our

calculations of expenditure and waste, is wholly insufficient. No

nation understands so little the use of milk as the English. To one

familiar with the cookery and diet of other countries, nothing can be

more afflicting than to visit the abodes, and inspect the food of those

classes amongst ourselves who cannot afford meat. The fashion of tea,

and the mania for baker’s bread, have expelled popular knowledge in

the culinary art, together with the use of this natural diet, which is

also proportionally diminished by the enclosure of commons, the methods

of agriculture, and the disuse of ewes’ milk, even when the number of

flocks increase.

Pliny derives the Latin word from the Greek βόος [boos] τύρα [tyra],

without explaining how butter could ever come to be called cows’

cheese, or observing that mares, not cows, furnished it. What he tells

us of butter refers to “the barbarians, who,” he says, “use it instead

of oil, to anoint their children, and hold it to be the daintiest of

meats. It is forbidden to the inferior classes; they employ it as a

medicine, and esteem it the more, the stronger (more rancid) it is.”

The two latter points exactly coincide with the practice in Africa.

For higher classes, read old men. They use butter medicinally, and

for that purpose keep it till it becomes rancid. The commentators,

however, would amend Pliny by substituting _minus_ for _majus_! The

Roman naturalist in all he says refers to oiled butter or gee, and not

to butter produced by agitation or churning. He is astonished that the

barbarians possessing butter are ignorant of cheese; but is by no means

surprised at his own countrymen, who, liking milk and cheese, could

neither make butter nor adopt it. The words _cheese_ and _butter_,

supposed to be derived from the Latin, were, as will presently appear,

derived by the Romans from the barbarians.

Butter is mentioned in the Old Testament. The commentators, however,

are agreed that it is a mistranslation. I admit that it does militate

against its antiquity that it should be so seldom mentioned there.

The imagery of the Scriptures is drawn from the most homely objects.

The worthies of Israel were as good cooks as Crœsus or Patroclus; the

high-priests were butchers by profession; and all the prophets did not

live on locusts and wild honey;--probably there was not one who had not

used the basting ladle. If, therefore, they had possessed that delicate

and valuable substance, with which we have become too familiar for its

just appreciation, is it possible that it should occur but eight times

from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New?

The explanation is furnished in the aversion of the Jew to butter, to

which I have already adverted. The same distinction between the Jew and

the Philistine, no doubt, held in the time of David.

The Jews interpret the injunction “Thou shalt not seethe the kid in

the mother’s milk,” to mean, that butter be not mixed with meat;[169]

consequently they do not allow it to touch any pan, dish, platter,

knife, spoon, or dresser used for their ordinary food. “Antagonism”

being thus established between butter and their common diet, butter

does not make “progression,” nor even hold its own. It is to be

inferred, that the butter they knew contained,--in part at least,--the

milk of goats, as would be the case in the Zahara method of churning.

It is first mentioned when Abraham entertains the angels. He took

“butter and milk, and the calf he had dressed.”[170] Four centuries

later, we have “Rivers of honey and butter;”[171] and butter compared

with oil for “washing one’s steps.”[172] It then occurs in Moses’s

song: “_Butter_ of _kine_, _milk_ of _sheep_, and _fat_ of lambs.” It

next appears in Deborah’s and Barak’s song: “He asked for water, and

she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.”[173] It

is brought for David when he is fleeing from Absalom.[174] The wise

man speaks of it as a wise man ought: “The _churning_ of milk bringeth

forth butter.”[175] The last mention is the most remarkable; it is

Isaiah’s prophecy respecting Christ: “Butter and honey shall he eat,

that he may know to refuse evil and choose good.” The word translated

butter is _imae_,[176] which Calmet explains as “the scalded cream in

use in the East.” Gesenius says, “Butter by the ancients, as well as by

the orientals, was only used medically.” By others it is interpreted

“curdled milk,” “cheese,” &c. In a word, the commentators have been

as much put out by Jewish butter as the scholiast by Phœnician bread.

Had curds or sour milk been meant, the proper name would have been

given. Had Calmet known anything of the scalded cream “in use in the

East,” he never could have supposed that it would be employed to

wash with. None of these could be obtained by _churning_. Then it is

answered, that the Jews had no churn. There is no such word in Hebrew:

the passage of Solomon is, “As the _churning_ of milk bringeth forth

butter, so doth the _wringing_ of the nose bring forth blood, and the

_stirring up_ of wrath bring forth strife.” The same word is employed

throughout--_mitz_. But the word which could be translated “churning,”

“wringing,” and “stirring up,” seems most happily adapted to describe

the jerk and swing of the skin full of liquid on the camel’s back, or

the process by which it was imitated.

In none of these passages, save the last, is butter spoken of as in

use among Jews after the promulgation of the Ceremonial Law. Abraham

and Job are anterior, so is the period to which Moses refers when he

speaks of the good things which they had abused, and thereby incurred

God’s displeasure. When brought forth in a “lordly dish,” it was by a

Midianite offered to a Hazorite.[177] There was much conveyed to the

Israelite in the epithet given to a dish in which butter could never

be placed by him. When brought to David it is offered indeed to a

Hebrew under the Ceremonial Law, but it might be for the Pelethites

or Cerethian, who accompanied him; it is presented too by “one of the

children of Ammon.” Solomon might be describing the practice of the

neighbouring Arabs or Canaanites. In both the cases in which it is

mentioned by Isaiah (ch. vii.), viz., that Christ shall eat it, and

that the people shall be reduced to eat it, no reference is made to a

present practice, and in both cases the sense of breaking the law may

be conveyed.

The Old Testament thus entirely establishes the present usage of

Morocco, and its identity with Palestine. There, as here, butter was

made, and then, as now, the Philistine fried his muffins in butter, the

Jew in oil.

One of the forms in which milk is most generally used, and of all,

perhaps, the most healthful and agreeable, is unknown in Europe, and

has no name amongst us: it is a curd (yumed) without rennet. It is used

fresh, but may be drained of its whey and kept a considerable time. In

travelling, it is hung in a bag, and, when very dry, rubbed down with

fresh milk or water. This is the _leben_[178] of the Arabs and the

_yourt_[179] of the Turks: it is also made in India, and called _tyre_.

It is made as follows:--the milk is heated to the point of boiling, and

then allowed to cool down until the finger can be kept in it while you

count three: a spoonful of the old yourt, mixed first with a little of

the milk, is then poured in. It is put in a warm place (the temperature

must not be under 70°), and in two or three hours it will have set.

The process is one of fermentation: the milk is leavened. The first

leaven of yourt, they say, was brought by Gabriel to Abraham. They,

however, profess to be able to make it anew by repeating the above

process during a fortnight, using on the first occasion a crab pounded

in vinegar, or a silver spoon or button: I have succeeded in obtaining

it without either the crab or the spoon. Milk after being brought to

the boiling point, was allowed to sour; a spoonful of it was mixed on

the second day, that again on the third, and so on till the fourteenth,

when perfect yourt was obtained.

When staying at Lamlin in Hungary, I used to have yourt sent over from

Belgrade: the Germans were very glad to get it, but had no idea of

making it for themselves. So travellers from all countries of Europe

have become acquainted with it, and learn its value as an economical

food and its qualities as a healthy diet. Most of them like it, some

of them give it the preference over everything else; yet no one has

thought of introducing it at home. In Greece, before and during the

revolution, it was, like baths, common use. “Civilization” came, and a

wholesome food and a healthful practice were straightway expelled.

This species of curd, without the aid of the liquid found in the

rennet of young animals, offers the explanation of practices of the

Greeks, and suggests the possibility of unknown uses even of milk. The

Greeks had cheese--or substances to which they applied that name--not

made with rennet, and of which the description applies equally to

yourt.[180] Their name for cheese, τυρὸς [tyros], is supposed to be

derived from Tyre: the Indian name for _yourt_ is _tyre_. The Hindoos

would not touch anything prepared with rennet. The Greeks made curd by

vinegar,[181] pepper, burnt salt, the flowers of bastard saffron, and

the threads on the head of the artichoke.[182]

Next to yourt comes _caïmac_: it is not, however, to us equally a

stranger. The first day I spent in Devonshire was occupied in a

discussion respecting the Phœnician settlements. It was maintained by

several learned natives that of these there was no _direct_ proof.

The next morning, walking with one of these gentlemen, we entered

a cottage. “There,” I said, pointing to the fire, upon which some

Devonshire cream was preparing, “is what you wanted last night.” There

was an Eastern dish made in an Eastern manner--the earthenware pots

and wood-fires:[183] the cottage was built of _tapia_. The name of

the adjoining village was _Torr_; direct proof why every second name

is Hebrew. Besides the village there is _Tor_quay, _Tor_bay, _Tor_

Abbey. To the eastward there is _Sud_bury; and, if that name be not

derived from the ancient metropolis of Phœnicia, no one will dispute

the derivation of _Marazion_ (Great Zion) from the Jewish metropolis.

_Beer_-Ferrers and _Beer_ Alsten are Hebrew for the Well of Ferrers,

the Well of Alsten. Then there is the _Menar_ rock, the river _Camel_,

and so many more.[184] Sir Richard Carew describes, in his day,

mattings for hanging _upon the walls_:[185] they are precisely so used

in Barbary. The Moorish house is the fac-simile of that of ancient

Judæa; we may expect, then, to find a Phœnician dish in villages which

retain Phœnician names, and are built according to the Phœnician

fashion, and were covered, as late as the seventeenth century, with

Phœnician matting.

Devonshire cream is made by heating the milk in a pan upon the fire,

then allowing it to stand; the creamy and caseous parts collect on the

top, and the watery part is drained off below. It may then be churned

into butter: the “scalded cream of the East” is made by a similar

process. The milk is poured into small shallow earthenware basins,

which are put in the oven with a slow heat: the lighter part rises, and

crusts. Gradually it hardens and thickens, until, by gathering up the

whole substance, it forms a little dome. It is then lifted off like a

cake, and a little colourless fluid remains at the bottom. This cream

derives its name from the process of making it, _caïmac_, which means

_burnt_.[186]

“Cream” has in Latin the same meaning: it could not, therefore, have

been originally applied as at present, and the first cream the European

nations who employed the word had seen must have been “burnt;”--that

is, caïmac. It was probably invented during the Crusades. All the

nations of Europe use this word. It follows, that none of them could

originally have had it; for, in that case, they would have had an

original one. Spain is, however, an exception: the Spaniards did not

take part in the Crusades.

Professor Ritter has made use of this art in tracing the ancient

Scythians, and W. Von Humboldt has in like manner employed it in his

remarkable work on the Basques. This is high tribute to the value of

cookery in the profoundest inquiries; but the results show that, before

it can be safely or successfully employed, philosophers must be cooks.

Ritter confounds cheese and butter;[187] assumes, on the strength of

the passage of Hippocrates,[188] on which I have above commented,

butter to be a Scythian name, and butter to have been made by the

Scythians. He then connects the Scythian compound from mares’ milk with

the butter used as a medicine in Greece, which we know was made from

cows’ milk, and the source of which I have already given. He does not

trace any of the parallel words, or show a Scytho-German origin for

“cream,” “milk,” “cheese,” &c.

Humboldt considers his case to be fully made out, and says that the

same thing holds with the Iberians;[189] but, as to whether we are

to infer that the Iberians were Scythians or Germans, he does not

explain. He refers to no one term in use, or to any practice. We have

seen that cream has no native name in any European dialect; that the

name for butter in every land expresses gee, not churned butter; and

the same thing holds even of the Tartars and Chinese, who, like the

Slaavs, call it “cows’ oil.” The Spanish peninsula is an exception, and

exhibits, not only one, but two systems of its own.

The Spanish has original words for cream and butter; the first is

_nata_,[190] the second _manteca_. Manteca means also fat, so that it

could not have been with them primitive: they do not use it now, save

as an imported habit.

In the Basque provinces it is indigenous, as among the tribes of the

Zahara, and for the dairy, in all its branches, they have original

terms: milk is _eznea_, butter _guria_, and cream _bicaño_. These

terms are wholly distinct from Aramean, Greek, Scythian, German, or

Celt. Between the north and south of the peninsula the difference in

practice coincides with the difference of its terms; and both prove

that two distinct people anciently inhabited it. It was next to

impossible that such primitive terms should have been lost. The things

were unknown to the Romans, and the words introduced to supplant them

were not Roman. (_Nata_ is an adaptation of the Latin _natare_.) More

is not wanted to confirm the statement of Strabo, that the “_Hispani_

restrict the term _Iberia_ to the portion bounded by the river Iber.”

The two races were Hispani and Iberi.

Connected with this subject is another peculiarity worth mentioning.

The Greeks had two names for bread; the one the vulgar name, which

I have already traced to the Brebers, and which is preserved in

the modern dialect of Greece and of Andalusia, in ψῶμι [psômi] and

_acemite_. The other is _artos_ (ἄρτος [artos]). Now this word is pure

Basque, and is found in a variety of compounds in their tongue. They

have two words for bread, _artoa_ and _oguia_: the first at present

applied to maize, the second to barley; but the first is the primitive,

being derived from “grinding with a stone;”[191] and as supplying the

word for “dough,” _artaoria_ (_orea_, mass). They have _artochiquia_,

_artopella_ for different preparations of flour. Now it may be asked,

could the Greeks derive so primitive a word as “bread” from the

Basques?[192] The explanation is given, by Socrates: “The Greeks had

many words from the barbarians who were _before them_;” and the Basques

were not always confined to the north of Spain. We know that they

colonized Sicily, and traces of the language are to be found on the

shores of the Euxine.

The settlement of the Celts in Italy was coeval with Rome. If they

had known cream and used butter, the Romans must have had them: their

ornaments, their bedding, the square and lozenge patterns, their

soap, &c., are known to us. The words and usages are thus not to be

considered as belonging to their common race, but as derived from the

incidents of their own adventures.

In Gaelic, or more properly _Erse_,[193] the word for butter comes

nearer to that of the Old Testament than the word employed by the Moors

and Jews in Barbary. It is _fin_: in the genitive case it is the same

as the Hebrew, _fine_. They have a second word which approaches equally

to the Semetic gee. It is _ce_. This appears to be the oiled butter

which has now fallen into disuse.[194] Like the ancients they used it

medicinally, and kept it till it was rancid. This is the third kind

of butter known; and they have a third name, _butter_. This word they

got where they got _fin_ and _ce_. The medicinal use of butter has in

these days been reduced to one spot of Africa--that is, Suz; and thence

a traffic in it is carried on to Negroland, just as formerly it must

have been exported from the whole coast of Barbary to Europe. This

preparation is known to-day in the interior of Africa--precisely in the

region where neither European nor Roman, nor Greek, could have spread

it--as _Budra_. The word is given, and the substance described, in

Jackson’s Vocabulary of the Shelloh dialect.

I have already shown that Pliny did not know whence the Romans had the

word, and they never had the thing. The clans derived it directly

from Barbary or Judæa hundreds of years before Pliny wrote. I need not

here repeat what I have elsewhere said regarding the transposition of

cognate letters. _D_ and _T_ are such. In adding, according to the

Greek and Roman fashion, their termination, they would for euphony say,

Butyron for Budron.

Cheese in Erse, is _Caise_,[195] pronounced Caishee. This, too,

is supposed to come from the Romans, and the probability of this

derivation is increased by Pliny’s statement, that the barbarians

had no cheese; but we know that the Greeks had their cheese from the

Phœnicians, since the word τύρον [tyron] is explained at least, as

Tyrian. Phrygia exported even cheese of asses’ milk.[196] The old Arabs

had a cheese of goats’ milk, not learnt from the Romans, for it had

another name, _Raïb_. It is clear, then, that the Semetic races did

not know the use of cheese, though, perhaps, as at present, they were

not partial to it, and did not excel in making it. In the interior of

Africa they do make cheese, and in the dialect of the great interior

tribe extending from Morocco to the Red Sea, the name is _agees_. It is

given in the French and Breber dictionaries.[197] The nearest approach

the Romans could have made to agees would be _acaseus_: their word is

_caseus_. There is no need of the intervention of Rome to bring caise

to the Celtic tribes.

In respect to the manufacture of butter by the clans;--even without

the aid of etymology we must carry it to times long antecedent to its

use in Europe. It is associated with their superstitions[198]--that

is, their mythological era. They make it by the process still in use

in Barbary from the whole milk,[199] as well as by that now employed

in the north of Europe, from cream thrown up cold. They eat it mixed

with sweetmeats and honey; and this practice is no less peculiar still

in some parts of the East than in the Highlands.[200] Preserves may be

traced back to the immediate progeny of Abraham. Jacob sends down to

Egypt a present for Joseph. It is the choice things of the land, of

course, and things not common in Egypt. The first is balm, the second

honey;[201] but honey could be no rarity in Egypt. The word in Hebrew

is _dipsi_. That is the name still in use for preserves made of grapes;

and in Shaw’s time, the village of Hebron alone exported annually three

hundred camel loads of it to Egypt.[202] There being no grapes in the

Highlands, the clans took to other fruit, not forgetting the oranges

they had been accustomed to in Spain. Butter--that I mean in present

use--being a preparation of cream, and cream being, as I have shown, of

very recent invention, and not yet traced to its source; the principal

evidence of the originality of butter among the clans, must rest on the

proof of their having been in possession of cream, and this, I think,

I can establish most satisfactorily. I have said that the word cream

is not known to them. Now, they have for it two rare names: _hachdar_,

which, like the nata of the Spaniards, means the “part that swims,”

and _barr_, which signifies “top.” Skimmed milk they call _bainne

lòm_, or milk “bare” or “naked;” they have also a term for “milk under

cream,” which is _bainne ce_, or _bainne fo che_. It is impossible

that so many, so comprehensive, and such descriptive terms, all of

them ancient, should have been in use, if the substance to which they

apply was not known, and if the invention had not been original. And

this is remarkable, that while the names of the preparations in use in

Judæa may etymologically be traced to domestic tongues, all the names

for this one, which is not to be found in the east, are pure Celtic.

Cream is a constituent part of the national food, and is so general,

that the very dishes of the dinner-service have been modified to suit

it. Dessert plates are like small soup plates, as it is the necessary

accompaniment of every sweet dish.

They have the Eastern caïmac in the shape of Devonshire cream. It is

known as “Carstorphine cream,” but it is going out of use. In the

village which has given to it its Lowland name, it is no longer to

be found, although the last generation of Edinburgh citizens used to

repair thither on festal days to regale themselves all unconsciously on

this Phœnician dainty.[203]

In Turkey neither of the Semetic words for butter has been adopted:

they have an original one,--like the mantica of the Spaniards. It is

_yagh_. It applies equally to butter, fat, and oil; the last they call

_zeïtin yaga_, “olive-butter;” and butter they sometimes qualify by

_jost_, or “milk-butter.” They, therefore, had none of their own; but

I refer to their word from a singular coincidence with the Erse, in

which language “tallow” is _igh_. It is at present pronounced _ce_, but

the orthography is a record of a more ancient pronunciation. The great

Sclavonic family is in like manner without a word for butter. They call

it oil.[204]

The last point of identification with the East which I shall adduce,

is the name of the substance which is the basis of all these

compounds--_milk_. In Erse, it is _bainne_; in Arabic, _chaleb_.

Here are not two consonants the same; to the ear there is no trace

of resemblance, yet they are from one root, from which also come

_gala_,[205] _lac_, and _milk_. Bainne is derived from the Gaelic,

_ban_, white. _Lebanon_ (without the Greek termination _Le ban_), is

known to have been so called from its colour, white. Leben is sour milk

in Arabic, and from the same root as chaleb.

The clans are indebted to no one for their cheese; for their name

for coagulated milk is derived from the _maw_, in which the rennet

is found. It is called _a bhinnbeach_. The stomach, or rennet, is

_binid_. They have a variety of other dishes[206] and names--[207]

so extensive, indeed, as to lead to the inference that at some time

they must have been essentially, if not like the tribes of the Zahara

exclusively, pastoral, and restricted for their food to the produce of

the dairy.

The Highlanders have the greatest variety of dishes made from milk.

They have the richest dairy, and the richest vocabulary: the words are

partly derivative, partly original, as might have been expected from

a practical and pastoral people, taking service amongst the different

nations with whom these preparations were in use. They learned the

usages of each, and retained them, with their names, so that the usages

and the words show the Highlanders to have been in communication

with the people who had Turkish _caïmac_, Hindoo _gee_, and Moorish

_simin_;--in other words, that they had been in the Holy Land before

Phœnician usages had been extinguished, or, that when they were in

Morocco the present habits were to be found.

“It often happens, that in seeking for the origin of a word a much

wider field of inquiry opens, and if carefully pursued, leads to

unexpected conclusions, bearing on the history, belief, manners,

and customs of primitive times, and so as to leave no doubt of the

occurrence of particular events, or of the existence of peculiar

customs, respecting which history is entirely silent, and of the

falsity of other things, handed down undoubtingly in her pages.

Etymology is the history of the languages of nations, which is a most

important part of their general history. It is the lamp by which that

which is obscure in the primitive history of the world will one day be

lighted up.”[208]

It is, indeed, the lamp, but not the light. The wick must be touched by

living flame before it ignites. That flame is custom. The pursuit of

mere sound--the affinities of roots--are but landscapes in the clouds,

until you get things substantial, with which they are associated, and

on which the light of etymology may be brought to shine.

A distinction between the use of butter and oil for simmering muffins

and crumpets in Morocco, furnishes a link between those eaten in

the Temple of Solomon and those sold in the streets of London, and

thereby supplies evidence to fix the Cassiterides, while incidentally,

it disposes of a great historical and ethnographic question, the

wanderings of the Celts.

An admirable product has been used for thousands of years in this

region, and no Jason has come to carry it away. Yet Julius Cæsar

and Count Julian, Sartorius, and Belisarius, Charles V., with many

other shrewd persons, have tasted Moorish butter. The Andalusians

are delighted to get a little pot of it, but as to learning how to

make it, that never entered into their philosophy. So yourt, made in

every tent or hut, from the Yellow Sea to the Adriatic, is unknown in

Europe. A magic line defines the domain of chops, of boiled potatoes,

of chocolate, of coffee. One race can boil, another cannot: _e.g._

the English.[209] One race can roast, another cannot; and each is

utterly incapable of comprehending the faculty conferred on the other.

There is a land congenial to pilaff, another to kuskoussou, another

to mutton-broth. Devonshire cream, polecuta, poi curry, have, like an

insect on a moss, their zone. You may transplant trees, and transfer

royal houses, carry forth religions, and distribute all around slips

of constitutions--but a dish!--no!--as there is more in a costume than

covering the back, so is there more in a dish than filling the belly.

There yet remains one term unexamined. Whence comes _dairy_? There is

no such word on the Continent; it is neither Latin nor Teutonic. It

has no Celtic root. I have been describing the douar, which is indeed

a camp; but the features which forced themselves upon my attention

belonged to the sheepfold. The people are shepherds. In every tent the

chief utensils are the milk-pails, leathern churns, and butter-pots;

the chief produce and food, milk and butter. Why is the Arab camp a

circle? It is to fold the cattle. Thence the name, douar and deïra. The

exploits of Abd-el-Kadir and his _Deïra_ have made the word familiar to

us in Europe. It is the very word we apply to the fold’s produce.[210]

From the same root is _gadeira_, _gadir_, an enclosure--the name of

Cadiz, the only city upon earth in which the cow or ewe is not to be

found, nor any animal whatever giving milk! How, it may be asked, could

the word come to us? _Tally ho!_ is in English an unmeaning word. The

rallying cry of the Arab in war is _Talla hu!_ Tally ho! doubtless, was

brought by the Crusaders. Dairy may have been learnt then, or many a

century before.

The pursuit of a word is like “hunt the slipper.” It is here, it is

there. There would be no game unless it were slipped under. There was

_Babia_, the goddess of infants, in Phœnicia; there are _babies_ in

England. No doubt it is the same slipper, though we cannot tell under

what petticoat it has slipped.

Sheeps’ heads, with the skin left on, are in Morocco, as in Scotland,

carried to the smithy to be singed. “Singed heads” were never twice

invented in the world.[211] Things that are worth anything, are only

invented once. The crop is sown, the weeds only come up of themselves.

There is nothing without its history, if we only knew it. Whatever is,

had a beginning. That only is worth looking for which we do not know.

[118] See “History of Civilization,” passim.

[119] The Americans call crumpets muffins, so that

the latter must have been the common name at the time

of the early emigration westward.

[120] In the culinary language of our country, I

use this term to supply the place of “plat,” and “met.”

[121] Africa, vol. ii. p. 4.

[122] Poll. Onomast lib. vi. 74.

[123] Ὁ δὲ σιτοποιὸς χειρίδας ἔχων καὶ περὶ τῷ

στόματι κημὸν ἔτριβε τὸ σταὶς ἵνα μηδὲ ἱδρὼς ἐπιῤῥέῃ,

μήτε τοῖς φυράμασιν ὁ τρίβων ἔπνέοι. [Ho de sitopoios

cheiridas echôn kai peri tô stomati kêmon etribe to

stais hina mêde hidrôs epirrheê, mête tois phyramasin

ho tribôn epneoi.]--ATHEN., lib. xii. 70.

[124] Athen. lib. iii. 77; Idem, lib. xiv. 54;

Poll. lib. vi. 32; Idem, lib. vi. 75; Schol. Aristoph.

Archar. 86.

[125] Rabbi Solomon translates it “wafer.”

[126] Abdul-melich asked the old Mechyumian,

what meat he liked best; he answered, an ass’s neck

well seasoned and well roasted. “What say you,” says

Abdul-melich, “to a leg or shoulder of a sucking lamb,

well roasted and covered over with milk and butter?”

Abulpheda remarks on this passage, “the Arabians had

not then changed their cookery from what it was in the

time of Abraham.”

[127] The Crusader, Baldwin, is known to the Arabs

as Bardui_l_. Portugal they make Portgu_n_. Labunitus

of Homer, is written Nabunitus by Berosius. The

exchange of _b_ and _m_ is so common, as almost to be a

rule; and thence, perhaps, that strange word biffin for

baked apples, resembling in shape the muffin.

Mr. Layard mentions, that the Yezidis, who abhor

all imprecations, will not use the word _naal_,

“horse-shoe,” because it approaches to _l_aa_n_ a

“curse.”--_Nineveh_, vol. i. p. 296.

[128] The Dutch have one of the best sweet dishes,

which they peculiarly honour by decorated booths at

their fairs, set apart for its preparation. Like the

muffin, it is flour and water set for three hours to

ferment: it is then poured, not on a griddle, but on

heated tongs with deep bars, so that it comes out with

the shape of a portcullis; it is then eaten like the

sfen, with sugar or honey.

[129] The Turks call the muffin _Gassi Cadaëf_.

This is also run on the griddle through a tin mould

with holes, and so forms coils of thread like

vermicelli. This is called _Tel_ (wire) _Cadaëf_. These

dainties are described in a Turkish cookery book;

Genek Rizalisè, by Negib Effendi, A.H. 1259,

A.D. 1842.

[130] The English roll out the dough and then put

dabs of butter on it, and then roll it again. The fee

for learning to make flake-pastry, as described above,

is five guineas.

[131] They also use rice for the same purpose,

reducing it by boiling. The pastry prepared from it is

called _kuladj_.

[132] The round copper dish in use in the East, and

which is carried hot from the fire and placed on the

_sofra_, or table, the τήγανον [têganon] of the Greeks.

[133] Khalil Dhaheri mentions it also. The passage

is quoted by Volney, and he translates it _indigo_. May

there not be some connexion between the Egyptian name,

and the old goddess Neith, and also with the English

word _knead_?

[134] Nouv. Missions, t. ii. p. 73.

[135] On making inquiries respecting it, I have

received the following reply from Cirencester.

“I cannot tell how the wheat is prepared, as we

procure it in a state of jelly from an old woman who

knows the secret. A pint of this jelly is melted in a

quart of milk; it is slightly boiled, lemon peel, and

cinnamon, and sugar being then added; the yolks of

five eggs beaten up, are mixed in, and it is served in

a tureen. Raisins and currants, all stewed well, and

plumped out with hot water, are served up separately;

they are cold, a spoonful or so being added to each

helping. The name is _frumenty_; this shows perhaps the

antiquity of the dish, and is an interesting specimen

of etymology. It is only made at Easter.”

[136] The Breber “Assowa.”

[137] _Carscones_, pancakes, “Redemption cakes,”

are eaten on Easter Monday.

[138] These facts throw new light on the knowledge

of the ancients, respecting the fermentation of liquors

and brewing. They did malt grain, and indeed they seem

to have been aware of the advantage of so treating it,

for fattening animals. We know that Penelope steeped

the grain which she gave to her geese.

[139] Hollinger de Rel. Sabæ. b. i. ch. 8.

[140] Herodot. l. ii. c. 2.

[141] “Their learned Rabbis were quite at a loss

for the meaning of that text of the prophet Isaiah, 'I

will sweep thee with the besom of destruction,’ till

they heard accidentally an Arabian maid-servant call a

broom by that same name, which was common to the Hebrew

and Arabic tongue, the meaning of which was quite lost

in the Hebrew, and only preserved in the Arabic.”

OCKLEY.

[142] The Passover bread _Khak_.

[143] Bunuclos, Spanish for crumpet.

[144] This word I have before explained.

[145] _Assowa_, a preparation used by the Shellahs,

similar to that called sowans in Scotland.--See

Jackson’s Vocabulary.

[146] The Teutonic _Brod_, made broth, broze, is

contained in _Chebrodlapson_.

[147] _Barr_, whence the three words in the text.

[148] _Ham_ in Arabic is beef, but it is applied to

dried flesh.

[149] _Zumeita_ (Breber), _Zimita_ (Shellah),

_Azamotan_, mentioned in Glass. Hist. of the Canaries,

and described as “barley-meal fried in oil,” is the

preparation used in crossing the Zahara. It is toasted

barley-meal mixed with water in the corner of the

haïk, exactly as the Highland drovers used to mix it

in the corner of their plaid. It is also mixed with

butter or with honey, and in this form it constitutes

the early meal. “_Meat_,” and the French _met_, which

signifies every kind of food, are going a begging for

an etymology. From Zimita come ζυμίται [zymitai] (Poll.

lib. vi. 32), ζυμὸς, ζυμὴ, ψῶμι [zymos, zymê, psômi]

(leaven broth and bread), and _Zimid_, the Turkish

bread baked with butter, _acemiti_, Spanish.

[150] Dr. Forbes, in his “Physician’s Holiday,” has

given some valuable suggestions on this matter:--

“In looking at the horrid compound sold in England

as salt butter--at least, the cheaper sorts of it used

by the poorer classes--I cannot but believe that its

supersession by the boiled butter of Switzerland would

be advantageous, both to the comfort and health of a

large proportion of our countrymen. It can hardly be

believed that such an offensive, briny, and semi-putrid

mass, as the cheaper sorts of our salt butter, can

be without serious detriment to the health of the

consumers, any more than the salted meat formerly

issued to our seamen was so.”

He describes a melted butter used in Switzerland,

and earnestly recommends the adoption of the same

practice for culinary purposes. It consists in boiling

it slowly after it is made: the process takes six

hours, two to heat it, two to cool it, and two to

simmer it. There is a white, hard cheesy sediment

which has carefully to be removed. He also describes

a process, by which the whole of the butter of these

Alpine pastures is preserved sweet, without salt. “On

a board, four or five inches wide, wooden pins two to

three feet in length, are fixed upright; the butter is

placed daily around these pins, beginning at the lower

end, in a mass not exceeding the width of the board.

Every day, as more butter is added around the pin, the

diameter is gradually enlarged, until the upper part

overhangs the base, like an inverted bee-hive. When one

pin is filled, another is proceeded with. The exposed

surface of these masses gets soon covered with a sort

of hard film, which effectually excludes the air.”

[151] “The cause why the idolaters magnify the

kine, is their use in agriculture--as much as to

say, it is not lawful to slay them.”--(Talmudists on

the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, apud Hollinger de

Religion. Sab. l. i. c. 8.) A Roman citizen was once

indicted and condemned by the people for killing an

ox. “For this beast,” says Pliny, “is our companion,

and labours together with us in ploughing the field.”

Yet in Rome everything was based upon pasturage, not

tillage: libations of milk were used in sacrifice.

_Pecunia_ was money, and the public revenues _Pascua_.

For laws against the slaughter of cattle used in

husbandry, see Ælian, Var. Hist., l. v. c. 14; Athen.

l. ix. ex Philloc.; Varro de Re Rustica, l. ii. c. 5.

The Hindoo code, of course, forbids the killing

of cows at all ages. The Mussulman code forbids the

killing of calves.

[152] A line of Euripides might appear conclusive

against me;

καὶ τορὸς ὀπίας ἐστὶ καὶ βοὸς γάλα.

[kai toros opias esti kai boos gala].--_Cycl._ v. 136.

But he is speaking of the food, not of common men,

but of Silenus. However, Athenæus will no way admit

the thing, or even the word. He corrects it (l. 14),

Διὸς γάλα [Dios gala], or milk _fit_ for Jupiter,

meaning goats’, not cows’ milk; so unnatural did the

latter seem. Consult Eustath. in Odyss. δʹ [d’]. Homer

calls the Hippomolgians galactophagoi, and otherwise

commends them, (Il. νʹ [n’]. 6). He only twice mentions

milk, and both times speaks of it as that of ewes or

goats;--πίονα μῆλα ἔμελγα [piona mêla emelga], Od.

ιʹ [i’]. 237; δ’ ἔμελγεν ὄϊς καὶ μηκάδας αἶγας [d’

emelgen oïs kai mêkadas aigas], Od. ιʹ [i’]. 244. He

mentions cheese twice (Od. κʹ [k’]. 234; Il. λʹ [l’].

638): on the last occasion, he calls it goats’ cheese,

αἴγειον τυρὸν [aigeion tyron], and it was hard, for it

was raped with a bronze rape, κνήστι χαλκείῃ [knêsti

chalkeiê].

[153] Chandler (vol. ii. p. 245) describes the

process of making butter in Greece, by putting _cream_

in a goat’s skin, and trampling on it. The method

referred to I shall presently describe: no cream is

used.

Silvestre de Sacy translates the title of Kholil

Daheri’s work on Egypt; “_Cream_ of the Exposition.” It

occurs in the taunting letter of Shah Rock to Timour;

he says,--

“Your expressions are the _Zebed_ of language.”

The word is translated elsewhere _foam_ (caïmah).--Cf.

Chresth. Arabe, t. ii. pp. 11, 76.

“That they skimmed the milk is evident, whatever

they may have done with the cream. Philostrates mentions

vessels filled to the brim with milk, on which the cream

lies rich and shining.”--ST. JOHN’S _Ancient Greece_,

vol. ii. p. 286.

The passage referred to has not a word about

cream; it is as follows; ψυκτῆρες γάλακτος, οὐ λευκοῦ

μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ στίλπνου. καὶ γὰρ στιλβεῖν ἔοικεν ὑπὸ

τῆς ἐπιπολαζούσης αὐτῷ πιμελῆς. [psyktêres galaktos,

ou leukou monon, alla kai stilpnou. kai gar stilbein

eoiken hypo tês epipolazousês autô pimelês].--_Icon._

i. xxxi. p. 809. “Vases of milk, not only white but

shining, for they appeared to shine from the floating

fat.” The shining skin which covers boiled milk is here

accurately described.

[154] The art of making tea consists in pouring the

water on and off immediately, so as to get the flavour.

Coffee-making is a more intricate affair, and cannot

be conveyed in a recipe. A docile spirit, that will

dismiss every received idea, and not reason, may make

something out of the hints I now submit. The fire must

be very low, half embers (wood), half ashes; the cup of

coffee small; and a small pot so as to make it cup by

cup. The coffee must be slowly roasted, not burnt, and

brought only to an umber brown; it must be roasted day

by day. The flavour dissipates in a few hours; it must

be reduced by pounding to an impalpable powder. These

are the conditions under which coffee can be made. In

making it, two opposite and apparently incompatible

ends are to be secured,--strength and flavour; to

obtain the first it must be boiled,--by boiling, the

second is lost. The difficulty is surmounted by a

double process; one _thorough_ cooking, one _slight_

one; by the first a strong infusion is obtained, by the

second that infusion is flavoured. Thus, a large pot

with coffee-lees stands simmering by the fire; this is

the _sherbet_: when a cup is wanted, the pounded coffee

is put in the little tin or copper pan and placed on

the embers; it fumes for a moment; then the sherbet is

poured on; in a few seconds the froth (caïmah) rises;

presently an indication that it is about to boil is

made manifest, when the coffee is instantly taken from

the fire, and carried to the apartment, and turned into

the cup and drunk.

[155] There is one thing new under the sun, and

that is an egg cup: no egg cups are to be found in

Etruscan sepulchres, in Egyptian pyramids, or Assyrian

palaces; eggs were only boiled hard in the shell. Small

spoons, egg-, or tea-, or salt-spoons, are also a

modern discovery, and all pertain to the new meal.

[156] One of the four-and-twenty romances of the

Arabs before the times of Mahomet, turns on a jar of

butter. Zouhaji pushes with his bow an old woman who

brought it. Thence arises a tribe-encounter, in which

the chief loses his life. There have been handed down a

lament by his son, and a pæan by his conqueror, which

Antar soon turned to an elegy.

[157] The discus of the ancients, as that used by

the modern Italians, was supposed to be cheese.

[158] It is an ingredient in Vancouver cement.

[159] The recent attempt to preserve it for use at

sea.

[160] A pastoral scene in Homer comes near this;

Ἐξόμενος δ’ ἔμελγεν ὄϊς καὶ μηκάδας αἶγας

Πάντα κατὰ μοῖραν, καὶ ὑπ' ἔμβρυον ἧκεν ἑκάστῃ.

Αὐτίκα δ’ ἥμισυ μὲν θρέψας λευκοῖο γάλακτος

Πλεκτοῖς ἐν ταλάροισιν ἀμησάμενος κατέθηκεν.

Ἥμισυ δ’ αὖτ’ ἔστησεν ἐν ἄγγεσιν, ὄφρα οἱ εἴη

Πίνειν δαινυμένῳ, καί οἱ ποτιδόρπιον εἴη.

[Exomenos d’ emelgen ois kai mêkadas aigas

Panta kata moiran, kai hyp’ embryon hêken hekastê.

Autika d’ hêmisy men threpsas leukoio galaktos

Plektois en talaroisin amêsamenos katethêken.

Hemisy d’ aut’ estêsen en angesin ophra hoi eiê

Pinein dainymenô, kai hoi potidorpion eiê].

--_Od._ ιʹ [i’]. 244-249.

which in substance is;--he milked the ewes and goats, and

divided the milk into two parts: the one he _turned_, and

laid the curd to drain in wicker baskets, the other he kept

for supper.

[161] L. iv. c. 2.

[162] Ἐγχέοντες γὰρ τὸ γάλα ἐς ξύλα κοῖλα σείουσι.

Τὸ δὲ ταρασσόμενον ἀφριεὶ καὶ διακρίνεται, καὶ τὸ

μὲν πῖον βούτηρον καλέουσιν, ἐπιπολῆς διΐσταται,

ἐλαφρόν ἐόν· τὸ δὲ βαρὺ καὶ παχὺ κάτω ἵσταται, ὃ καὶ

ἀποκρίναντες ξηραίνουσιν· ὁ δὲ ὀῤῥὸς τοῦ γάλακτος ἐν

μέσῳ ἐστίν. Αὕτως δὲ καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ταρασσομένον,

κ.τ.λ.

[Encheontes gar to gala es xyla koila seiousi. To

de tarassomenon aphriei kai diakrinetai, kai to men

pion boutêron kaleousin, epipolês diïstatai, elaphron

eon; to de bary kai pachy katô histatai, ho kai

apokrinantes xêrainousin; ho de orrhos tou galaktos en

mesô estin. Hautôs de kai en tô anthrôpô tarassomenon,

k.t.l.]--_De Moribus_, l. iii. sec. 5.

[163] “The Tartar tribes prepare a spirit from

milk, by allowing it to ferment with frequent agitation.

This agitation converts the milk sugar into lactic acid,

and another portion into grape sugar, which becomes

converted into alcohol. Animals that live entirely on

vegetable matter, produce the largest quantity of

spirit.”--FOWNES.

[164] Richardson meets a few Touanez women in the

Desert by themselves; the men having gone to Fezzan,

he asks them why they have not gone also; one of them

asks, “Why should I go away? what better shall I find

in Mouryuk of Ghat? can they give me more than milk!

God is everywhere!” They bring him milk, he dwells

with pleasure on the hospitality and modesty of his

entertainers: “Nothing was given for the milk for we

had nothing to give. But if offered, it would not be

accepted by the laws of hospitality among these desert

Arcadians.”--_Sahara_, vol. ii. p. 204.

[165] The ancients used it largely as a medicine.

Cows’ milk was for this purpose not only used, but

preferred as more aromatic. It was applied externally

for all diseases of the skin, abstinence from animal

food being at the same time enjoined. It was prescribed

at Rome for ague; in Arcadia it was given for atrophy

and gout; it was considered an antidote to various

poisons, and a specific for hardness of the spleen.

Uncooked, it was held to be unwholesome; a prejudice

still subsisting in the East.

[166] One other food resembles it, and that is eggs.

[167] All the blood, the muscular fibre, cellular

tissue, nervous matter, and bones, derive their

origin from the nitrogenized constituent of milk, the

caseine--the butter and sugar containing no nitrogen.

[168] In the life of Cornaro it is stated, that

up to the age of forty he laboured under various

diseases, which made his existence a burden to him. He

then commenced a diet of bread and _milk as drawn from

the animal_; he became robust, vigorous, and enjoyed

perfect health, for one hundred years. Had he omitted

the bread, and drunk the milk alone, he might perhaps

have drawn out his lease of life to the fabled limit of

the patriarchs of the Zahara.

[169] There is a work by Maimonides upon this

subject. The title, as translated, is “Carnis cum lacte

non commedenda.”

[170] Genesis xviii. 8.

[171] Job xx. 17.

[172] Job xxix. 6.

[173] Judges v. 25.

[174] 2 Samuel xvii. 29.

[175] Proverbs xxx. 33.

[176] Hebrew: חמיאה.

[177] There is an Arab counterpart to the story

of Sisera, and a fact. Shanfara asks a woman of the

Salamana tribes for water; she gives him _agit_ and

_raïb_--salt cheese and spirits--from milk; he is thus

driven by thirst, in the dead of night, to a well where

his enemies are lying in wait for him.

[178] Leben also signifies butter-milk, &c. See

Burckhardt’s Notes, vol. i. pp. 239, 241.

[179] Among the Tartars, the districts are termed

“Yourts,” as the Armatobo Greeks used to term their

districts, _Psomi_, bread.

[180] Καὶ τρυφαλὶς ἐφ’ ἑτέρου φύλλου νεοπαγὴς καὶ

σαλεύουσα. [Kai tryphalis eph’ heterou phyllou neopagês

kai saleuousa.]--PHILOST. _Icon_, p. 809, i. 31.

A celebrated cheese of goats’ milk made at Tromileia,

called ὀπίας [opias], was curdled not by rennet, but by

the sap of the fig tree.--ATHEN. lib. xiv. 76; EURIP.

_Cyclop_ v. 136.

The Dutch cheese called _Gouda_ is turned by muriatic

acid.

[181] Devonshire Junket is made by pouring gently

a spoonful of vinegar into a bowl of milk; the top

is then brased. Pounded sugar-candy is dusted on and

brased again; this is several times repeated. It may

also be made with rennet, and seasoned with brandy.

[182] See St. John’s Ancient Greece, vol. ii. p.

288.

[183] Copper pans and coal fires are common in the

North of Devonshire; but probably in twenty years, all

recollection of pottery and wood will have died away.

[184] _Tamer_, _Philleg_ (Pheleg), _Cuddan_,

_Chynhals_, _Barrak_, _Lieber_, The _Mozins_, _Zeinior_,

_Carracks_, _Stam_, _Oaz_. Search the rest of England

through, and you will not find two names in one county

that could be strained into Phœnician.

[185] These have not long gone out. Pope in

describing the death scene of the Duke of Buckingham,

says:

“In the worst inn’s worst room, with mats half hung,

The floor of plaster and the walls of dung.”

[186] That of Erzerum is much esteemed: it is sent

to Constantinople.

[187] “This Aristæus, the companion of Zeus, according

to Diodorus, was called the augur, the inventor of the art

of healing, and father of bees; according to Aristotle,

the inventor of the olive (as Buddha in India, and Hercules

among the Greeks); according to him and Appian, he was the

discoverer of the ART OF MAKING BUTTER (τὴν τὲ τοῦ γάλακτος

πῆξιν [tên te tou galaktos pêxin]), which, hitherto unknown

to the Greeks, was, according to Herodotus and Hippocrates

(who found it of great service as a medicine), known to the

Scythians, to the north of the sea of Pontus, by the native

name of butter, and made from mares’ milk. This name was

consequently northern, and has remained German, and probably

from the name, is of Buddhistic origin,” &c.

Πῆξις [Pêxis] is from πήγνυμι [pêgnymi], to coagulate,

and means cheese. Cheese is not known to the Hindoos; nor

butter to the Buddhists.

[188] Hippocrates introduces it in various unguents

and emulsions, with a certain produce of Arabia, oil of

cedar, and other strange and rare ingredients from the

south; one of these is “the liver of the sea-serpent dried

in the shade.”

[189] “Compare the profound and astute observations

of Ritter (Vorhalli Euro. Völler, p. 357) on the source of

the preparation of butter (buttervercitung), which came

from the barbarians to the Greeks, and has remained a

distinguishing character of the northern and German people.

That it belonged to the Iberians demonstrates the source

of that people.” Dendit auf den Ursprung des Volkes kin;

Prüfunz uber die Überv der Urbewohnu.

In the same page he says, “butter is only mentioned

among the mountaineers of the north.” For this statement

he does not quote his authority. That it was used by them

and only by them, is sufficiently attested, by the

subsisting habits and language, but it would be interesting

to find the statement in an ancient writer.

[190] Brocense, Aldrete, &c. describe nata as the part

of the milk thrown up _by boiling_; in the seventeenth

century, the Spaniards were still unacquainted with cream.

[191] Humboldt derives this word from acorn. “If the

edible gland is formed in the north of Spain, and if this

name (artea) is there given to the oak that bears it, then

it may be supposed that the Basque _artoa_, comes from this

and from the ancient habit of acorn bread,” referred to by

Juvenal (Sat. vi. 10), “glandem ructante marito,” this is

nearer than _Aratu_ to plough, or the Greek ἄρτος [artos].

I cannot answer for the three suppositions, but when acorns

are eaten, they are not made into bread. Juvenal speaks of

acorns, not of bread. Larramandi in his introduction, gives

the etymology I have quoted in the text; as to deriving a

Basque word from the Greek, as well might you so derive

a Hebrew or Egyptian one.

[192] Elephas (in the genitive, elephantos) in Greek

applies to “ivory,” and the “elephant,” the etymon of it,

as accepted in our dictionaries, is the “el fil,” of the

Arabs; but in Basque it is _Elefandia_; _Elia_, “great,”

_Andia_, “bull,” or “beast.”

[193] This is the name given by the clans to their

tongue, as distinguished from the Celtic.

[194] In corroboration of the former use of gee, I may

cite the following words. _Blathach_ is “butter-milk,”

from _blath_, “warm,” “curds and cream,” are _Gruth 'us

ce_, as if Devonshire cream was meant, which is the first

stage to gee, or to caïmac, the difference being, that

greater heat is used in the first case, and a slow one

in the second: they have a mixture of _curds and butter_,

but for that there is another name, _crowdy_ in Scotch,

_fuarag_ in Erse.

[195] In Welsh it is _Ecaus_, butter _menin_, cream

_hefen_.

[196] Anat. Hist. Animal. l. iii. c. 20.

[197] The following words are from the same dialect,

_aufkee_ and _ikfee_ milk, _dahan_ butter, _swaag_ beaten

milk, _agroumi_ bread.

[198] “They give new-born infants fresh butter to

take away the _miconium_, and this they do for several

days.”--MARTIN’S _Western Islands_ (p. 195). In the western

islands there was a supposition that cream could be charmed

away to another churn. The use of butter must have extended

far beyond the period when it was first known in Europe.

They have a proper name for churn _muidhe_.

[199] In Ireland they churn the whole milk. The

striplings (the last milk from each cow, which is the

richest) are put together in a deep crock, morning and

evening till full. Any cream or whole milk which has

remained over is added, it is not churned till it has

become quite thick, this takes two or three days in summer,

but in winter more, unless the temperature is kept up. The

butter milk that remains, is far more nutritive than that

from the churned cream, and is used for various domestic,

culinary, nursery, and poultry-yard purposes.

[200] “One of the ladies of the dwelling brought a

plate of fresh and exquisite honey, and a small plate

of fresh butter, as part of our meal, and instructed us

how they were to be eaten together.”--CARNE.

[201] Gen. xliii. 11.

[202] Travels, vol. ii. p. 144.

[203] Crock, obsolete Irish for butter, may apply

to this dish.

[204] _Maslo_ originally meant oil, and does so

yet in certain Sclavonic dictionaries. Butter is a

secondary signification--Durick, apud Lindi Polish Dic.

[205] The Greek term γάλα [gala] is a form of the

Arabic. In the genitive, it is γάλακτος [galaktos]

(galactos) hence the Latin _lac_; by transposition the

verb ἀμέλγω [amelgô], to milk, is held to be formed,

whence the Latin _mulgere_, we, from the verb, have

re-formed a substantive, mulg, mulk, milk, which is

spread over the north of Europe as the derivatives of

lac are over the south; in the Polish and Russian it is

_mleko_.

[206] A remarkable preparation is _hatted kit_,

in Erse, _Bainne ce_. Buttermilk is put into a kit

with a spiket, and left to stand for twenty-four

hours: warm milk is poured on twice a day, for three

or four days; the top is then a sort of coagulated

cream; the lower part is let to run off. It is now,

like Carstophine cream, falling into disuse. It is

mentioned in the Gowrie trial, two centuries and a

half ago. “Ane fyne hattilkit wt sukar, comfietis, and

wyn.”--PITCAIRN’S _Trials_, part iv. p. 285.

_Crowdy butter_ is made as follows: The milk is

yearned, and then placed on a dish, and left till the

whole of the whey has run off. The curds are then

worked up with butter or cream, and it will keep for a

month: it spreads soft like butter, and gets softer the

longer it is kept.

[207] For instance, curds _gruth_, whey _miog_,

curds and whey _slomban_, frothed whey _adhan_, kinds

of syllabub _chranochan_, _bainne-cobhar-bhar_, _bainne

sadte_, biestings, _nos_.

[208] Talbot’s Etymologies, Introduction.

[209] I must make a reservation in favour of

Northumberland, where I have fallen upon persons who

did know how to boil. They spoke of “seasoning” the

water, and of things being spoilt that were “knocked

about” in the pot. Here was the apprehension of the two

points to be kept in view, that the water be not hungry

so as to exhaust the meat, that the bubbles should not

be generated at the bottom of the pot so as to scorch

it and harden the fibre. Any one born with the instinct

of a cook, will, however bred in prejudice, from these

two hints, gain all that is requisite. He who has not

these instincts, will not learn how to boil if a waggon

load of cookery books were shot over him. Strange it

is, that the only people who have not a conception

of boiling, should alone persist, generation after

generation, in sending up to table vegetables and fish

plain boiled! Fish, however, differs from flesh in

this, that the hotter it is boiled the better; thus oil

or butter, which rises to 600° before boiling, is best

for it.

[210] Thence also the Greek word δαῆρες

[daêres].--See Eur. Phœn. v. 90. The convents in Syria

are called _derr_.

[211] The peculiarity of the “singed head” is,

that the skin is left on, which of course is connected

with the manner of slaughtering and flaying animals.

The Egyptians, as Herodotus mentions (l. ii. c. 38),

“cut off the head and then skin the body.” He says

that no Egyptian will eat the head of any animal,

which Wilkinson contradicts (Thebes, vol. ii. p. 232),

because a mendicant receives one: this rather confirms

than confutes the assertion.

BOOK IV.

EL GARB.

CHAPTER I.

DEPARTURE FROM RABAT.

I never had greater difficulties of the kind to encounter, than in

getting away from Rabat. Ali Bey, in the narration of his pilgrimage,

mentions that, after starting from some place, the whole caravan

commenced a violent dispute about the loading of the animals; after

lasting about two hours, it suddenly ceased. On inquiring the cause

of this phenomenon, it was told him, that from such a place to such a

place, “the Arabs dispute.” Our dispute had no limits, save those of

the journey. A large party accompanied us across the water to the Salee

side, and a slave of Mustafa Ducali’s privately suggested that it was a

great pity that I should go away, that it was better to stay at Rabat

than to go. “If you stay,” said he, “you will have a nice house like my

master’s, and two or three pretty wives, the daughters of caïds.”

We left the beach about two o’clock, turning to the right to avoid

Salee: we passed through one of the gates of its old walls, enclosing

the ancient harbour; turning again to the left, we passed between the

gardens and the back of the city. When opposite one of the gates, we

sent in for corn to carry with us, and I was much tempted to enter the

forbidden city, but contained myself, not to commence dissensions with

the guard at the very moment of starting.

Rambling on while the guard awaited the messenger, we came on a

cleft in the rock, the bottom occupied by an orange grove, most

inviting, with its green lustre and deep shadow, cool, damp, dark,

and fragrant. To this retreat, many a seafarer has returned to enjoy

the fruits of his industry: how many a tender “Rover,” has been here

formed by listening to his sire’s tales of Maltese galleys, Christian

argosies and Andalusian maids. While we were looking from the backs

of our horses over the wall that ran along the edge of the cliff,

the proprietor came up, and invited us to descend: there was nothing

piratical about him, so we yielded. The first flight of steps brought

us to a small tank, covered with a trellis of vines, surrounded by

a little walk, through which there were grooves for the water to

circulate, without wetting your feet, and it fell from all sides into

the tank in little cascades. At one side there was a little kiosk with

a window opening upon the orange grove below. Here we found a party

of Moors seated in one corner, and the inseparable tea-things in the

other. My host hurried me down, and walked me all over the grounds,

gathering sweet and bitter lemons and oranges, and seemingly anxious to

stock me with a supply of every variety. Suddenly, having got me alone,

he stopped, and with ominous signs and emphasis, pronounced the word

_Serser_! I was now in my turn anxious to know what he had to say, and

wished to call a Jew I had got as an interpreter; but this he would

not suffer, and seemed to expect to succeed in making me understand by

speaking very close to my ear:--he was much opposed to the working of

mines, and apprehensive of my safety. When I admired in one place the

culture of the garden, he said, “this is the ‘Madem’ (mines) of the

Arabs;” he then asked me to stay some days at Tangier, and he would

come and see me there. On taking leave, he insisted on walking with me

a quarter of a mile, till I was outside of the aqueduct, and in the

open country, and gave me the name of a person at Larache, to whose

house he desired me to go. This person was absent on my arrival there.

Towards sunset we entered a douar, without asking anybody’s leave,

and pitched in the middle of it without a question being asked us by

any one: the change was as great as if one had fallen through from

one century into another, yet all external objects were precisely the

same. There were, however, only so many cottagers living in tents: we

had entered a village, not a douar. Had I gone from Tangier to Rabat

by land, I should, by passing through these successive changes, have

become gradually familiarized with them; fortunately I had seen the

southern country. Everything in this douar was for sale at extortionate

prices, each bargain accompanied by great squabbling. The Sheik did

come, and did bring, as a present, a jar of milk. This was all that

recalled to me the tribes to the south.

Early the next day we arrived at Medea. Lying on the edge of a ravine,

we were almost at the gate before we saw it. Like the other towns, it

is built at the estuary of a river, which descending through a chasm,

has carved out through the rock and sand, its way to the ocean, where,

met by a heavy surge, it heaps up a bar, which the waves incessantly

lash.

The fortress is a parallelogram. The contents in people, and in value,

could not be equal to a douar. Below and between the town and the

river, there is an enclosure of walls in the form of a rectangle, and

about four hundred yards long: the walls are in Tapia, and vary from

twenty to forty feet in height, and from five to seven in thickness.

Seen from above, it appears like a labyrinth; there are large square

spaces and passages running round them; the interval between the

walls is at times not greater than their own thickness; there are no

windows or doors, or the spring of arches for covering in. Bare dead

walls compose the vast chambers, or narrow passages; a small aperture

is seen here and there, by which a man might creep through. There

is a Moorish gateway, but it is a modern addition. Being outside the

fortress, and under it, this building could not have been intended in

any way for defence. It was neither a reservoir for water, nor a store

for merchandize. The deputy governor who accompanied me was perfectly

certain that it was built by Christians: when I expressed doubts, he

became angry, and vociferated loudly, “Eusara,” “Romani.” It was so

fresh, that the walls might have been just finished or still in process

of construction.

I found the caïd superintending the mending of an oar. He reiterated

his salutations of welcome at least a dozen times (it has to be

repeated three times) and pressed me to stay that night, or at all

events to dine. We, however, were anxious to get on, and the cattle

were conducted down to the boat, while the caïd sent his deputy--who,

like himself, every inch a Moor, is a negro in complexion, but whose

features are European--to conduct me over the building I have already

noticed.

We intended here to get if possible fresh horses, not less on account

of the wretched quality of those we had, than of the annoyance we

suffered from their owners. After they had received their money,

they wanted to decline performing the journey, and when I expressed

surprise, they answered, “We have no law--we have no flag: we are

neither Mussulmans, Jews, nor Christians.” This answer I comprehended,

knowing them to be Oudaïas, a tribe broken and dispersed, and holding

no ties with the world, its enemy--a Poland of the Desert.

The boat in which we crossed was about forty feet by ten, pulled by a

couple of oars. Their ingenuity had not arrived at making a platform

for embarking cattle. The camels stride in fastly enough, and stow

easily: they are made to crouch down head and tail, and a row of

their strange heads projects over both sides. Getting in the horses

is a laborious operation: they have to be unladen, and then walked

into the water, and beaten until they spring in, first getting their

fore-legs into the boat, and then with a second spring their hind-legs:

some of them, however, are very expert. Our horses had to perform

this operation four times between Rabat and Tangier--at Rabat, Medea,

Larache, and Arzila.

Just as we had got our cattle embarked, the caïd was seen on horseback

winding his way down the rock. We put back to take him in; and he came

into the stern, where we were seated upon our baggage, carrying in

his hand a handkerchief containing a large provision of hard-boiled

eggs. He said, “As you would not stay to eat, I had these boiled that

you might not be hungry on the way.” One of the packages of majoon

appearing amongst the baggage, the conversation turned upon that

composition; and he told me that he was then going, in consequence of

an order he had received that morning from the Sultan, to gather for

him roots, from which another and superior kind of majoon was made,

and which were only to be found at an hour’s distance from whence we

were, and if we would wait for him at a certain well, he would himself

bring a specimen of the plant. As soon as we reached the indicated

place, he appeared on the hill above, coming towards us at full speed,

and presented me with one of the roots, which was like a large parsnip:

it appears to be the plant called surnag by Leo Africanus. He had also

the consideration to bring some of the leaves, that I might recognise

it again. I forgot to ask the mode of preparing it, which I have since

been unable to ascertain, as it is not used by the people; though the

most strange stories are told of its effects. It is said to have been

discovered by the Emperor Ismael, and to its use is attributed the

numerous progeny of that sovereign, reported at sixty births per month.

The Seboo is the largest river of the kingdom of Fez; it is here about

half a mile in width: the bar is so fierce as to be wholly impassable.

It rises in the Atlas, and passes near Fez and through Mequinez. A

branch of it passes through the city of Fez: it is there termed the

“river of pearls,” and was formerly called the “river of gold.” It was

once navigable as far as Fez, and it still has all the appearance of

being so; yet the corn is carried thither to be ground at an expense

of transport exceeding its value, and then the flour is carried back

again, for at Fez they seem to have good mill-stones, and do not use

the common sand-grit. But, probably, the navigation of the stream

has been purposely disused, in pursuance of their standing policy of

closing the door against Europeans, and sacrificing the advantages of

the present to security for the future.

The Seboo, more than any other river in Morocco, abounds with the

shabel; that of Azimore is the finest in quality. It is about the

size of a salmon, which it resembles: the flesh is soft, fat, and

delicate, and those who have tasted the kiran of the Lake of Ochrida

have eaten something that recalls it. The Seboo bore signs of passing

through a chalk country, showing that the region around had still all

the aspect of the Zahel. The river, while we crossed it, was covered

with bees that were dropping in. There are thousands of hives in the

neighbourhood: the bees were perishing in great quantities from its

being a foggy morning.

A broad and level beach of sand bordered the river, and exhibited a

beautiful pattern in colours, resembling that Moorish ornament which

is at once the richest and the commonest. On pointing it out to one

of those who were with me, he exclaimed, “That is the figure on the

Tower of Hassan.” It is so remarkable that it must have been imitated

in their buildings. It is produced by there being sands of different

colours, which also vary in size and specific gravity. Each warp of

a wave sets them in motion, and then deposits them with mathematical

precision. The river abounds with black sparkling grains of iron, which

they use for dusting on their writing: this was the first time we had

seen it. To the south there was no lime: the iron on the surface is

red, being oxide: here the chalk commenced, and the iron is carbonate.

Besides this, there are three or four sands of different shades of

yellow and red, falling into different portions of the patterns. There

is the blue,[212] brown, and yellow figure, as if laid on with a touch

or stamped with a block. This beach presents at once the origin of the

peculiar Moorish tracery and colouring, with which no other style has

anything to compare.

That night we encamped in a douar, which was near the southern

extremity of the long marsh or lake, El Marga, which runs parallel to

the sea. As we passed along its placid waters, we had on the left the

incessant roar of the ocean, which we never saw. From the sea, the

country must appear a perfectly barren waste; and yet, at the back of

the cliffs, there was a vale of forty miles thickly peopled and well

cultivated. The lake seemed very shallow, and was so covered with

waterfowl that they might have been rained upon it. We saw some boats,

not pulled with oars, but punted. The lake varied in width from one

mile to five. The douars were close to each other all along its banks

on both sides; but, on the side on which we were, the tents might be

seen in lines, or irregularly scattered. They had seines and cast-nets,

and the fish was chiefly a very fat but flavourless barbel. They did

not shoot the water-fowl, but caught them with gins of horse-hair,

into which they ran their necks while swimming. The swans, in one place

seen from a great distance, appeared like a white streak: we could

scarcely believe they were birds till we came near. Next to that on

the Lake of Mexico, I imagine that this is the largest collection of

waterfowl on earth.

That night, when our people were at supper, there was an attempt made

to carry off one of our horses. The alarm was given, not by the dogs,

which only barked as usual, but by the women, who set up a frightful

yelling--the classic _ululatus_. We had pitched a little way from the

tents to avoid the noise. After this, men were drafted from the douar

to sleep and watch all round us. The robbers were suspected to be of

the tribe of Azamor, near Mequinez, two of which tribe were sitting at

supper with our people at the very time.

The whole of the next day we travelled along the shore of the lake. We

had in sight before us a range of hills, one of which was covered with

snow; and here snow upon a mountain in the middle of winter is the sign

of a greater height than it would be with us in the middle of summer. I

performed most of the journey on foot, wearing only shirt and drawers;

and I got away from the party that I might have a better chance of

seeing the people, and I always met with the utmost kindness. They were

always surprised that I was on foot, but never that I was alone. I was

invited to their tents; or they would come running from a distance,

bringing milk. I was amused with the alertness with which they always

set to work to teach me Arabic words.

About sunset, and after travelling ten hours, we came to the head

of the lake, and chose for pitching, a sward on a projecting angle

running into it, and some hundred yards from a douar. This was the

first time that we got away from the tents, and I revelled in recalling

the night’s repose of Eastern travel. The Arabs came and helped us to

pitch; brought us all we required, and then made a blazing fire of

cork-bark. As the night closed in, the water-fowl near us in the angle

of the lake, came swimming in to a clump of bulrushes not fifty yards

distant, just as tame ducks might do. There is abundance of boars in

the neighbourhood; and the Sheik offered to turn out with all his tribe

if I would stay or return for a day’s hunting.

Next morning, while the animals were lading, I strayed along the

water’s edge, and was suddenly assailed by a rush of dogs from the

tents. With my back to the water, I defended myself with a stick for

some time.[213] Presently, a woman and a girl ran down from the tents

to the rescue; and after belabouring the dogs, and setting me free,

they seemed overjoyed with their exploit, ejaculating incessantly,

“Eh, Nazarene!” examining me all over, feeling my hair and skin, and

bursting into fits of laughter. Our conversation, if not _spirituelle_,

was lively. When the interpreter came up, I learnt that my deliverer

was the wife of the Sheik: she was a comely middle-aged woman, with

a head to delight a phrenologist. She said she had a question to ask

me, if I would answer her. On my promising to do so, she resumed: “You

have come to our country, and seen it: now, tell me which is best,

your country or ours?” I answered her, “God is the father of all men,

and the maker of all lands, and he has given to his children the land

that best suits each: your country is good for you, and ours for us.”

I in my turn proposed a question:--“In your country, which is a good

country, tell me what is the best thing?” She reflected, and said,

“We have no good things.” I then asked, “What are your bad things?”

She answered, “God’s evils.” The explanation was, “old age and bad

weather.” I told her that, if she had seen my country, she would know

that with them the one was rare and the other late. She then asked how

much I had seen of their country; and having told her that I had been

into Shavoya, and amongst the Ziaides, she began to expatiate on her

own tribe. “God,” she said, “has given us a fertile and a pretty land;

he has given us plain, and forest, and marsh; he has put a sea beyond

the hills, that no one should harm us; we have a lake that has fish and

birds; we have cattle, sheep, milk, and butter; we have reeds, honey,

and firewood; we have corn in store, and gold and silver; and, if we

live under tents, and not in the city, it is because we choose it.”

Our conversation was put an end to by the rest of the tribe thronging

around us; and an old woman entertaining, or pretending, great alarm, a

little pantomime was suddenly improvised. The Sheik formally announced

that they had in their tents a slave escaped from England, whom it was

their intention to deliver up that I might take her away, upon which

they recounted her services and merits to show how useful a slave she

was that they were giving up--and one of her services was to supply the

douar with wild sows’ milk. On this the old woman ran for her life, and

all the children after her: she was, however, caught, brought back, and

delivered up, and by this time our horses were laden and we took our

leave.

Nothing can exceed the richness of the women’s hair--it falls like

clusters of black grapes or knots of snakes: it is plaited on both

sides of the head, and falls behind. They increase its volume by silk

or worsted cords; and I could not help thinking that the hair of the

women of Carthage was not so despicable a substitute for standing

rigging, especially if they used, as the Jewesses to-day, a turban of

silk thread (_shoualif_) made to imitate it.