The same care that the Germans show in the growing and transportation
of fish is also manifested in their treatment of game.
During the automobile tour across Germany to which reference has
been made, we purposely stopped, as a rule, at the smaller towns and
taverns; but everywhere, without advance notice, we had excellent
food. I had previously come to the conclusion that the average German
restaurant serves nearly if not quite as good meals as the average
French restaurant, at least in the provinces.
It was game season, and everywhere we were able to get
partridges--plump young birds, juicy, and cooked scientifically, at
about one-third American prices.
Hares and rabbits are a German specialty, and _Hasenrücken_ is a very
different thing from the undrawn rabbit abomination sold in American
markets. The Californian cottontail is the nearest approach we have
to the Teutonic hare. I shot dozens of them in Los Angeles County one
winter and found them as tender and almost as well flavored as young
chicken.
Venison is seldom to be had in our markets and usually only at fancy
prices. In German restaurants it is as cheap as beef; sometimes
cheaper. The back--_Rehrücken_--costs a trifle more, and is better than
the rest of the meat, which is usually served roasted or as a ragout;
but all is good. It seems to be a specialty of the Rhine boats.
Other game also is abundant and cheap, for the simple reason that
the greed for sport is regulated by severe laws which are strictly
enforced. We, too, now have game laws in most of our States, but they
are seldom enforced effectively and most of them, moreover, were made
on the principle of locking the stable door after the horse has been
stolen.
Africa is at present the scene of ruthless slaughter of game, big and
little, but at its worst it is not often so reckless, extravagant, and
wasteful as the hideous carnage of which Americans have been guilty.
Time was when wild pigeons blackened the sky and were slain by the
hundreds with poles. Wild turkeys inhabited every thicket and could be
bought for twenty cents apiece--they are twice as much a pound now,
though seldom on sale at any price. Ruffled grouse were so plentiful
that a bounty was offered for their extermination, their abundance
being a menace to the crops. To-day you pay $5 for a brace of these
birds. Deer, until lately, were killed for their haunches, the rest
being left for beasts of prey; while millions of buffaloes were
slaughtered for their tongues and hides--often for the tongues alone.
The Audubon Society, aided by generous donors and, to some extent,
by the Government, has done royal service to protect game and song
birds. The intelligent sporting clubs are lending useful aid, while
the Yellowstone Park has been set aside as a great game preserve.
Unfortunately, although the animals are safe from guns while they
remain in the Park, thousands are slaughtered in winter when hunger
drives them outside its limits, while many thousands more perish
because no provision is made for feeding these poor wards of the
Government.
A pathetic picture is printed in Dillon Wallace's splendid book,
"Saddle and Camp in the Rockies." It tells a sad story. One
settler told him there had been times when he could walk half a
mile on the bodies of dead elk. Instead of helping its wards, the
Federal Government actually gave permits to sheepmen which would
have devastated the last refuge of the elks. The settlers saved the
situation by holding an indignation meeting. "The sheepmen saw the
point--_and the rope_--and discreetly departed."
In Germany the game animals are cared for in winter. While visiting
Mark Twain's daughter and her husband, the eminent pianist-composer,
Ossip Gabrilowitsch, in the Bavarian Highlands, in the summer of 1912,
we met at their house a young tenor who was also a mighty hunter before
the Lord. He gave us an account of the game laws and the general
arrangements for preservation and multiplication, which convinced us
that if we are to retrieve the errors and crimes of our predecessors,
East and West, we must follow the example of Germany.
Pointing to the meadows round about, he explained that the hay made on
these is preserved and fed to the deer in winter. Often one may see as
many as a hundred at a time assembling for their daily meal, and people
come all the way from Munich to see them at it.
As it had been found that too much hay or other dry food was not good
for the deer, the owners of private game preserves, of which there are
many, have taken to planting beets, turnips or potatoes, which remain
in the ground till the animals dig them out from under the snow and
soil.
A suggestive detail regarding the protection of birds is that thickets,
bristling with thorns, are specially provided to help them during
nesting time and when pursued by birds or beasts of prey. The clearing
away of thickets in America has done almost as much as actual slaughter
in exterminating birds. Lovers of song birds as well as epicures who
like game for a change would unite in blessing our railway companies if
they followed the German example of planting shrubs as homes for birds
all along the railroad embankments.
While the Germans are fond of partridges and other game birds, their
favorite food, so far as the feathered tribes are concerned, is the
domesticated goose. In the markets, especially of the northern cities,
more geese are exposed for sale than all other kinds of poultry
combined, and in restaurants _Gänsebraten_ is seldom absent from the
menu. The French rather look down on roast goose, but that is because
their roast goose is not so juicy and tender as the Prussian, whether
owing to a difference in variety or rearing I cannot tell.
The Germans are most painstaking in the growing and the proper feeding
of this bird. They know that corn fodder yields the largest amount
of fat--and goose fat is much in demand--while the finest Flavor is
secured by feeding barley malt.
The best goose, like the best beef, is grown where there is abundant
pasturage. There is less of this in the Empire than there used to be,
hence large numbers of geese are imported. From six to seven millions
of them are annually brought across the border, mostly from Russia.
Every day, a special "goose train," consisting of from fifteen to forty
cars crosses the Russian frontier bound for Berlin or Strassburg.
[Illustration: Deer in German Forest]
Strassburg is one of the many cities that were made famous by a special
food. Goose liver was already relished as a great delicacy by the
ancient Romans; Horace refers in one of his poems to the joys of eating
the liver of the white goose fattened with juicy figs. In Strassburg,
unfortunately, the geese are not fattened with figs, but are locked up
in cages and stuffed for a number of days with shelled corn or noodles
till their overworked livers become abnormally enlarged, after which
they are made into what is known the world over as _pâté de foie gras_.
This mixture of liver, meat and truffles is now prepared on a large
scale also in Toulouse and other French places, but the headquarters
for it is Alsace, where it is made in many places, though it is said
that there is a growing opposition to it on account of the cruelty
inseparable from the stuffing process. It's a great pity that such
cruelty should be necessary, for not a few epicures feel like the Rev.
Sydney Smith, who exclaimed: "My idea of heaven is eating _foies gras_
to the sound of trumpets."