The Frontier Lands of the Christian and the Turk (Volume 1)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 54 DELICATE FARE. instance, sub tegmine fagi, two young girls passed with a basket of wild strawberries, culled probably in some garden of the Hesperides, where no dragons watched, and we thought it might be acceptable as a dessert after the meal we were about to partake of: we succeeded in communicating to them our proposal to purchase their whole stock in trade, and they intimated the amount of their demand with many smiles on their little sunburnt faces, and by the aid of their little dirty fingers; but it was utterly impossible to meet it with any degree of precision, and as the alternative was naturally in their favour, being between a greater and a smaller sum than what they claimed, they danced off with their empty basket, shouting with delight at having realised so fair a profit on the exchange of their fragrant merchandize for a fragment of well-thumbed paper representing more than its current value. The inn-keeper now brought us our much-vaunted dinner in earthenware, on a wooden tray, the whole being colourless from the secular accumulation of filth. As for the contents of the disgusting vessels, they consisted in a greasy mixture with slices of cucumber floating on its surface, ambitiously styled, by the host, soup; a savoury mess of onions fried in a liquid sauce of rancid oil; and an offensive stew of tripe swimming in an ocean of melted hog's lard. The inspection was soon completed, and, as none of these dainty dishes could pass muster, we fell back on our reserve, the strawberries, and told the crest-fallen cook that he might eat the produce of his cuisine himself, while we would be satisfied with our dessert. He soon recoveredhis self-respect, however, when he found himself called upon to supply information on the subject of the castle; and for the credit of...