Part 16

----“_alter enim, quantum in legione Tribuni Accipiunt, donat Calvinæ vel Catienæ_;”

or, as it may be translated,--

“Such sums as a full Colonel’s coffers swell, He flings to Lola, or to Laura Bell!”

But this must have been in very late times, previous to which frugality, modesty, and indifferent pay were ever the Tribune’s share of the national virtues and their consequences, lauded by Livy. The first Cæsar doubled the _salarium_ of the army, and decreed that it should never be reduced. His successors followed the example of increase. Augustus fixed the salt-money at ten _asses_ a day, and by the time of Domitian it was considerably more than double that amount. From that period, the soldiery fed better, and fought worse, than ever. Up to the time of the Empire they had been frugal livers, and were not above preparing the rations of corn allowed them with their own hands: some ground it in hand-mills, others pounded it between stones, and the hastily-baked cakes were eaten contentedly upon the turf, with nothing better to wash them down than pure water, or, at best, _posca_, which was water mixed with vinegar,--and a very wholesome beverage, too, in hot weather.

The Jewish dispensation, unlike that of the early Olympian theology, enforced the use of salt in all sacrificial ceremonies. That of the Dead Sea was abundant; and Galen pronounced it as the most favourable for seasoning, and for promoting digestion. The Greeks learned to call it “divine,” and at last consecrated it to their gods. Spilling salt was accounted as unlucky in the days when “young Time counted his birthdays by the sun,” as in these modern times when the schoolmaster is abroad,--sometimes too much abroad.

Ancus Martius was the first of the Roman Kings who levied a duty on salt. He was not visited by the gods--as legends say other Kings were who created such imposts--by some dire calamity. The bad example of Ancus Martius has continued over nearly the whole of Europe; and a slave cannot eat salt to his bread without paying tribute to the King.

The word “salt” was often used for life itself. When Dordalus says to Toxilus, in the “_Persa_,” “_Eodem mihi pretio sal præhibetur quæ tibi_,”--“I get my salt at the same price as you do,”--he simply means that his manner of life is as good as that of Toxilus, and that a slave-merchant is as respectable as the very best-fed of slaves themselves. Catullus employs the word to denote beauty; other poets use it to signify virtues of various kinds; and in Terence we find a man without salt to mean a man without sense. Plutarch was not wrong when he styled salt “the condiment of condiments.” I do not know that it has ever been used to point a proverb with a contemptuous meaning, except in Greece, where he who had nothing to dine upon was called a “salt-licker.” Rome, where it was of such commercial importance, honoured it more by giving to the road along which it was conveyed the name of “the Salarian Way.”

There were people who never knew its use, as in Epeiros; some who have steadily rejected it, as the Bathurst tribe in Australia. The Peruvians delighted in it, and ate it mixed with hot pepper and bitter herbs, as a sort of “sweetmeat.” How sacred it is in Arabia, we all know; and, in illustration of it, I have heard of an Arab burglar accidentally letting his tongue come in contact, as he was plundering a house by night, with a piece of salt. He instantly deemed he had partaken of the owner’s hospitality, and he departed without booty. Could Christian thieves be so influenced, we should salt our plate-baskets and cash-boxes nightly!

In Sicily a salt is spoken of that melts only in fire, and hardens in water. At Utica, one of the great salt suppliers of the ancient world, it lay about in such huge mounds, hardened by the sun and moon, that the pickaxe would scarcely penetrate it. In Arabia whole cities were once built of it, the blocks of salt being cemented by water. It is still procured with most difficulty in Abyssinia, where the clouds are supposed to deposit the crystal in sandy plains, of heat so furious, that it is only during one or two hours of the night that the seekers of it dare dash into the locality, and carry off, as hastily as possible, what they seek. It is procured far more pleasantly in those parts of Chili where it is found deposited on the leaves of plants. Off the warmer coasts of South America, and the still hotter shores of Africa, blocks weighing from one to two hundred weight have been picked up. Some writers tell us that lakes are nothing more than salt plains in solution; and others, that salt plains are merely lakes congealed. However this may be, it is known that generally four gallons of water produce one of salt; but there is great difference of result in various localities, some water yielding a sixth, other only a sixteenth. The deep sea-water is the most highly productive. There are various strange ingredients, too, used in different places to make the salt “grain” properly. White of egg, butter, ale, and even blood, are employed to produce the desired result. In its fossil or mineral state it is nowhere seen to such great advantage as in the mines of Williska, in Poland. I have seen those near Salzburg, in southern Austria; but these are mere salt-cellars, compared with the Polish mine, which forms a large subterranean city, has its streets, citizens, and coteries, and is an underground republic, many of the natives of which die without seeing a blade of grass, or a gleam of sunlight, upon the bosom of the upper earth.

Finally, salt is the most natural stimulant for the digestive organs; but it should be remembered that too much of it is _almost_ as bad as too little. The lowering of the price of salt, a consequence of the abolition of the duty, was beneficial to the poor, and ruinous to the worm-doctors. It is a singular production. In small quantities it is a stimulating manure; in large quantities it begets sterility. A little of it accelerates putrefaction, while a large quantity prevents it. Farther, it is to be remembered,--and I have mentioned the fact in another page,--that the salt in salted meat is not (whatever it may once have been) the table salt, the use of which is so favourable to digestion. In the meat it undergoes a chymical change, by which it deteriorates itself as well as the object to which it is applied. “Sweet salt” was the name once given to sugar; and in reference to this latter production, it may be safely averred, that its introduction worked a considerable change in society. And it appears to have been early added to that “significant luxury,” wheat. In Isaiah xliii. 24 there is an allusion made to it in these words: “Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of sacrifices.” And again, in Jeremiah vi. 20: “To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and sweet cane from a far country?” It would seem, however, that though the sweet cane may have been known, its uses were not very speedily appreciated, or, if they were, that they were for a long time forgotten. Thus, as late as the thirteenth century of our era, a writer speaks of a novel sort of salt that has been discovered, the flavour of which was sweet, and, as he suggests, might be found acceptable to sick persons, because of its soothing and cooling properties. “Honey out of the rock,” which was the sweetener most early noticed in Scripture, fell into comparative disuse, after sugar had become a necessary of life, after being first a medicine, and then a luxury. The Spaniards received it from the Arabs, and familiarized it in Europe. Its first settlement beyond the Continent was in Madeira, and at length it found a congenial soil in the islands of the Western Indies. God gave the gift, but man has discovered how to abuse it to his own destruction; and, from the sweet food offered by an angel, he has distilled the fire-water, which slays like the pestilence. But to return, for a moment, from the sweets to the salts, and especially to the latter in the form of brine.

The Romans were fond of brine,--water in which bay-salt had been dissolved,--as a seasoning; and after dinner, those who could not guess the riddles that were put to them, were punished, like the refractory gentlemen at the Nightingale Club, by being compelled to swallow a cupful, without drawing breath. Apicius invented a composition made up of salt, pepper, ginger, thyme, celery, rocket, and anise-seed, with lamoni, wild marjoram, holy thistle, spikenard, parsley, and hyssop, as a specific to be taken, after heavy dinners, against indigestion. They who could digest the remedy need not have been afraid of the dinner.

That universal seasoning of the classical world, the _garum_, was originally a shrimp sauce; but it was subsequently made of the intestines of almost any fish, macerated in water, saturated with salt; and when symptoms of putrefaction began to appear, a little parsley and vinegar were added; and there was the famous _garum_, of which the inventors were so proud,--and particularly of a _garum_ which was prepared in Spain. Flesh instead of fish was occasionally used, with no difference in the process of preparation; and it would be difficult to say which was the nastier. But, perhaps, if we could see the witchery of preparing any of our own flavouring sauces, we should be reluctant ever to allow a drop of the polluted mixture to pass our lips. There _is_ a bliss in ignorance.

Pythagoras showed better taste in the science of seasonings, when he took to eating nothing but honey wherewith to flavour his bread. Hybla sounds sweet, the very word smells sweet, from its association with honey. Aristæus, who is said to have discovered its use, merited the patent of nobility, whereby he was declared to have descended from the gods; and the placing the honeycomb and its makers under the protection of Mellona, expressly made by men for this purpose, was a proof of the value in which they were held. Theophrastus placed sugar among the honeys,--the honey of reeds,--or the “salt of India,” as some strangely called it. The Greek physicians recommended its use, both as food and as flavourer. It was at one time as scarce as cinnamon,--that precious bark of which the phœnix made its nest, and which the Cæsars monopolized. Cinnamon and cloves were not employed in seasoning until a comparatively modern period. The good people of earlier days preferred verjuice, in certain cases prescribed by Galen. They seemed to have a taste for acids: hence the admiration, both in Greece and Rome, for vinegar and pickles. Vinegar figured in the army statistics of Rome especially; but it once, at least, figured in a still more remarkable way in the statistics of the French army, in the time of Louis XIII., when the Duc de la Meilleraye, Grand Master of the Artillery of France, put down £52,000 as the sum expended by him in cooling cannons. How hot the war must have been, and at what a price the fever must have been maintained, when the merely refrigerating process cost so much!

French epicures maintain that the pig was born to be “ringed,” and that his mission was to rout at the foot of the yoke-elm trees, and turn up truffles! Pliny gravely looked upon the truffle as a prodigy sown by the thunderbolt in autumnal storms. However this may be, all lovers of good things eat the truffle with a sort of devout ecstasy, in spite of the wide differences of opinion which exist among the faculty of guessers, as to whether the truffle be nutritious or poisonous, fit for food, or monster sire of indigestion. The fact is, that they should be delicately dealt with, like mushrooms; of which he who eats little is wise, and he who eats not of them at all is safe from blaming them for bringing on indigestion--as far as _he_ is concerned.

The truffle is thus elaborately, yet not verbosely, described by Archimagirus Soyer: “The truffle is a very remarkable vegetable, which, without stems, roots, or fibres, grows of itself, isolated in the bosom of the earth, absorbing the nutritive juice. Its form is round, more or less regular; its surface is smooth, or tuberculous; the colour, dark brown outside, brown, grey, or white within. Its tissue is formed of articulated filaments, between which are spheric vesicles, and in the interior are placed reproductive bodies, small brown spheres, called ‘_truffinelles_.’ Truffles vegetate to the depth of five or six inches in the high sandy soils of the south-west of France, Piedmont, &c. Their mode of vegetation and reproduction is not known. (?) Dogs are trained to find them, as well as pigs, and boars also, who are very fond of them. They are eaten cooked under the ashes, or in wine and water. They are preserved when prepared in oil, which is soon impregnated with their odour. Poultry is stuffed with them; also geese’s livers, pies, and cooked pork, besides numerous _ragoûts_. They possess, as it is said, exciting virtues.” The latter, we suppose, is a paraphrase for the sentiment of “Falstaff,” before cited, “It rains potatoes!” Shell-fish had the same reputation in the olden time. “_Tene marsupium_,” says Italius to Olympio, in the _Rudens_:--

“_Abi atque obsonia propera; sed lepidè volo Molliculas escas, ut ipsa mollicula est._”

As for the mushroom, if it be not in itself deadly, it has been made the vehicle of death. Agrippina poisoned Claudius in one, and Nero, his successor, had a respect for this production ever after. Tiberius, in Pagan, and Clement VII., in Papal, Rome, as well as Charles VI. of France, are also said to have been “approximately” killed by mushrooms. Seneca calls them “voluptuous poison,” and of this poison his countrymen ate heartily, and suffered dreadfully. The mushroom was not rendered harmless by the process of Nicander,--raising them under the shadow of a well-irrigated and richly-manured fig-tree.

One of the most perfect illustrations of “sauce,” in its popular sense, with which I am acquainted, is conveyed in the reply once given by a French _Curé_ to his Bishop. It is a regulation made by canonical law, that a Priest cannot keep a female servant to manage his household, unless she be of the assigned age of, at least, forty years. It once happened that a Bishop dined with a _Curé_, at whose house the Prelate had arrived in the course of a visitation tour. On that occasion he found that they were waited on at dinner by two quietly pretty female attendants, of some twenty years each. When diocesan and subordinate were once more alone, the former remarked on the uncanonical condition of the household, and asked the _Curé_ if he were not aware that, by rule of church, he could maintain but one _menagère_, who must have attained, at least, forty years of age? “I am quite aware of it, _Monseigneur_,” said the rubicund _Curé_; “but, as you see, I prefer having my housekeeper in two volumes!”

With respect to the use of spices, it may be safely said, that the less they are used, the better for the stomach. A _soupçon_ of them in certain preparations is not to be objected to; but it must be recollected that in most cases, however pleasant they may be to the palate, the apparent vigour which they give to the stomach is at the expense of the liver, and the reaction leaves the former in a worse condition than it was in before.

The world probably never saw a second time such a trade in spices as that which was carried on of old between Canaan and Egypt. The Dutch and Amboyna was a huckstering matter compared with it. Egypt sent Canaan her corn, wine, oil, and linen; and Canaan sent, in return, her spicery, balm, myrrh, precious woods, and minerals. The Ishmaelites were the carrying merchants; and, while each class of them had its especial article of commerce, they all dabbled a little in slave-dealing. Thus, the men of the tribe that purchased Joseph dealt in spicery only,--a term including balm and myrrh. The Egyptian demand for the article was enormous. At the period of the sale of Joseph, spicery was most extensively used, not only for the embalming of men, but of sacred animals. In after times, this practice ceased to a great extent, on account of a large failure in the supply.

There is something very characteristic of the “ancient nation” in the transaction of the brethren with respect to Joseph. The general proposal was to slay him; but it was Judah, first of his race, who, with a strong eye to business, exclaimed, “What _profit_ to slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, let us _sell him_ to the Ishmaelites.” The opposition to fratricide, on the part of Judah, was not on the principle that it was a crime, but that it brought nothing. But, no sooner had he pointed out how they might get rid of the troublesome brother, and put money in their purses to boot, than the profligate kinsmen adopted the project with alacrity, preferring lucrative felony to downright profitless murder.--Do I hear you remark, Sir, that it has ever been thus with this rebellious Jewish people? Well, let us not be rash in assertions. Judah was a very mercenary fellow, no doubt; but it was better to sell a live brother into a slavery which gave him the chance of sitting at the table of Pharaoh Phiops, than to murder one for the mere sake of making money by the sale of the body, as was done by a Christian gentleman of the name of Burke.

There are some plants used in seasoning which have been esteemed for other virtues besides lending a fillip to the appetite. Others of these seasoning plants have acquired an evil reputation. Thus orach was said to cause pallor and dropsy. Rocket had a double use: it not only was said to remove freckles, but an infusion of it in wine rendered the hide of a scourged convict insensible to the whip. Fennel was, unlike asparagus, held to be good for the sight. Dill, on the other hand, injured the eyes, while it strengthened the stomach. Anise-seed was in great favour with the medical philosophers, who prescribed it to be taken, fasting, in wine; and hyssop wine was a specific for cutaneous eruptions, brought on by drinking wine of a stronger quality. Wild thyme cured the bite of serpents,--if the sufferer could only collect it in time; and pennyroyal was sovereign for indigestion. Rue cured the ear-ache, and nullified poisons; for which latter purpose it was much used by Mithridates. Mint was gaily eaten, with many a joke, because it was said to have been originally a pretty girl, metamorphosed by Proserpine. The Romans, now and then, ate camomile at table, just as old country ladies, when tea was first introduced, and sent to them as a present, used to boil the leaves, and serve them, at dinner, like spinach. Capers, in the olden time, were vulgar berries, and left for democratic digestion. “I once saw growing in Italy,” said an Irish traveller, fit to be “own correspondent” to one of the morning papers, “the finest anchovies I ever beheld!” A listener naturally doubted the alleged fact; and the offended Irishman not only called him out, but shattered his knee-cap by a pistol-shot. As he was leaping about with intensity of pain, the Irishman’s second remarked to his principal, that he had made his adversary cut capers, at any rate. “Capers!” exclaimed the Hibernian, “capers! ’faith, that’s it. Sure, Sir,” he added, advancing to his antagonist, “you were right; it was not anchovies, but capers, that I saw growing. I beg pardon: don’t think any more about it.” Let us add, that, if the aristocratic ancients deeply declined capers, they were exceedingly fond of assafœtida, as a seasoning ingredient. Green ginger was also a popular condiment; and it is commonly eaten in Madagascar at this day. I suppose that, in former times, Hull imported this production in large quantities, and that therefore one of her streets is called “the Land of Green Ginger.” The Romans gave wormwood wine to the charioteers, perhaps considering that the stomachic beverage would secure them from dizziness.

I have mentioned above that Mithridates patronized rue as a nullifier of poisons. He was in the habit of swallowing poisons, as people in the summer swallow ices; and he was famous for inventing antidotes, to enable him to take them with impunity. One consequence is, that he has gained a sort of immortality in our pharmacopœia; and “Mithridate,” in pharmacy, is a compound medicine, in form of an electuary, serving as either a remedy or a preservative against poisons, being also accounted a cordial, opiate, sudorific, and alexipharmic. “Mithridate” is, or rather, I suppose, was, one of the capital medicines in the apothecaries’ shops. The preparation of it, according to the direction of the College, is as follows; and I request my readers to peruse it attentively, and to get it by heart, in case of necessity supervening. Here is the facile recipe: “Take of cinnamon, fourteen drachms; of myrrh, eleven drachms; agarick, spikenard, ginger, saffron, seeds of treacle-mustard, frankincense, Chio turpentine, of each ten drachms; camel’s hay, costus, Indian leaf, French lavender, long pepper, seeds of hartwort, juice of the rape of cistus, strained storax, opopanax, strained galbanum, balsam of Gilead, or, in its stead, expressed oil of nutmegs, Russian castor, of each an ounce; poly-mountain, water germander, the fruit of the balsam tree, seeds of the carrot of Crete, bdellium strained, of each seven drachms; Celtic nard, gentian root, leaves of dittany of Crete, red roses, seed of Macedonian parsley, the lesser Cardanum seeds freed from their husks, sweet fennel seeds, gum Arabic, opium strained, of each five drachms; root of the sweet flag, root of wild valerian, anise-seed, sagapenum strained, of each three drachms; spignel, St. John’s wort, juice of acacia, the bellies of scinks, of each two drachms and a half; of clarified honey, thrice the weight of all the rest: dissolve the opium first in a little wine, and then mix it with the honey made hot. In the mean time, melt together, in another vessel, the galbanum, storax, turpentine, and the balsam of Gilead, or the expressed oil of nutmeg,” (I have no doubt that one will do quite as well as the other; and this must be highly satisfactory for sufferers to know,) “continually stirring them round, that they may not burn; and, as soon as these are melted, add to them the hot honey, first by spoonsful, and afterwards more freely. Lastly, when this mixture is nearly cold, add by degrees the rest of the spices reduced to powder,”----_and_, as the French quack used to say of his specific for the toothache, if it does you no harm, it will certainly do you no good. For my own part, I think the remedy worse than the disease; but a gentleman just poisoned may be of another opinion; and I can only say, that if, with prussic acid knocking at his pylorus, he has leisure to wait till the above prescription is made up for him,--till the bellies of scinks and the camel’s hay are procured, and till the ingredients are amalgamated “by degrees,”--he will, _if_ he survive the poison, the waiting, and the remedy, have deserved to be called, κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, the “patient.” But here are the pastry and the fruits; and there ARE people who are given to believe that pastry and poison are not very wide asunder.