United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The intestines found their way into the soup-kettles without any observances of the preliminary home processes. The cartilaginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in the mêlée and passed round to be chewed upon; and even the liver, warm and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten before it had seen the pot.
There was a bustle of preparation all about us. Such a harnessing of horses, such a rolling-up of half-dried shirts, but it was all orderly and systematic. Over it all hung a smell of soup-kettles the preparations for the midday meal, and a buzz of many voices as the men sat about eating out of their tin dishes. I did wish I could see only the picturesque side of it.
It was perfectly dark before the action finished, but, on going to take advantage of the fires which the enemy had evacuated, we found their soup-kettles in full operation, and every man's mess of biscuit lying beside them, in stockings, as was the French mode of carrying them; and it is needless to say how unceremoniously we proceeded to do the honours of the feast.
The tree was the celebrated "canoe-birch," or as Lucien named it, "paper-birch," celebrated as the tree out of whose bark those beautiful canoes are made that carry thousands of Indians over the interior lakes and rivers of North America; out of whose bark whole tribes of these people fashion their bowls, their pails, and their baskets; with which they cover their tents, and from which they even make their soup-kettles and boiling-pots!
Greel to accompany me on inspection." In the galley the fires were out, the ovens cold, the soup-kettles empty, and all the cooks, dish-washers, and scrubbers were absorbing the eloquence of the third assistant pie-maker, who stood on an empty biscuit-box and explained the glories of the one-hour day in the New Era.
The French army of Flanders was gone, their artillery, their standards, their treasure, provisions, and ammunition were all left behind them: the poor devils had even fled without their soup-kettles, which are as much the palladia of the French infantry as of the Grand Seignior's Janissaries, and round which they rally even more than round their lilies.
"Well, well, Master Jack, say no more about it; I do not suppose they mean to do me any harm; but there would be danger in rousing the passions of such a multitude of people. They seem, luckily, to direct their attentions exclusively to me, so you had better go back and look after the canoe." "No; I shall follow you wherever you go, Willis, even into the soup-kettles of the wretches."
Into an earthen pot, which she had bought of the right size to fit upon the hole in the stoves of the poor where they put their soup-kettles, she now threw the poppies, pouring over them two-thirds of the wine she had brought back with her. Then she lighted a fire beneath the pot, intending to obtain the decoction agreed upon as quickly as possible.
The long tables which had so often, to use a hackneyed phrase, "groaned" beneath the weight of civic fare the cosy high-backed stuffed chairs which had held many a portly citizen nay, the very soup-kettles and venison dishes all were to be submitted to the noisy ordeal of the auction hammer.
Word Of The Day