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The flesh of the manatee is excellent, superior even to that of pork, and the oil furnished by its lard, which is three inches thick, is a product of great value. When the meat is smoke-dried it keeps for a long time, and is capital food. If to this is added that the animal is easily caught, it is not to be wondered at that the species is on its way to complete destruction.
To most people it might have seemed ridiculous to have heard that bronzed voyageur calling himself and his brown-faced, smoke-dried, weather-worn companions, by the title of white people; but Lawrence referred to the natural colour of the race to which he belonged.
A little checked curtain hung from the mantel-shelf to keep away the draught which rushed down the wide open chimney, on each side of which was a straight-backed wooden settle. The dark smoke-dried rafters were evidently used as larder and storehouse, for all manner of things hung from them, such as a side of bacon, tallow dips, and a pair of clogs.
The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor Commandante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep embrasured window of the Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt breath of the distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-dried cheeks.
What could we expect in such a place but just something to stay the cravings of hunger: that something rendered uneatable by the terribly dirty no, let me say, smoke-dried look of the speaker, who seemed to be cook and waitress in one? 'Suppose we have an omelette? suggested my young friend. An omelette cooked by those hands!
The traveller might be hospitably entertained in a pa the gate of which was decorated with the smoke-dried heads of slain enemies by a host whose dress might include a necklace of human teeth, the owner of which he had helped to eat. Though a cannibal feast was a rare orgie, putrid food was a common dainty. Without the cringing manner of the Oriental, the Maori had his full share of deceitfulness.
but by a smoke-dried skinny old Highland woman, who did not seem to think herself much honoured by the duty imposed upon her, but muttered between her teeth, 'Our fathers' herds did not feed so near together that I should do you this service. A small donation, however, amply reconciled this ancient handmaiden to the supposed degradation; and, as Edward proceeded to the hall, she gave him her blessing in the Gaelic proverb, 'May the open hand be filled the fullest.
He cut up and smoke-dried the flesh, and the intolerable pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome food with him. We were not only indecent, it seemed to me, but cannibals to feed on the faithful servant that had been our butcher. "But what does it matter?" I argued with myself.
Stafford wrote frequently to his friends in Warwickshire, to assure them that they had quite wrong notions of Ireland; that all Ireland was not a bog; that there were several well-grown trees in the parts he had visited; that there were some as pretty villages as you could wish to see any where, only that they called them towns; that the men, though some of them still wear brogues, were more hospitable to strangers than the English; and that the women, when not smoke-dried, were some of the handsomest he had seen, especially one Rose or Rosamond Gray, who was also the best and most agreeable girl he had ever known; though it was almost a sin to say so much of one who was not an Englishwoman born.
They have not even a cathedral, with eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d'oeuvres of Reubens or Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven't any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross.
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