green vegetables is much sooner over than with us. They
eat the Indian corn in a great variety of forms; sometimes
it is dressed green, and eaten like peas; sometimes it is
broken to pieces when dry, boiled plain, and brought to
table like rice; this dish is called hominy. The flour of it is
made into at least a dozen different sorts of cakes; but in
my opinion all bad. This flour, mixed in the proportion of
one-third with fine wheat, makes by far the best bread
I ever tasted.

I never saw turbot, salmon, or fresh cod; but the rock
and shad are excellent. There is a great want of skill in
the composition of sauces; not only with fish, but with every
thing. They use very few made dishes, and I never saw
any that would be approved by our savants. They have an
excellent wild duck, called the Canvas Back, which, if deli-
cately served, would surpass the black cock; but the game
is very inferior to ours; they have no hares, and I never saw
a pheasant. They seldom indulge in second courses, with
all their ingenious temptations to the eating a second
dinner; but almost every table has its dessert (invariably
pronounced desart), which is placed on the table before the
cloth is removed, and consists of pastry, preserved fruits,
and creams. They are "extravagantly fond," to use their
own phrase, of puddings, pies, and all kinds of "sweets,"
particularly the ladies; but are by no means such con-
noisseurs in soups and ragoûts as the gastronomes of Europe.
Almost every one drinks water at table, and by a strange
contradiction, in the country where hard drinking is more
prevalent than in any other, there is less wine taken at
dinner; ladies rarely exceed one glass, and the majority of
females never take any. In fact, the hard drinking, so
universally acknowledged, does not take place at jovial din-
ners, but, to speak plain English, in solitary dram-drinking.
Coffee is not served immediately after dinner, but makes

-268-