I ate it with unflagging appetite every morning that I remained along the whole great chain of lakes and rivers, from Chicago to the Saguenay, and every morning I thought it rather better than the last. If I could only succeed in acclimatising it in our own Scottish lochs-where it still lingered within historical times, and lived freely during late geological epochs-I should feel (as prefaces always say) that my work was not quite in vain.

Entrées, being rather a question of the cook than of the country, need not detain us long. Indeed, I did not find a single truly national entrée during my whole visit, nor do I think that any exists. If I do wrong, herein, to the trans-Atlantic cuisine, I humbly offer my best apologies to its offended dignity.

Next, then, in the due order of banqueting, we arrive at the important item of meats. And here I am compelled by native verity reluctantly but emphatically to confess that there is no good meat in America, with the exception, perhaps, of well-fed pork. The beef, the mutton, the veal, and the lamb, are all tough, stringy, dry, and flavourless. Added to which bad points, the cooks, in their desire to retain a little juice within the fibrous tissues, insist upon sending up the joints only half-dressed, in a manner strikingly suggestive of those Hellenic ogres, the omophagi. Having been bred up personally among a tribe who know the use of fire and practise the art of cooking, I found this habit, to say the least of it, unpleasant: but as remonstrance proved unavailing, I was fain in the end to take what was given me, and be as thankful as my sinful nature permitted.

To say the truth, there is no tender beef in the world, except in a small corner of Western Europe, which I designate the good meat belt. This is an age of meteorological discoveries, when we have charts of winds and weather, maps of isothermals and phytozones, theories of sunspots, monsoons, and Indian famines. Now I have got a little hobby of my own on the subject of good meat, which I mean to illustrate some day by publishing a 'Creatological Map of Europe; the Good Meat Belt coloured Red.' That idea, I flatter myself, is a really new one. Observe the connection of cause and effect. The warm westerly breezes blowing across the Atlantic and the Gulf Stream reach the shores of Great Britain, Ireland, Northern France, Belgium, and Holland, laden with copious moisture, which falls perpetually upon the nearest land, thus causing a constant growth of fresh, tender, velvety grass. Nowhere in the world, save in this favoured corner, do you find that close-cropped mossy sward which feeds our South-downs and our prés salés, our Herefords and our Galloways. In Eastern and Southern Europe, in India, in America, the sheep and cattle, grazing upon coarse, stringy, burnt

up vegetation, become themselves mere bundles of thick muscular fibre, with no pretence to plumpness, tenderness, or delicacy of flavour. So beautifully does well-directed science show us the intricate interdependence of mundane affairs! At what glorious gastronomical results might we not arrive if the Royal Society would only forsake Potential Energy and devote its powers to the construction of such creatological charts!

The Americans themselves are conscious of this want in their national culinary resources. Years ago, when I was sipping my vermouth one day in a café on the Boulevards, a lean Yankee sat by my side at a little table discussing a mutton chop. After he had carefully picked the whole available material off the bone, he held up the remnant upon his fork, and observed to me with the charming familiarity of his fatherland, 'I take it this is the only thing that your country raises which my country can't lick. Without wholly endorsing the negative portion of this striking apophthegm, I am fully prepared to acquiesce in its positive statement. All America cannot produce a decent mutton chop.

But if the great continent is weak in meat, it makes up for the deficiency by its richness in vegetables. Nowhere in the world and my gastronomical experiences have been many and varied-have I found such excellent fruits, pulses, tubers, or saladgreens as in the North-Western States and Canada. Our ordinary English garden-stuff-pease, beans, cabbage, cauliflower, asparagus, sea-kale, lettuce, and celery-grows far more abundantly and lusciously there than in Europe. The pease and asparagus, especially, are beyond all praise-tender, melting, succulent, and gigantic withal. Tomatoes load the table at every meal, either sliced cold and dressed like a salad or stewed as only New England and Canadian cooks can stew them. Then, in addition to these familiar old friends, better here than in their Eastern homes, a number of new luxuries await the inquiring palate. Indian corn forms in itself a memorable epoch in the epicure's life. It is picked green,' that is to say, young and tender-for the colour is a pale yellow-and, after being boiled or roasted, is eaten with a copious supply of that delicious butter which goes without the saying in America. Delicate-minded people cut off the grains from the 'cob' with a knife, which wastes half the contents and spoils all the flavour; but ordinary bodies hold the 'cob' boldly in one hand (farmer folks even going the length of two), and gnaw off the succulent grain as a dog gnaws a bone. Not a graceful performance, certainly, but very effectual; and as to the gustatory result, I think green corn may fairly be elevated on to the same lofty pedestal of vegetable excellence with asparagus and top arti

chokes. The egg fruit, too, yields another new sensation—a deep purple-skinned, melon-shaped object, sliced thick, and nicely fried in breadcrumbs. Sweet-potatoes, yams, and similar Southern products, brought up by rail from the Carolinas, swell the list. In short, while the Americans have all our vegetables in greater perfection than can ever be attained at home, they have a great many other delicious species to which we are total strangers.

Moreover, by cunningly combining and ringing the changes on all their vegetables, the cooks produce several excellent mixtures, such as succotash, a mélange of Indian corn and beans, admirably adapted for the finale of a breakfast. Furthermore, being prone to follow the customs of France in all good things, they invariably observe the laudable practice of serving vegetables upon a separate plate, so that each convive may be seen surrounded with a semicircle of little dishes, containing great melting pease, stringless haricot beans, suave tomatoes, or snowy broccoli. In this way neither does the gravy spoil the delicacy of the vegetables, nor do such stronger flavours as that of tomato drown and overpower the specific sapidity of the meat. Our English custom of loading slices from the joint, sauces, vegetables, and condiments on a single plate is decidedly a grossier survival from earlier ages which the spread of Darwinism and the course of contemporary evolution' ought speedily to sweep away.

Entremets, like entrées, offer little ground for philosophical comment. Suffice it to say that the cooks are not inferior to our own in this department, though they hardly reach the level of excellence common in France and Italy. So we reach next the question of cheese, a question much misunderstood in Europe. Because American cheese,' as sold in London, proves generally cheap and bad, the human intellect is prone to leap at the erroneous conclusion that no good cheese can be made in America. It is sad to think how many excellent gourmets may have gone down to the grave under the influence of this fatal delusion. I can testify from personal experience that the country round Albany on the Hudson, and the whole Canadian lake-board, may fairly vie at least with Stilton, Cheshire, and Gruyère, even if they fall short of such old-world refinements as Roquefort and Carembert. But when once a country has acquired a name for producing a cheap article, buyers imagine that all its wares must be common and unclean; and so, if its better goods are put into the market at all, they are sold under cover of some other well-known name. Many American merchants assured me that whole tons of first-class Western cheese and bacon are annually shipped to Europe, where they are retailed as prime Cheddar or best Wiltshire to an unsuspecting British public.

Last of all, we come to dessert. And here, again, nothing but praise can be given. America is pre-eminently the land of fruits and vegetables. No such apples, pears, plums, or cherries can be found in any other country. As for the strawberries, they positively incommode one by their size, requiring two bites from the most capacious mouth. The raspberries, red, white, and black, are equally good; while the fact that no English gardener has yet introduced the last-named variety at our tables, affords a melancholy illustration of that natural conservatism which appears to be inherent in the bucolic mind. But perhaps the nicest of all American acquisitions to the fruiterer's stock is the cultivated blackberry. This excellent fruit has been carefully selected and re-selected till the gritty stones have been nearly eradicated, and a sweet, pungent, subacid pulp alone remains. Eaten with cream and ice they almost equal the unapproachable strawberry, and they, too, are well worthy the attention of British horticulturists.

Peaches grow plentifully in the neighbourhood of Baltimore and elsewhere as a standard fruit in the open fields. They are sold by the basketful for a mere trifle. But in flavour they fall far short of our own wall-fruit, being quite watery and destitute of bouquet or fragrance. I believe fruits are always best in those countries where most care is necessarily taken in raising them. Certainly no Continental garden can vie with our English peaches and grapes; while the coarse and fibrous West Indian pine-apples are not fit to bear the same name as our scented hot-house Queens and Ripleys. The finest oranges come from the Azores, fifteen degrees north of the tropics, or from the barren rock of Tangiers, on the borders of the African desert. And the best strawberries in Britain ripen in September upon the windy wolds behind the cold grey granite city of Aberdeen.

Talking of Southern fruits, I should add that not only pines and oranges, but also bananas, prickly-pears, limes, and other Carolinian luxuries are brought in abundance to all the Northern towns both in summer and winter. But for my part, I would never touch a tropical fruit if I could get a strawberry, a cherry, The tropics have always a sickly tinge of yellow fever about their luscious richness, while our Northern berries carry with them an inherent notion of freshness, health, and digestibility.

A better result of the unbroken stretch of land which joins New York and Boston with the sunny regions of perpetual dogdays is this, that winter green pease, early strawberries, and other like unseasonable dainties can be brought up by rail from the South without difficulty during any one of the frozen months. It is true one can in like wise buy Algerian fruits in Paris through

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the whole of December; but their price puts them beyond the reach of any save princes and bourgeois. The intervention of the Mediterranean effectually cuts off Northern Europe from the subtropical lands; while the continuous reach of the American mainland converts Charleston into a winter garden for Chicago and Montreal.

Perhaps the best of all American fruits, however, are the grapes. I tasted them to absolute perfection in the vineries of an enthusiastic viticulturist in a little Canadian town on Lake Ontario. This benefactor of his country had spent many years and sunk much capital in the endeavour to acclimatise the vine in that inclement air, and at last he succeeded to perfection. By employing British stocks, crossed with the native American grape, he produced several dozen varieties which surpassed anything I have ever tasted. The original wild vine of Canada bears tart little berries, slightly astringent in the mouth like alum; but a judicious course of hybridizing, with black Hambros, Sweetwaters, Muscatels, and other European strains, yielded finally a number of new stocks which was simply astounding. I could not have believed before that one fruit could be tortured into giving the most sensitive palate seventy-five distinct flavours.

Dessert naturally brings the wine: but that element in an American dinner may be said closely to resemble the famous snakes of Iceland. American gentlemen drink little or nothing at mealtimes, considering it disrespectful to indulge in intoxicants' (as they gracefully term them) before the eyes of ladies. They make up for this abstinence, however, a little later on by constant nips at the bar, repeated with the regularity of a doctor's prescription at all the saloons' in the neighbourhood.

Dessert also brings the end of dinner; and that reminds me that I must draw this Epicurean Tour to a close. It grieves me to desist, for the mind lingers fondly, with a natural reluctation of the tongue, over the memory of that dinner at Syracuse, those breakfasts at Philadelphia, and one delicious revel in the graperies of Canada. But there are other lands to see and other dishes to taste in the interest of that new and noble science of Comparative Gastronomy which your epicure hopes to found-and so I must return once more to the unquiet bosom of the Atlantic, and to that hopelessly, unattainably, tantalizingly excellent bill of fare which a cruel purser dangles daily before the eyes of the worst sailor in existence. Farewell, perhaps for ever, to the unwieldy oysters and the stringy beef, the melting pease and the glorious ambrosial apples of dear, fussy, conceited, amiable, irrepressible, hospitable America!