The Opelousas courier., 1885-08-15
DINING WITH KING GEO.
An American at a Big Feast
in Dahomey.
When the King Raised His sceptre,
Everybody Fell to With a Will!

hVefyDouy 1eu 10 Win d Will
J. w. Watson writes as follows in
the New York Cook: I am, perhaps,
the only man in America who has in
terviewed the King of Dahomey. Not
the present King, Badzahunz, but &C.
20, his father. How l got there, or
what my business was is no matter.
but suffice that, somehow, l got up
from Whydah, on the Guinea coast to
the City Of Attorney, a city of 100000
people, one hundred miles to the north,
a few years since, and was received by
the King as a guest of honor. 1t is of
this time I speak, and Of the first din
ner 1 partook at Attorney by invita-
ton of the King. On the coast of
Africa you get. almost invariably,
European cooking, but as you pene-
trate into the interior, this gives way
to the native cuisine gradually, until
it is exclusively the latter, and on the
occasion in question, was a GROWING
effort of native culinary skill. Covers,
as we would say, were set for about
forty people, and the feast served on
a covered platform about 200 feet by
rs, the table being two feet in height,
surrounded by low stools, the King
sitting on a raised dais at n end,
within easy reach of the table. His
costume was a tunic of blue silk, Or
namented with stars, and %crescents,
cut from sheet silver, a cap Of red vel
vet, trimmed with gold lace, and san
dals Of raw hide covered with bits of
hammered gold, at which art the
Dahomians are very skillful.
No one touched a morsel until the
King raised his sceptre, and then they
fell to with a will, tooth and nail, re-
CARELESS of courses, and would soon
have cleared the board had not the
slaves brought in reintorcements of
supplies as fast as wanted. We were
not troubled with knives and forks,
nor any more crockery than to each
guest a platter of native pottery, a
coarse. red, half glazed ware. The
principal dish was antelope, stuffed
with tomatoes-with which vegeta-
bic the Dahomians have been familiar
for hundreds of years, they being al
ways great farmers--and baked in a
dough made of ground peanuts, a food
as much used as potatoes with us,
moistened with milk. Then long strips
of beef, apparently fried and dipped,
absolutely dipped in the reddest of red
pepper, always this pepper in every
thing. After that, chickens stewed in
minced onions, spices and plantains.
For fish they had n they called
sewash, from fresh water, very like
Jul white fish, which might have been
good but for the pepper.
Fruits there were in delicious album
dance, pines, grapes. bananas, alacan-
ia (aqucate) pears. sweet sap, POM
granate, aEricots, and half a score of
others | have forgotten, and a pudding
of ground peanuts, mixed with raj
sins, and various fruits, and sweet
cakes made from flour, and the meat
of various nuts, which were exceeding
ly palatable, and around the flavor of
which my tongue still longingly rolls.
For drinks they had palm wine, the
fermented juice of the cassava, or
bread root, and New England rum,
the only imported article, of which
the King himself is very proud; al
though | cannot say that the Daho-
milan tarries long at the wine cup,
though he does at the table, our feast
having listed five hours, but made en-
durable to me by attentions, and the
fact that / had my own interpreter
with me, an intelligent Krooman, who
took care I should not go ignorant of
anything.