The Press., 1890-03-06

111Lytl IS so Ce1lu0T us SdSlly to De torn apart by the hands. But whale meat is not docile under culinary treat ment. Gastronomically, it has an indi- viduality of it's own, which will keep on asserting itself, no matter how much spice and pepper is put upon it. It is wild, untamed steed. propounded it to my guests in the guise of sausages. but when the meal was over the sausages were there still. It can't be done. Shark can. Sharks is a sweat meat, much resembling that of the swordfsh, but no man will ever eat a whale, at least an old one. The calves might conduct themselves better in the frying pan. We had many about us whose mothers we had killed. but we never thought of frying them. When whaler is trying out oil, she is blackened with the greasy soot arising from the burning blubber scraps from stem to stern. It falls like storm of black snowf1akes. They sift into the tiniest crevice. Of all this my cookery got its full share. It tinged my bread and even my pies with funeral tinge of blackness. The deck at such times was covered with ''horse pieces" up to the top of the bulwarks. "Horse pieces" are chunks of blubber foot or so in length, that being one stage of their re- duction to the size necessary for the try pots. I have introduced them here for the purpose of remarking that on my passage to and fro, from galley to cabin, ~ while engaged in laying the cloth and arranging our services of gold plate and Sevres wear, had to chamber, wade, climb and sometimes, in my white neck tie and swallow-tail coat, actually crawl over the greasy mass with the silver tureen full of "consomme" or s'soup Julien," while held the gilt-edged and enameled menu between my teeth. Those were trying-out times for mari time head butler.
 The cook socially does not rank high at sea. He stands very near the bottom round of the ladder. He is the subject of many jests and low comparisons. This should not be. The cook should rank next or near to the captain. Itis the cook who prepares the material which shall put mental and physical strength into human bodies. He is, in fact, a chemist E who carries on the last external process es with meat, flour and vegetables neces sary to prepare them for their invisible and still more wonderful treatment ir the laboratory which every man and wo man possesses-the stomach-whereby these raw materials are converted no only into blood, bone, nerve, sinew ant muscle, but into thoughts. A good cool may help materially to make good DO etry. An indigestible beefsteak, friet
 in grease to leather may. in ths hf; sH9g} st9m} shall depend the fate of nations. A goot cook might have won the battle. O. course, he would receive no credit there for, save the conviction in his own culin ary soul, that his beefsteak properly ant quickly broiled was thus enabled to di gest itself properly in the stomach of tn, general, and thereby transmit to ant through the generals organism tha amount of nerve force and vigor, which acting upon the brain, caused all his in telligence and talent to attain its maxi mum, and thereby conquer his adver sary. That's what cook may do. Thi would be far better and happier world were there more really good cooks or land and sea. And when all cooks art Blots or Soyers, then will we have a SO ciety to be proud of.
 While whaling in Marguerite bay, we "kedged' the Henry about one hundred miles inland, where the whales abounded In so kedging it was necessary to stake out at low water portions of the channe daily, when it ran Q mere creek through an expanse of hard sand, sometimes g mile from either shore. At high water all this would be covered to a depth oi six or seven feet. The Henry grounded at each ebb, and often keeled over at an angle of forty-fve. From our bulwarks 1t was often possible to jump on dry ground. This keeling over process, twice repeated every twenty -four hours, 2 was particularly hard on the cook, for the inconvenience resulting from such a forty-five degree angle of inclination ex- tended to all things within his province, My stove worked badly at the angle of forty-five. The kettle could be but half filled, and only boiled where the water was shallowest inside. The cabin table could only be set at an angle of forty five. So that while the guests on the upper side had great difficulty in pre- venting themselves from slipping off their seats on and over that table, those on the lower side had equal difficulty in keeping themselves up to convenient feeding distance.
 Capt Reynolds, at the head of the board, had a hard lot in the endeavor to maintain his dignity and sitting perpen- dicularly at the same time on the then permanent and not popular angle of forty-fve. But I, steward, butler. cook and cabin boy, bore the hardest tribula- tion of all in carrying my dishes across the deck, down the cabin stairs. and ar ranging them on a table at an angle of forty-fve. Of course, at this time the rack used in rough weather to prevent