The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-01-07

planned about prices. "Why, MIR. Nor
tonP it was common thing for them TO
say when they paid their bills, you are
charging me as much here as / should
have TO pay in New York; 1t was natural
that he should, when he had to bring
ana then pay 25 per cent. duty on 1t.
ut is land of fruit, of course; but
outside of oranges and bananas, no tropi-
cal fruit amounts to much. The oranges
are excellent and cheap. We kept bar
rel OF them constantly standing on the
piazza, bought for 80 to 80 cents hun
dred. AS to bananas, half dollar would
buy a bunch as tail as you are. The
other southern fruits are fat and taste
less-sugar apples, papaws, cherimoyas,
and so on. However, must except the
alligator pears. They grow as large as
melons and are very good.
O'Ihe cooks are very wasteful There
is no such thing in the West Indies as
delicate little dishes made from yester-
days leavings. Whatever is left on the
table disappears like magic, because there
are so many servants about When they
boil pot of rice. which they do three
times day, they waste at least third
OF 1t by letting it burn fast to the pot.
Ihls they never try to prevent, but con-
slider it the proper thing. Dat de pot
cake, boss, the cook says, when you ask
him about it. The pot cake goes to the
pigs and chickens.
1.-THE Dutch oven is a great institution
with northern people living in the West
Indies. Imagine New York housekeeper
baking in Dutch ovenl | suppose you
know what it is! Simply an iron pot with
fiat bottom and fat iron cover To
bake in it you make bed Of hot Goals on
the ground, put the pot in the midst of
them, and cover them with more Goals.
ID1~iraifiua sc nritr 20
chance to make some dainty little dishes
of her own without going into the kitchen.
The kitchen is almost forbidden ground
for the woman of the house 1t is block
away from the house, to begin with, is
always dirty and smoky, and always full
of sisters, cousins, aunts and children of
the cook. There is no keeping them away,
and it would be a waste of breath to try
to have the kitchen kept clean. There is
always heap Of dirty dishes in one cor
nef, for the custom Of the country is to
wash the dishes before meal, not after.
Last nights dinner dishes stand all night
in the corner, to be washed this morning
before breakfast.
1.-The West Indian cook despises a
stove. Give him an old-fashioned fire.
place and few old pans and he is salts
fed. His favorite light is a candle stood
in the fireplace. While he cooks a meal
the kitchen is full of darkness and smoke;
but he pulls through somehow, and if you
give him the materials he will cook you a
good dinner. Occasionally he burns
dish because he has had to stop to kill q
snake. The snakes are harmless, but
unpleasant, being sometimes eight or ten
feet long, and they have a great liking for
kitchens and chicken yards.
half through the week, every week,
there was an eternal thump, thump,
humping in the back yard. 1t was the
lady who did the washing. Beginning on
Monday morning, with barrel and big
FOUNDER, she pounded our clothes TO
pieces for three days. The last three
days of the week she spent in ironing
them, the family consisting of two per-
sons. This lady who did the wash
ing led me into one of the first of a
series of comical blunders that a stranger
must inevitably make in such a strange
country. My wife being inaccessible, the
lady of the barrel and FOUNDER came to
me for bluing for the clothes. Having
none, sent boy to the store for some,
with written order, of course-for woe
soon comes to him who trusts q verbal
message to a West Indian boy. please
send me box of bluing,' was the order,
for had always seen the stuff moulded
into round balls and done up in little
pasteboard boxes. An hour later the boy
came back on a cart, for the box of blu
~
was a box of bluing with vengeance, be-
ing more than two feet square. When
opened it was found to contain LA bottles
of liquid blue.
"When we were at our best-that is, in
the hight of the season, when the hotel
was full and New York food was compar-
atively plenty--we lived almost entirely
upon imported things. The cost of Il
makes me weep to think of it, but no mat.
ter. Many and many dinner we sat
down to with every blessed thing on the
table imported from America, even the
water. Yes, sir, even the water. We be-
gan to tire of rain water stored in tanks,
the only water available, and fell to
drinking imported water. The ice also
came from Maine; prime roast beef from
New York; all the bread and pastry, of
course, originally from New York in the
form of -four; all the vegetables from the
New York markets; even the fruit from
New York, for, after six months in the
tropics, all the native fruit in the world
is not equal to one northern apple, or
'Nord apple as they call it down there.
However, all these little troubles about
food in the far south help to make bust
ness for us in New York, so have no rea-
son to complain. am shipping food stuffs
by every steamer, and in another month
the southern demand will double"