-
Kerguelen.
{30} Kerguelen (Writing In 1768) Says:
"They live during the
summer principally on cod's heads.
A common family make a meal of
three or four cods' heads boiled in sea-water." - ED.
{31} This bakehouse is the only one in Iceland, and produces as
good bread and biscuit as any that can be procured in Denmark. [In
Kerguelen's time (1768) bread was very uncommon in Iceland. It was
brought from Copenhagen, and consisted of broad thin cakes, or sea-
biscuits, made of rye-flour, and extremely black. - ED.]
{32} In all high latitudes fat oily substances are consumed to a
vast extent by the natives. The desire seems to be instinctive, not
acquired. A different mode of living would undoubtedly render them
more susceptible to the cold of these inclement regions. Many
interesting anecdotes are related of the fondness of these
hyperborean races for a kind of food from which we would turn in
disgust. Before gas was introduced into Edinburgh, and the city was
lighted by oil-lamps, several Russian noblemen visited that
metropolis; and it is said that their longing for the luxury of
train-oil became one evening so intense, that, unable to procure the
delicacy in any other way, they emptied the oil-lamps. Parry
relates that when he was wintering in the Arctic regions, one of the
seamen, who had been smitten with the charms of an Esquimaux lady,
wished to make her a present, and knowing the taste peculiar to
those regions, he gave her with all due honours a pound of candles,
six to the pound!
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