Part 22 (1/2)
Then for 1,000 lbs. of ham take 3-1/4 pecks of coa.r.s.e salt, 2-1/2 lbs. of saltpetre, 2 qts. hickory ashes, 2 qts. mola.s.ses, 2 teacupfuls of red pepper.
”Mix all together on the salting table. Then rub each ham with this mixture, and, in packing, spread some of it on each layer of ham. Use no more salt than has been mixed. Pack skin down and let stand for five weeks, then hang in the smoke house for five or six weeks, and smoke in damp weather, using hickory wood.
”As a ham, however well cured, is of no use to civilized man until it is cooked, and as this crowning mystery is seldom revealed out of Virginia, it may not be out of place to record here the process.”
A VIRGINIA RECIPE FOR COOKING HAMS
Soak over night in cold water, having first scrubbed the ham with a small brush to remove all the pepper, saltpetre, etc., left from the curing process.
Put on to boil next morning in tepid water, skin downwards, letting it simmer on back of stove, never to boil hard. This takes about four hours (or until it is done, when the ham is supposed to turn over, skin upwards, of its own accord, as it will if the boiler is large enough). Set aside over another night in the water it has boiled in.
The _following_ day, skin and bake in the oven, having covered the ham well with brown sugar, basting at intervals with cider. When it is well baked, take it out of the oven and baste another ten to twenty minutes in the pan on top of the stove. The sugar crust should be quite brown and crisp when done.
To be thoroughly appreciated a ham should be carved on the table, by a pretty woman. A thick slice of ham is a crime against good breeding.]
[Footnote 42: It is interesting that Varro has realized the hope, here expressed, that his wisdom might survive for the benefit of the ”uttermost generations of men” chiefly in the case of this treatise on Husbandry among the many monuments of his industry and learning.
Petrarch in his _Epistle to Varro_ in that first delightful book of Letters to Dead Authors (_de rebus familiaribus_ XXIV, 6) rehea.r.s.es the loss of Varro's books and, adapting the thought here expressed in the text, regrets for that reason that Varro cannot be included in that company of men ”whom we love even after their death owing to the good and righteous deeds that live after them, men who mold our character by their teaching and comfort us by their example, when the rest of mankind offends both our eyes and our nostrils; men who, though they have gone hence to the common abode of all (as Plautus says in Casina), nevertheless continue to be of service to the living.” If Petrarch had been a farmer he might have saved some of his regret, for Varro is surely, by virtue of the _Rerum Rusticarum_, a member of the fellows.h.i.+p Petrarch describes.]
[Footnote 43: Varro was essentially an antiquary and it is amusing to observe that he is unable to suppress his learning even in his prayers. One is reminded of the anecdote of the New England minister, who, in the course of an unctuous prayer, proclaimed, with magisterial authority, ”Paradoxical as it may appear, O Lord, it is nevertheless true, etc.”]
[Footnote 44: Following Plato and Xenophon and Cicero, Varro cast his books into the form of dialogues to make them entertaining (”and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice in Wonderland, ”without pictures or conversations.”): for the same reason he was careful about his local colour. Thus the scene of this first book, which relates to agriculture proper, is laid at Rome in the temple of Earth on the festival of the Seed Sowing, and the characters bear names of punning reference to the tilling of the soil. Varro was strong on puns, avowing (Cicero _Acad_. I, 2) that that form of humour made it easier for people of small intelligence to swallow his learning.]
[Footnote 45: The story is that when Scipio captured Carthage he distributed the Punic libraries among the native allies, reserving only the agricultural works of Mago, which the Roman Senate subsequently ordered to be translated into Latin, so highly were they esteemed. Probably more real wealth was brought to Rome in the pages of these precious volumes than was represented by all the other plunder of Carthage. ”The improving a kingdom in matter of husbandry is better than conquering a new kingdom,” says old Samuel Hartlib, Milton's friend, in his _Legacie_. It is a curious fact that as the Romans derived agricultural wisdom from their ancient enemies, so did the English. Cf. Thorold Rogers' _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_.
”We owe the improvements in English agriculture to Holland. From this country we borrowed, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the cultivation of winter roots, and, at that of the eighteenth, the artificial gra.s.ses. The Dutch had practised agriculture with the patient and minute industry of market gardeners. They had tried successfully to cultivate every thing to the uttermost, which could be used for human food, or could give innocent gratification to a refined taste. They taught agriculture and they taught gardening. They were the first people to surround their homesteads with flower beds, with groves, with trim parterres, with the finest turf, to improve fruit trees, to seek out and perfect edible roots and herbs at once for man and cattle. We owe to the Dutch that scurvy and leprosy have been banished from England, that continuous crops have taken the place of barren fallows, that the true rotation of crops has been discovered and perfected, that the population of these islands has been increased and that the cattle and sheep in England are ten times what they were in numbers and three times what they were in size and quality.”]
[Footnote 46: The Roman proverb which Agrius had in mind reminds one of the witty French woman's comment upon the achievement of St. Denis in walking several miles to Montmartre, after his head had been cut off, (as all the world can still see him doing in the verrieres of Notre Dame de Chartres): ”en pareil cas, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute.”]
[Footnote 47: To this glowing description of agricultural Italy in the Augustan age may be annexed that of Machiavelli on the state of Tuscany in his youth: ”Ridotta tutta in somma pace e tranquillita, coltivata non meno ne' luoghi piu montuosi e piu sterili che nelle pianure e regioni piu fertili....” It is our privilege to see the image of this fruitful cultivation of the mountain tops not only in Machiavelli's prose, but on the walls of the Palazzo Riccardi in Gozzoli's _Journey of the Magi_, where, like King Robert of Sicily, the Magi crossed
”Into the lovely land of Italy Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere pa.s.sing of that cavalcade.”
It seems almost a pity to contrast with these the comment of a careful and sympathetic student of the agricultural Italy of the age of King Umberto: ”To return to the question of the natural richness of agricultural Italy,” says Dr. W.N. Beauclerk in his _Rural Italy_ (1888), ”we may compare the words of the German ballad: 'In Italy macaroni ready cooked rains from the sky, and the vines are festooned with sausages,' with the words today rife throughout the Kingdom, 'Rural Italy is poor and miserable, and has no future in store for her.' The fact is that Italy is rich in capabilities of production, but exhausted in spontaneous fertility. Her vast forests have been cut down, giving place to sterile and malarious ground: the plains and sh.o.r.es formerly covered with wealthy and populous cities are now deserted marshes: Sardinia and other ancient granaries of the Roman Empire are empty and unproductive: two-thirds of the Kingdom are occupied by mountains impossible of cultivation, and the remainder is to a large extent ill-farmed and unremunerative. To call Italy the 'Garden of Europe' under these circ.u.mstances seems cruel irony.”]
[Footnote 48: As we may a.s.sume that the yields of wine of which Fundanius boasts were the largest of which Varro had information in the Italy of his time, it is interesting to compare them with the largest yields of the most productive wine country of France today.
Fifteen cullei, or three hundred amphorae per jugerum, is the equivalent of 2700 gallons per acre: while according to P. Joigneaux, in the _Livre de la Ferme_, the largest yields in modern France are in the Midi (specifically Herault), where in exceptional cases they amount to as much as 250 hectolitres to the hectare, or say 2672 gallons per acre. It may be noted that the yields of the best modern wines, like Burgundy, are less than half of this, and it is probable that the same was true of the _vinum Setinum_ of Augustus, if not of the Horatian Ma.s.sic.]
[Footnote 49: The modern Italian opinion of farming in a fertile but unhealthy situation is expressed with a grim humour in the Tuscan proverb: ”in Maremma s'arricchisce in un anno, si muore in sei mesi.”]
[Footnote 50: This is Keil's ingenious interpretation of an obscure pa.s.sage. We may compare the English designation of a church yard as ”G.o.d's acre.” What Licinius Cra.s.sus actually did was, while haranguing from the rostra, to turn his back upon the Comitium, where the Senators gathered, and address himself directly to the people a.s.sembled in the Forum. The act was significant as indicating that the sovereignty had changed place.]
[Footnote 51: Tremelius Scrofa was the author of a treatise on agriculture, which Columella cites, but which has not otherwise survived.]
[Footnote 52: ”It was a received opinion amongst the antients that a large, busy, well peopled village, situated in a country thoroughly cultivated, was a more magnificent sight than the palaces of n.o.blemen and princes in the midst of neglected lands.” Harte's _Essays on Husbandry_, p. 11. This is a delightful book, the ripe product of a gentleman and a scholar. In the middle of the eighteenth century it advocated what we are still advocating--that agriculture, as the basis of national wealth, deserves the study and attention of the highest intelligence; specifically it proposed the introduction of new gra.s.ses and forage crops (alfalfa above all others) to enable the land to support more live stock. It was published in 1764, just after France had ceded to England by the Treaty of Paris all of her possessions in America east of the Mississippi River; and not the least interesting pa.s.sages of Harte's book are those proposing an agricultural development of the newly acquired territory between Lake Illinois (Michigan) and the Mississippi, which he suggests may be readily brought under cultivation with the aid of the buffaloes of the country. He shrewdly says: ”Maize may be raised in this part of Canada to what quant.i.ty we please, for it grows there naturally in great abundance.” It happened, however, that a few years later, in 1778, Col. George Rogers Clark of Virginia made a certain expedition through the wilderness to the British outpost at Vincennes, which saved England the trouble of taking Harte's advice, but that it has not been neglected may be evident from the fact that less than a century and a half later, or in 1910, the State of Illinois produced 415 million bushels of maize, besides twice as much oats and half as much wheat as did old England herself in the same year of grace.
Harte was the travelling governor of that young Mr. Stanhope, to whom my lord Chesterfield wrote his famous worldly wise letters. He was the author also of a _Life of Gustavus Adolphus_, which was a failure. Dr.
Johnson, who liked Harte, said: ”It was unlucky in coming out on the same day with Robertson's _History of Scotland_. His _Husbandry_, however, is good.” (_Boswell_, IV, 91). With this judgment of Dr.
Johnson there has been, and must be, general concurrence.]
[Footnote 53: Pliny records (H.N. XVIII, 7) that at Lucullus' farm there was less ground for ploughing than of floor for sweeping.]