BM
PH a,p. IX.] . JUNGLE COOKING. 217
shot with the Fletcher rifle, and secured our dinner.
Thus provided, we selected a steep sugarloaf-shaped
hill, upon the peak of which we intended to pass the
night. We therefore cleared away the grass, spread
boughs upon the ground, lighted fires, and prepared
for a bivouac. Having a gridiron, and pepper and
Salt, I made a grand dinner of liver and kidneys,
while my men ate a great portion of the gazelle raw,
and cooked the remainder in their usual careless manner
by simply laying it upon the fire for a few seconds
until warmed half through. There is nothing like a
good gridiron for rough cooking; a frying-pan is
good if you have fat, but without it, the pan is utterly
useless. With a gridiron and a couple of iron skewers
a man is independent:—the liver cut in strips and
grilled with pepper and salt is -excellent, but kabobs
are sublime, if simply arranged upon the skewer in
alternate pieces of liver and kidney cut as small as
walnuts, and rubbed with chopped garlic, onions,
cayenne, black pepper, and salt. The skewers thus
arranged should be laid either upon the glowing
embers, or across the gridiron.
“ Not a man closed his eyes that night—not that
the dinner disagreed with them—but' the mosquitoes !
Lying on the ground, the smoke of the fires did not
protect us, we were beneath it, as were the mosquitoes
likewise; in fact the fires added to our misery, as
they brought new plagues in thousands of flying
bugs, with beetles of all sizes and kinds: these, becoming
stupefied in the smoke, tumbled clumsily