Our
first demand was for food; our next, for a guide to the glacieres. Food
we could have; but why _should_ we wish to go to the glacieres, when
there was so much else worth seeing at a little distance?--a guide might
without doubt be found, but there was nothing to be seen when we got
there. We ordered prompt dinner, anything that happened to be ready, and
desired the landlord to look out for a man to show us the way up the
hills. When the dinner came, it was cold; and the main dish consisted
apparently of something which had made stock for many generations of
soup, and had then been kept in a half-warm state, ready to be heated
for any passer-by who called for hot meat, till the cook had despaired
of its ever being used, and had allowed it to become cold: at least, no
other supposition seemed to account for its utter want of flavour, and
the wonderful development of its fibres. As a matter of politeness, I
asked the man what it was; when he took the dish from the table, smelled
at it, and pronounced it veal.
There were also several specimens of the original old turnip-radish,
with large shrubs of heads, and mature feelers many inches long.
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