eggs, pepper, and salt,
were very good; game, wild fowl, vegetables, also preserved, eggs,
sardines, curry powder, cigars, tobacco, snuff, cigarette papers, tea,
coffee, tooth powder, and currant jelly. When cargoes came in from
Constantinople, we bought great supplies of potatoes, carrots,
turnips, and greens. Ah! what a rush there used to be for the greens.
You might sometimes get hot rolls; but, generally speaking, I bought
the Turkish bread (_ekmek_), baked at Balaclava.

Or had you felt too ill to partake of your rough camp fare, coarsely
cooked by a soldier cook, who, unlike the French, could turn his hand
to few things but fighting, and had ridden down that muddy road to the
Col, to see what Mother Seacole could give you for dinner, the chances
were you would have found a good joint of mutton, not of the fattest,
forsooth; for in such miserable condition were the poor beasts landed,
that once, when there came an urgent order from head-quarters for
twenty-five pounds of mutton, we had to cut up one sheep and a half
to provide the quantity; or you would have stumbled upon something
curried, or upon a good Irish stew, nice and hot, with plenty of
onions and potatoes, or upon some capital meat-pies. I found the
preserved meats were better relished cooked in this fashion, and well
doctored with stimulants. Before long I grew as familiar with the
mysteries of seasoning as any London pieman, and could accommodate
myself to the requirements of the seasons as readily. Or had there
been nothing better, you might have gone further and fared on worse
fare than one of my Welch rabbits, for the manufacture of which I
became so famous. And had you been fortunate enough to have visited
the British Hotel upon rice-pudding day, I warrant you would have
ridden back to your hut with kind thoughts of Mother Seacole's
endeavours to give you a taste of home. If I had nothing else to be
proud of, I think my rice puddings, made without milk, upon the high
road to Sebastopol, would have gained me a reputation. What a shout
there used to be when I came out of my little caboose, hot and
flurried, and called out, "Rice-pudding day, my sons." Some of them
were baked in large shallow pans, for the men and the sick, who always
said that it reminded them of home. You would scarcely expect to
finish up your dinner with pastry, but very often you would have found
a good stock of it in my larder. Whenever I had a few leisure moments,
I used to was