ardless
of Shakespeare, call it, Helingsoer. There in the Marienlyst you may see
Hamlet's grave, which is so excellently built up that one would believe
it to be really the burial place of a Viking, and you can lunch at the
Kursaal, whence there is a delightful view across the Sound to Sweden.
There is a second park at Elsinore where Ophelia's pool is shown.

The meals in Denmark are preceded by a feast of little delicacies,
"sandwiches with the roof off" as they have been aptly described, which
both men and ladies eat as they stand and chat before going into lunch
or dinner, as is the custom in Sweden and Russia also.

N.N.-D.

CHAPTER XIV

RUSSIA

Food of the country--Restaurants in Moscow--The dining places of
St. Petersburg--Odessa--Warsaw.

Russian Dishes

The Russians are a nation of gourmands, for the _Zakouska_, the potatoes
and celery, spiced eels, stuffed crayfish, chillies stuffed with potato,
olives, minced red cabbage, smoked goose-flesh, smoked salmon, smoked
sturgeon, raw herring, pickled mushrooms, radishes, caviar, and a score
of other "appetisers," and the _petits pates_, the _Rastegai_ (tiny pies
of the lightest paste with a complicated fish stuffing and a little
fresh caviar in the openings at the top), the _Tartelettes St-Hubert_,
any other little pasties of fish and flesh eaten with the soup, could
only be consumed by vigorous eaters. Soups are the contribution of
Russia to the cuisine of the world, and the moujik, when he first
stirred some sour cream into his cabbage broth, little thought that from
his raw idea the majestic _Bortch_ would come into existence. The two
cold soups of which salt cucumber juice forms the foundation are
curious. There are other admirable soups of Russian invention, one,
_Selianka_, a fish soup made from the sterlet and sturgeon, being much
liked when a taste for it has been acquired. The sturgeon of course
comes into the menu of many Russian dinners, and also the sterlet,
cooked in white wine and served with shrimp sauce. There is a fish pie
of successive layers of rice, eggs, and fish, which is one of the native
dishes and is much like _Kedgeree_. Boiled Moscow sucking pig, which in
its short but happy life has tasted naught but cream, boiled and served
with horse-radish sauce and sour cream is a dish for good angels, and
roast mutton stuffed with buckwheat is not to be despised. _Srazis_ are
little rolled strips of mutton with forced meat i