commerce, it is difficult to obtain information on particular branches
of it in the detail. I addressed myself to the retailers of rice, and
from them received a mixture of truth and error, which I was unable to
sift apart in the first moment. Continuing, however, my inquiries, they
produced at length this result; that the dealers here, were in the habit
of selling two qualities of rice, that of Carolina, with which they were
supplied chiefly from England, and that of Piedmont: that the Carolina
rice was long, slender, white, and transparent, answers well when
prepared with milk, sugar, &ic. but not so well when prepared _au gras_;
that that of Piedmont was shorter, thicker, and less white, but that it
presented its form better when dressed _au gras_, was better tasted,
and therefore preferred by good judges for those purposes: that the
consumption of rice, in this form, was much the most considerable, but
that the superior beauty of the Carolina rice, seducing the eye of those
purchasers who are attached to appearances, the demand for it was
upon the whole as great as for that of Piedmont. They supposed this
difference of quality to proceed from a difference of management; that
the Carolina rice was husked with an instrument which broke it more,
and that less pains were taken to separate the broken from the unbroken
grains; imagining that it was the broken grains which dissolved in oily
preparations: that the Carolina rice costs somewhat less than that
of Piedmont; but that being obliged to sort the whole grains from the
broken, in order to satisfy the taste of their customers, they ask and
receive as much for the first quality of Carolina, when sorted, as for
the rice of Piedmont; but the second and third qualities, obtained by
sorting, are sold much cheaper. The objection to the Carolina rice
then, being, that it crumbles in certain forms of preparation, and
this supposed to be the effect of a less perfect machine for husking, I
flattered myself I should be able to learn what might be the machine of
Piedmont, when I should arrive at Marseilles, to which place I was to
go in the course of a tour through the seaport towns of this country.
At Marseilles, however, they differed as much in the account of the
machine, as at Paris they had differed about other circumstances. Some
said it was husked between mill-stones, others between rubbers of wood
in the form of mill-stones, others of cork. They concurred in one fact,
how