on
four savages who were cooking something over the fire.

The Indians ran away in alarm, and, on coming up to discover what the
brown men had which was good to eat, the explorers found a large
number of oysters roasting on the coals. Through curiosity, one of our
gentlemen tasted of the fish, and, much to his surprise, found it very
agreeable to the stomach.

Before telling his companions the result of his experiment, he ate all
the oysters that had been cooked, which were more than two dozen large
ones, and then, instead of exploring the land any further on that day,
our gentlemen spent their time gathering and roasting the very agreeable
fish.

As a matter of course, the news of this discovery spread throughout the
settlement, and straightway every person was eating oysters; but they
soon tired of them, hankering after wheat of some kind.

Among those who served some of the gentlemen even as Nathaniel and I
aimed to serve Captain Smith, was James Brumfield, a lazy, shiftless lad
near to seventeen years old. Being hungry, and not inclined to build a
fire, because it would be necessary to gather fuel, he ventured to taste
of a raw oyster. Finding it pleasant to the mouth, he actually gorged
himself until sickness put an end to the gluttonous meal.

It can thus be seen that even though Nathaniel and I had never been
apprenticed to a cook, it was not difficult for us to serve our master
with oysters roasted or raw, laid on that which answered in the stead of
a table, in their own shells.

LEARNING TO COOK OTHER THINGS

Then again the Indian girl had shown us how to boil beans, peas, Indian
corn, and pumpkins together, making a kind of porridge which is most
pleasant, and affords a welcome change from oysters; but the great
drawback is that we are not able to come at the various things needed
for the making of it, except when our gentlemen have been fortunate in
trading with the brown men, which is not often.

This Indian corn, pounded and boiled until soft, is a dish Captain Smith
eats of with an appetite, provided it is well salted, and one does not
need to be a king's cook in order to make it ready for the table. The
pounding is the hardest and most difficult portion of the task, for
the kernels are exceeding flinty, and fly off at a great distance when
struck a glancing blow.

Nathaniel and I have brought inside our house a large, flat rock, on
which we pound the corn, and one of us is kept busy pic