Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/222

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. MARCH is, 1902.

years before the issue of Dr. Stubbe's ' Indian 'Nectar,' 1662, and seven years before Thomas Rugge's ' Mercurius Politicus Eedivivus, quoted by W. I. B. V. Then again, in the Public Advertiser of 16 June, 1657, the follow- ing advertisement is said to occur: "In Bishopsgate Street, in Queen's Head Alley, at a Frenchman's house, is an excellent West India drink, called chocolate, to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade at reasonable rates" (' Ency. Brit.,' ninth edition, s.v. ' Cocoa'). Chocolate houses began to spring up in Queen Anne's reign, sometimes assuming the sign of the " Cocoa Tree," as in the case of the now his- toric club of that name, transferred, before its clubhood, from Pall Mall to its present abode in St. James's Street. The chocolate- house sign of the "Cocoa Tree" survived as late as 1808, when it distinguished the shop of a tea-dealer at 302, Holborn ( l Banks Coll. of Shop-bills,' 3). There was a chocolate house in St. Martin's Lane, " next to Slaugh- ter's Coffee-house " (Daily Adv., 15 Oct., 1742), and another at Blackheath (' O. and N. Lond.'), and no doubt many other such houses could be named, but the high price at which the new preparation was retailed kept it for a long time out of the reach of any but the most wealthy. A silver chocolate mill was apparently among the necessaries of a wealthy traveller's outfit, but so rare was it that the present-day dealer in antique silver does not seem to be aware of an example which has survived the melting-pot. It was, however, probably like a Queen Anne coffee-pot, and used to beat up chocolate by putting its par- ticles in a circular motion with a stick rubbed between the hands. Such a utensil is adver- tised, among other articles for the recovery of which twenty - five guineas reward is offered, as having been stolen from the " One Bell" in the Strand. It was engraved with "three boars' heads on fess in a lozenge" (Daily Adv., 25 March, 1742). It was after the dried kernels of the cocoa tree had been pounded in a mortar that the mill came into use. The powdered chocolate was " steeped in a little water and worked well with the little mill ; whence they abstract a very large scum, which is so much the more augmented by how much the Cacao is the more old and rotten. This scum they put into a dish a part, mixing therewith a sufficient quantity of Sugar, which done, they set it up for their

use, and drink it cold not in Winter, but

in the greatest heat of Summer." This was one of several ways of making chocolate described in a little book entitled v The Man- ner of Making of Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate,

newly done out of French and Spanish,' 1685. There is an excellent account of * Chocolate and Cocoa' in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xlv. (New Series).

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. Wimbledon Park Road.

Mr. Edward Forbes Robinson in his 'Early History of Coffee-houses in England' (Lon- don, 1893) tells us (p. 73) that "about the year 1650 coffee and chocolate began to be frequently taken " at Oxford. His authority is Anthony a Wood. In the appendix to this book Mr. Robinson reprints part of 'The Character of a Coffee-house,' first printed in 1665. It contains the following allusion to chocolate :

The Player calls for Chocolate.

All which the Bumpkin, wondering at,

Cries, ho, my Masters, what d' ye speak,

1)' ye call for drink in Heathen Greek?

Give me good old Ale or Beer,

Or else I will not drink, I swear.

CHAKLES HIATT.

SHIPS OF WAR ON LAND (9 th S. vii. 147, 235, 296, 354, 431 ; viii. 128). When this query appeared I did not happen to see it, and the replies which have from time to time been proffered have not enlightened me as to the exact form of the original question. Being now better informed, I offer the following. An account of Emanuel Sweden borg's engi- neering feat at the siege of Frederickshall is to be found in the collection of documents concerning his life and character made by the late Rev. R, L. Tafel, A.M., Ph.D., and pub- lished by the Swedenborg Society in 1875-7, vol. i. pp. 554, 555. The account is translated from Fryxell's ' Berattelser ur Svenska His- torien,' part xxix. pp. 128, 129, and describes the modus operand*, thus :

"Charles [XII.] then hit upon the same idea which Peter tried to carry out near Twerminne in 1713. Over heaps of brushwood, by means of rollers and through flowing water, he dragged and carried two galleys, several large boats, and a sloop overland from Strom stad to the Iddefjord, about two and a half Swedish miles [about seventeen English miles]. Polhem had formed the plan, and he sent Swedenborg to execute it. At first the work went on very slowly ; but soon Charles came himself, and urged on the work in person. For every yard over which any of the craft was carried he gave to each man engaged in the work a small remuneration ; and they raised a loud huzza when the first galley shot down into the waters of the Iddefjord. 'You see now,' said the king, 'that it goes ; and now the other craft must come also.' And so they did."

CHARLES HIGHAM.

CHALICES OP WOOD (9 th S. ix. 89). The eighteenth canon of the Council of Tribur, A.D. 895, in Gratian's ' Decretum,' iii. Dist. i.