Page:Rural Hours.djvu/431

Rh are all thinly sprinkled yet. Can this difference be owing to the greater power of the morning sun?

Pleasant walk. Stopped at the mill to order samp, or cracked corn. It is always pleasant in a mill; things look busy, cheerful, and thrifty there. The miller told us that he ground more Indian corn than anything else; nearly as much buckwheat, and less wheat than either; scarcely any rye, and no oatmeal at all. The amount of wheat ground at our mills is no test, however, of the quantity eaten, for a great deal of wheat flour is brought into the county from the westward.

They grind buckwheat at the village mill all through the summer, for a great deal of this flour is eaten here. In most families of the interior buckwheat cakes are a regular breakfast dish every day through the winter. In many houses they are eaten in the evening also, and among the farmers they frequently make part of every meal. This is the only way in which the flour is used with us—it all takes the form of “buckwheat cakes.” The French in the provinces eat galettes of the same flour; they call it there blé de Sarazin, as though it had been introduced by the Saracens. It came originally from Central Asia. Montesquieu speaks of these French buckwheat cakes as a very good thing: “Nos galettes de Sarrazin, humectées toutes brulantes de ce bon beurre du Mont d'Or étaient, pour nous, le plus frois régal.”

It appears that the Chinese eat much buckwheat also; they make it up there in the form of dumplings, and Sir George Staunton speaks of these as a very common dish in China.

Indian corn differs from the buckwheat in being prepared in many ways by our housewives: we have sapaen, or