Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/132

116 8. Chicken in long, thin, shredded fibers, served with the broth.

9. Boiled rice.

10. Peculiar hard, woody mushrooms, or lichens, boiled and served with brown gravy.

11. Thin, translucent, and very slippery macaroni, cooked in a Chinese samovár.

12. Cocks' heads with sections of the necks; and finally,

13 to 19. Different kinds of soups served simultaneously.

The soups virtually brought the dinner to an end. The table was again cleared, the vinegar-saucers and sáki-cups were removed, and the servants brought in successively nuts and sweetmeats of various sorts, delicious "flower tea," and French champagne.

The dinner occupied about three hours, and within that time every guest partook of thirty or forty courses, consumed from one to three saucersful of Chinese vinegar, drank from fifteen to twenty-five sáki-cupfuls of hot rice-brandy flavored with rose, and washed down the last mouthfuls of Chinese confectionery with bumpers of champagne to the health of our host.

That we were able to get to our dróshkies without assistance, and did not all die of acute indigestion before the next morning, must be regarded as a piece of good luck so extraordinary as to be almost miraculous. My curiosity with regard to a Chinese dinner was completely satisfied. If the Chinese dine in this way every day I wonder that the race has not long since become extinct. One such dinner, eaten late in the fall, would enable a man, I should think, if he survived it, to go into a cave like a bear and hibernate until the next spring.

I little thought when I drove away from the Chinese merchant's counting-house in Maimáchin late that afternoon that I had enjoyed the last recreation I should know for months to come, and that I was looking at the old Mongolian town for the last time. Early Sunday morning