ABSTRACT
‘On their return from this excursion, about three in the afternoon, they were agreeably entertained with a dinner of fish and dried meats, and such wild fruits and herbs as the sides of the mountains would afford. The monarch rallied Pangoleen on his wishing for things boiled or roasted, saying, “He would make but a poor traveller, who could not do without his pots and gridiron, his wood, coal, or flint and steel. This, I am convinced,” said he, “must have been among you a deviation from nature. You find yourselves, that meat slightly broiled has most nourishment, and is most easy of digestion; raw, / it certainly must be most nutritive, and most like the body of the animal it is intended to nourish. We know the savages eat it indiscriminately raw, roasted, or blood-warm; and all carnivorous animals, whose stomachs and power of digestion are like the human, eat it in its natural state. How difficult to discover, and how many ages must the world have existed, before the use of fire could be generally known, and its application to food determined. In wandering over mountains, deserts, meadows, and seas, how hard to obtain it, or to carry the apparatus necessary for it. In those ages, therefore, men must have fed upon the food as it offered, without culinary preparations; and raw provisions must have been the primitive and natural diet of men.”’
