The Last of the Flatboats

by George Cary Eggleston

  CHAPTER XIX

  SCUTTLE CHATTER

  The pocket in which _The Last of the Flatboats_ lay at anchor was wellout of the path of passing steamboats. It was also pretty free fromdrift-wood, except of the smaller sort. So there was nothing of anyconsequence to be done during the two days of waiting. It was necessaryto pump a little now and then, as the very tightest boat will let in alittle bilge water, especially when she is as heavily loaded as this onewas. There were what Irv Strong called "the inevitable three meals aday" to get, but beyond that there was nothing whatever to do.

  Ed's books were a good deal in demand at this time. Irv and Phil managedto do some swimming in spite of the drift-wood and the coldness of thewater. For the rest, the boys lounged about on the deck, with now andthen a "long talk" at the scuttle or in the cabin if it rained. Their"long talks" on deck were always held around the scuttle, so that theone on guard over Hughes might take part in them. There were only fivesteps to the little ladder that led from deck to cabin, and by sittingon the middle one the boy on guard could keep his feet on the edge ofthe prisoner's bunk and let his head protrude above the deck.

  They had naturally been thinking a good deal about what Ed had told themconcerning food, and now and then a question would arise in the mind ofone or another of them which would set the conversation going again.

  "I wonder," said Will Moreraud, "how men first found out what thingswere good to eat?"

  "By trying them, I guess," said Phil. "I read in a book somewhere thatwhenever the primitive man saw a new beast he asked first, 'can he eatme?' and next, 'can I eat him?'"

  "Yes," said Ed, "and that sort of thing continued until our own time,when science came in to help us. You know where the jimson weed got itsname, don't you?"

  None of them had ever heard.

  "Well, 'jimson' is only a corruption of 'Jamestown.' When the earlysettlers landed at Jamestown they found so many new kinds of grain, andanimals, and plants that they began trying them to see which were goodand which were not. Among other things they thought the burs of thejimson weed--the poisonous thorn-apple of stramonium--looked ratherinviting. So they boiled a lot of the burs and ate them. Like idiots,they didn't confine the experiment to one man, or better still 'try iton a dog,' but set to work, a lot of them at once, to eat the stuff. Itpoisoned them, of course, and made a great sensation in Jamestown. Sothey named the plant the Jamestown weed."

  "I remember," said Irv, "my grandfather telling me that when he wasyoung, people thought tomatoes were poisonous, and he said it took along time for those that tried them to teach other people better."

  "That's what I had in my mind," said Ed, "when I said that there was noknown way to find out whether things were good to eat or not except bytrying them, till modern science came to our aid."

  "How does modern science manage it?" asked Will.

  "Well, if any new fruit or vegetable should turn up now, a chemist wouldanalyze it to find out just what it was composed of. Then the doctorswho make a study of such things would 'try it on a dog,' or more likelyon a rabbit or guinea pig, to find out if it had any value as amedicine. They try every new substance in that way in fact, whether itis an original substance just discovered or some new compound. They eventried nitro-glycerine, and found it to be a very valuable medicine. So,too, they have got some of our most valuable drugs from coal oil, simplyby trying them."

  "Good for modern science!" said Phil. "But, Ed, what were the other newthings the colonists found in this country?"

  "There were many. But those that have proved of most importance arecorn, tobacco, tomatoes, watermelons, turkeys, Irish potatoes, and sweetpotatoes."

  "Oh, come now," said Irv, raising his head and resting it on his hand,"you said _Irish_ potatoes."

  "And why not? They are a very important product, and the crop of themsells for many millions of--"

  "_But_ they didn't originate in this country, did they? Weren't theybrought here from Ireland?"

  "Not at all. They were taken from here to Ireland."

  "Then why are they called Irish potatoes?"

  "Because they proved to be so much the most profitable crop the Irishpeople could raise that they soon came to be the chief crop grown there.I don't know whether the colonists found any of them growing wild inVirginia or not. They are supposed to have originated in South Americaand Mexico. At any rate, they are strictly native Americans. By theway," said Ed, "the people who thought tomatoes poisonous were not sovery far out in their reckoning. Both the tomato and the potato areplants belonging to the deadly nightshade family, and the vines of bothcontain a virulent poison."

  "Perhaps somebody tried tomato vines for greens," said Phil, "and gothimself ready for the coroner before the tomatoes had time to grow andripen."

  "That isn't unlikely," said Ed. "At any rate, an experiment of that kindwould have gone far to give the fruit a bad name."

  "However that may be," said Irv, "it is pretty certain that men musthave found out what was and what wasn't good to eat mainly by trying.There's salt now. It is the only mineral substance that men everywhereeat. All the rest of our foods are either animal or vegetable."

  "And that's a puzzle," replied Ed. "Man must have got a very early tasteof salt, or else there wouldn't be any man."

  "How's that?"

  "Why, the human animal simply can't live without salt. He digests hisfood by means of an acid which he gets from salt, and from nothing elsewhatever. So he must have had salt from the beginning."

  "The Garden of Eden must have been a seaport then," mused Phil. "Adamand Eve probably boiled their new potatoes in water dipped up from thedocks."

  The boys laughed, and Ed continued:--

  "It is a curious fact that the ancients, even as late as Greek times,knew nothing about sugar; at least, in its pure state. They got a gooddeal of it in fruits and vegetables, of course, and the Greeks usedhoney very lavishly. They not only ate it, but they made an intoxicatingliquor out of it which they called mead. But of sugar, pure and simple,they knew nothing whatever. Their language hasn't even a word for it.Yet in our time sugar is one of the most important products in theworld, so important that many nations pay large bounties to encourageits cultivation."

  "By the way," asked Phil, after a few moments' meditation, "what is themost important crop in this country?"

  "Wheat"--"cotton," answered Will and Constant respectively.

  "No," said Ed, "corn is very much our most important crop."

  "More so than wheat?"

  "Four to one and more," said Ed. "Our corn crop amounts to about twothousand million bushels every year--often greatly more. Our wheat cropaverages about five hundred million bushels. And as corn has more foodvalue in it, pound for pound, than wheat has, it is easy to see that notonly for us, but for all the world, our corn crop is quite four to onemore important than our wheat."

  "But I thought corn wasn't eaten much except in this country?" queriedIrv. "The Germans and French and English don't eat it."

  "Don't they, though?" asked Ed, with a quizzical look. "Don't they eatenormous quantities of American pork, bacon, and beef? And what is thatbut American corn in another shape?"

  "That's so," said Irv, this time sitting bolt upright. "I've heard thatthe big farmers all over the West keep tab on the price of meat andcorn. If meat is high and corn low, they bring up all their hogs fromthe woods, fatten them on the corn and sell them. But if meat is low orcorn high, they sell the corn."

  "And they know to the nicest fraction of a pound," added Ed, "how muchcorn it takes to make a given amount of pork."

  "Well, even if we didn't sell any corn at all to other nations," saidPhil, "I should think our crop would help them. _We_ eat a great deal ofit, and if we hadn't it, we'd eat just so much wheat instead, and so weshould have just that much less wheat to sell to them."

  "Exactly," said Ed. "Every thing that feeds a man in any country leavesprecisely that much more to feed other men with in other countries."

  "And what a
lot it does take to feed a man!" exclaimed Will.

  "Not so much as you probably imagine," said Ed. "A robust man requiresabout a pound and a half of meat and a pound and a half of bread perday. Vegetables are simply substitutes for bread and cost about thesame. Eggs, milk, etc., take the place of meat and cost less. So byreckoning on three pounds of food a day, half meat and half bread, ortheir equivalents, we find that a strong, healthy, hard-working man canbe fed at a cost of about fifteen cents a day. The coarser and morenutritious parts of beef and mutton and good sound pork can be bought atretail at an average of eight cents a pound--often much less. The man'smeat, therefore, will cost him twelve cents a day or less. Good flourcan be had at about two cents a pound. The man's bread will, therefore,cost him about three cents a day, making the total cost of his foodabout fifteen cents a day, or less than fifty-five dollars a year."

  "But it costs something to cook it," said Phil.

  "Yes, but not much. I have calculated only the actual cost of the rawmaterials, but my figures are too high rather than too low, for cornedbeef and chuck steaks are often sold at retail as low as three or fourcents a pound, and neck pieces, heads, hearts, livers, and kidneys evenlower, while I have allowed eight cents a pound as an average price forall the meat that the man eats. Now, allowing for the cost of cookingand for unavoidable waste, I reckon that a strong, healthy Americancitizen can feed himself abundantly on less than seventy-five dollars ayear."

  "But what if he can't get the seventy-five dollars?" asked Will.

  "In this country any man in tolerable health can get it easily. There isno excuse in this country for what somebody calls 'the poverty thatsuffers,' at any rate among people who have health. Why, one hundreddollars a year is a good deal less than thirty cents a day, and anybodycan earn that."

  "What does cause 'the poverty that suffers,' then?" asked Will.

  "Drink, mainly," broke in Phil.

  "By the way," said Irv, looking up from some figures he had been making,"does it occur to you that our corn crop alone, even if we producednothing else in the world, would furnish food enough for all the peoplein this country?"

  "No; how do you figure it, Irv?" asked Will.

  "Why, Ed says the corn crop amounts to 2,000,000,000 bushels. There are56 pounds in a bushel, or 112,000,000,000 pounds in the crop. That wouldgive every man, woman, and child in our 70,000,000 population 1600pounds of corn per year, or pretty nearly four and a half pounds apieceeach day in the year, while Ed says no man needs more than three poundsof food per day. So the corn crop, whether eaten as bread or partly inthe shape of meat, furnishes a great deal more food than the Americanpeople can possibly eat. No wonder we ship such vast quantities offoodstuffs abroad!"

  "That's encouraging," said Phil; "but it's bedtime. Hie ye to yourbunks! Whose watch is it?"

  And so the scuttle chatter ended.