, of each horse, though they failed
to produce a sufficient quantity of oil to please us, yet in the cool
of the night resolved themselves into a consistent jelly that stank
like rotten glue, and at breakfast at least, when this disgusting
stuff was in a measure coagulated, we would request one another with
the greatest politeness to pass the glue-pot. Had it not been that I
was an inventor of transcendent genius, even this last luxury would
have been debarred us. We had been absent from civilisation, so long,
that our tin billies, the only boiling utensils we had, got completely
worn or burnt out at the bottoms, and as the boilings for glue and oil
must still go on, what were we to do with billies with no bottoms?
Although as an inventor I can allow no one to depreciate my genius, I
will admit there was but one thing that could be done, and those muffs
Tietkens and Jimmy actually advised me to do what I had invented,
which was simply--all great inventions are simple--to cover the
bottoms with canvas, and embed the billies half-way up their sides in
cold ashes, and boil from the top instead of the bottom, which of
course we did, and these were our glue- and flesh-pots. The tongue,
brains, kidneys, and other titbits of course were eaten first.
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