Our viands

IT has fallen to my lot more than once to be told by Americans ' You have no corn in England.' At first I felt somewhat insulted by this assertion — especially as we were at the time journeying by rail through a part of the country where the yellow corn, in the ear and in the sheaf, gladdened the eye and made one rejoice in a plentiful harvest. But, of course, according to American notions, we have no corn in England, for they confine the term corn to the one cereal maize, which is believed to have been indi- genous in America, and unknown to Europe before the time of Columbus. The Americans are, undoubtedly, wrong in limiting the term corn to maize, because long before the discovery of America corn was the generic term for wheat, barley, oats, and rye, and maize received its name of Indian corn from the first European settlers in America, who found it growing there, and in use by the natives as the only bread-stuff. We all know Longfellow's charming description of the birth of this beautiful plant in 'The Song of Hiawatha.' After the hero had buried Mondamin, who was the maize personified — Day by day did Hiawatha Go to wait and watch beside it, 34 MAIZE AND MILLET 3$ Kept the dark mould soft above it, Kept it clean from weeds and insects Drove away with scoffs and shoutings, Kahgahgee, the king of ravens ; Till at length a small green feather From the earth shot slowly upward. Then another and another, And before the summer ended Stood the maize in all its beauty, With its shining robes about it, And its long, soft, yellow tresses. And in rapture Hiawatha Cried aloud, ' It is Mondamin ! Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin ! ' Then he called to old Nokomis, And lagoo the great boaster ; Showed them where the maize was growing ; Told them of his wondrous vision, Of his wrestling and his triumph, Of this new gift to the nations, Which should be their food for ever. Well may this plant be called 'the friend of man,' for since its first introduction it has spread more rapidly than could have been supposed possible, being cultivated in every land where the climate will allow it to ripen ; but when we find savages in the heart of Africa, who apparently have never met with a white man, cultivating this plant, we become somewhat sceptical as to its introduction by white men since the days of Columbus. It is undoubted that agriculture was known very early in some parts of America, and that maize was the chief cereal grown, although millet and beans were also cultivated. Now, although maize was found by Darwin in a raised beach on the coast of Peru, 85 feet above sea-level, and must therefore have been of vast antiquity in America, yet 36 OUR VIANDS all the American legends relating to it tell of its introduc- tion or cultivation by foreigners, coming from the sea. Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Manco Capac in Peru, Hiawatha among the wild Indian tribes of North America, are some of these legendary introducers of this great boon to man.