The livers of geese and poultry are esteemed a great delicacy by some gourmands; and on the continent great pains are taken to procure fat overgrown livers.  The methods employed to produce this diseased state of the animals are as disgusting to rational taste as revolting to humanity.  The geese are crammed with fat food, deprived of drink, kept in an intolerably hot atmosphere, and fastened by the feet (we have heard of nailing) to the shelves of the fattening cribs.  The celebrated Strasburg pies, which are esteemed so great a delicacy that they are often sent as presents to distant places, are enriched with these diseased livers.  It is a mistake that these pies are wholly made of this artificial animal substance.

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TURKEY

Colonel Rottiers, a recent traveller in Turkey, holds out the following temptation to European enterprise:—­

The terrestrial paradise, which is supposed to be situated in Armenia, appeared to M. Rottiers to stretch along the shores of the Black Sea.  The green banks, sloping into the water, are sometimes decked with box-trees of uncommon size, sometimes clothed with natural orchards, in which the cherries, pears, pomegranates, and other fruits, growing in their indigenous soil, possess a flavour indescribably exquisite.  The bold eminences are crowned with superb forests or majestic ruins, which alternately rule the scenes of this devoted country, from the water’s edge to the summit of the mountains.  The moral and political condition of the country contrasts forcibly with the flourishing aspect of nature.  At Sinope there is no commerce, and the Greeks having, in consequence, deserted the place, the population is at present below 5,000.  This city, once the capital of the great Mithridates, enjoys natural advantages, which, but for the barbarism of the Turkish government, would soon raise it into commercial eminence.  It has a deep and capacious harbour—­the finest timber in the world grows in its vicinity—­and the district of the interior, with which it immediately communicates, is one of the most productive and industrious in Asiatic Turkey.  Amasia, the ancient capital of Cappadocia, Tokat, and Costambol, are rich and populous towns.  Near the last is held an annual fair, commencing fifteen days before the feast of Ramadan, and which is said to be attended by at least fifty thousand merchants, from all parts of the east.  From the nature of the country in which it is situated, M. Rottiers is disposed to believe that Sinope holds out peculiarly strong inducements to European enterprise.  He also had an opportunity of observing, that its defences were gone totally to ruin, and significantly remarks, that it could not possibly withstand a coup de main.  Amastra, a great and wealthy city while possessed by the Genoese in the middle ages, is now a wretched village, occupied by a few Turkish families, whose whole industry consists in making a few toys and articles of wooden ware.  It stands on a peninsula, which appears to have been formerly an island, and the Isthmus uniting it to the mainland is wholly composed, according to the account of Mr. Eton, who surveyed part of this coast, of fragments of columns and marble friezes.