THE PENNY MAGAZINE
March 30, 1833
Chocolate
The Camel
March 30, 1833
Chocolate
The Camel
This is a paper which is over 190 years old. It is printed in a small format, measuring 7” by 11” in size, and is 8 pages long. The issue came from a bound volume and has minor typical disbinding marks at the spine and occasional light browning spots from age, but is otherwise in excellent and attractive condition.
The highlight of this issue is an article in the center pages, on THE CAMEL, illustrated with a charming 4.5x5.5-inch wood engraving of The Arabian Camel. The accompanying story takes up a page of space, with 125 lines of text. It says, in part:
“Over the arid and thirsty deserts of Asia and Africa, the camel affords to man the only means of intercourse between one country and another. The camel has been created with an especial adaptation to the regions wherein it has contributed to the comfort, and even to the very existence, of man. . . . It is constituted to endure the severest hardships with little physical inconvenience. Its feet are formed to tread lightly upon a dry and shifting soil. . . . Under a burning sun, upon an arid soil, enduring great fatigue, sometimes entirely without food for days, and seldom completely slaking his thirst more than once during a progress of several hundred miles, the camel is patient, and apparently happy. He ordinarily lives to a great age, and is seldom visited by any disease.
“Camels are of two species. . . . The camel of the heavy caravan, the baggage camel, may be compared to the dray-horse; the dromedary to the hunter, and, in some instances, the race-horse. . . . The expense of maintaining these valuable creatures is remarkably little: a cake of barley, a few dates, a handful of beans, will suffice, in addition to the hard and prickly shrubs which they find in every district but the very wildest of the desert. . . .” Etc., etc.
On the next to last, and back page, is an article on COCOA. It takes up about half of each page, and is illustrated with a nice 3x3.5-inch woodcut of “Leaf, flower, and fruit of the Cacao, with a pod opened.” The article gives a brief history of cocoa, touching on Creole cocoa and the Forastero variety, with a description of the seed’s harvesting and processing. The essay was newsworthy at the time because of some recent changes in British law, with the beginning of the piece saying:
“In consequence of a dimunition in the duty on cocoa, a very nutritious and cheap article of food is now placed within the reach of almost all classes of persons, and a short account of it may be acceptable to our readers.”
The article concludes on a laudatory note:
“A great consumption of chocolate takes place in Spain, where it is considered as a necessary of life. In France it is also much used, and is fashioned into an endless variety of forms.
“When the seeds are to be made into cocoa they are ground to a fine powder. The husks, boiled in milk, make a thin and delicious beverage, and are in great request in France, for delicate persons who find the paste or powder too rich for them.
“An excise duty on chocolate, and heavy duties on cocoa, have hitherto prevented any great consumption of these two articles in England, and the principal demand for the latter has hitherto been in the navy, each sailor’s allowance being an ounce per diem, which affords him a pint of good liquid. The late reduction of duty will probably bring cocoa into more general use, as it is now half the price of coffee, and one-fifth that of tea, and certainly far more nutritious than either.”
The front page story is an engraving of The Jupiter of Phidias, with a one and 1/2-page story inside on the enormous statue.
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Background on this publication: The Penny Magazine was a weekly 8-page paper put out by London’s “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.” Throughout the 1830s, an American edition was very popular in the United States, only to dwindle into extinction during the following decade. The paper did not cover the current news of the day, and carried no advertising. Instead, the Penny Magazine provided excellent essays on a wide array of subjects, such as architecture, science, geography and natural history. The paper was compact in size and was usually illustrated with several fine woodcut engravings.
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