344 SPITSBERGEN chap xxv 



eider-down will suffice for a bag. The down may be 

 purchased for about thirty kroner a kilo, through Mr. 

 Mack of Tromso. It should be made up in England in 

 a cover of woollen sateen of a kind you can get at the 

 Army and Navy Stores, and doubtless elsewhere. It pays 

 to carry a rifle and a few cartridges, for reindeer can 

 generally be procured ; but the rifle should not be heavier 

 than can be helped. A Paradox is the best kind to take. 

 A change of foot-gear is necessary, for boots and stockings 

 will be wet through daily. A piece of thin rubber-sheeting 

 should form part of each man's pack ; it will serve to 

 keep the sleeping-bag dry on the march, and for floor to 

 the tent in camp. For food you must carry biscuits, con- 

 centrated soups and stews, 1 brick-tea, and the like. When 

 reindeer are not likely to be forthcoming, suitable ration 

 cartridges must be taken, such as those manufactured by 

 the Bovril Company ; they are filling, if not exactly appe- 

 tising. No good light cooking apparatus exists. The best 

 way is to carry an aluminium saucepan, and to boil it by 

 burning beneath it pure spirits of wine in a small open 

 pan or tray about three inches wide. If this pan be put on 

 the bottom of an empty biscuit tin with some stones round 

 it to support the saucepan, the tin will keep off the wind, 

 and form a more efficient cooking apparatus than the bulky 

 and cumbersome affairs made for travellers by people who 

 have never been away from a town. With such an equip- 

 ment as this it will be easy to make expeditions of four 

 or five days' duration from the coast, where the party should 

 have a whale-boat more elaborately stored with comforts. 

 With this boat they can row or sail from one base to 

 another, and the whole western part of the island, and, 



1 The Portable Food Company's consolidated stews in tin cylinders are the 

 best things of the kind known to me. 



