570 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



about 1.1 grams of metabolic water to each gram of fat. Popular 

 knowledge of this phenomenon comes from the fat of the camel's 

 hump, the water tank of the "ship of the desert." Hence, plane crews 

 bailed out on the arid plains, or sailors cast out in a life boat can live 

 much longer on pemmican because the fat conserves the body water 

 and the protein rebuilds the body tissue. If lost for a short time carbo- 

 hydrates are satisfactory, but if the time is longer protein must be in 

 the ration for survival. If one has room enough for starchy products 

 there is a slightly greater amount of metabolic water formed per 

 calorie of energy from starch than is formed per calorie of energy 

 from fat. However, the difference is very small, and the fat and 

 protein combination is a much more compact unit of energy than is 

 the starch and protein combination. 28 



Pemmican was not planned to be a regular food supplanting all 

 others, but was really an explorer's, adventurer's, or traveler's ration. 

 It was intended for hungry men, not for epicures, gourmets, or con- 

 noisseurs. The remarkable thing about it was that it could be used 

 so long, be completely nutritive, and still appeal to the man using it. 

 It creates no appetite when first placed in the mouth, but the longer 

 it stays, the better it tastes, and the longer one eats it the more he 

 appreciates it. After living on it for months at a time, on several 

 polar trips, Admiral Peary wrote : 



It is the most satisfying food that I know. I recall innumerable marches in 

 bitter temperatures when men and dogs had worked to the limit and I reached 

 the place for camp feeling as if I could eat my weight of anything. When the 

 pemmican ration was dealt out, and I saw my little half-pound lump, about as 

 large as the bottom third of an ordinary drinking glass, I have often felt a sullen 

 rage that life should contain such situations. By the time I had finished the 

 last morsel, I would not have walked around the completed igloo for anything 

 or everything that the St. Regis, the Blackstone, or the Palace Hotel could 

 have put before me. 80 



In a similar vein Raymond R. Priestley, who was a member of the 

 scientific staff of the first Shackleton Expedition, 1907-09, and the 

 second Scott Expedition, 1910-13, is equally full of praise : 



Under ordinary circumstances, when one first starts on a journey, one's full 

 allowance is seldom eaten, but, as time passes and the work and the keen air 

 take effect, one becomes hungrier and hungrier, until the sledging allowance of 

 pemmican is not sufficient to satisfy rne cravings aroused. It is then that pem- 

 mican is truly appreciated at its full worth. Nothing else is comparable with 

 it. 1 have taken all sorts of delicacies on short trips when the food allowance 

 is elastic, I have picked up similar delicacies at depots along the line of march, 

 and I have even taken a small plum-pudding or a piece of wedding-cake for a 



49 Shinn to author, February 18, 1955. 



*° Admiral Robert E. Peary, The secrets of polar travel, pp. 77-79, New 

 York, 1917. 





