I902J COOKING-APPARATUS 327 



would hold out no allurements, and indeed, from my small 

 experience of a shortage of fuel under these conditions, I 

 believe that few, if any, sledge-travellers could continue 

 long without hot food. 



So, at any rate for me, the sledge cooker is a matter of 

 great importance, and it is here, if anywhere, that an immense 

 advance has been made of late years in the sledging equip- 

 ment. The cooking-apparatus we adopted was Nansen's, 

 who, I consider, in devising this and adapting to it a modern 

 form of heating-lamp, consuming paraffin in a vaporised state, 

 made his greatest contribution to the sledge-traveller's require- 

 ments. 



The principal requirement of a good cooking- apparatus is 

 that it should allow a minimum wastage of heat, and though it 

 is difficult to arrive at an exact figure, it is probably stated with 

 some reason that the Nansen cooker expends usefully nearly 

 90 per cent, of the heat supplied by the lamp beneath it. The 

 design of the apparatus provides that the heated gases circu- 

 late about the central cooking-pot, and after passing up inside 

 the annular container, which we termed the outer cooker^ descend 

 again on the outside and thus give up most of their 

 heat before reaching the open air. The greater part of the 

 apparatus is constructed of aluminium, and the whole is made 

 as thin as is compatible with the necessary strength in order to 

 save weight. 



I have already mentioned how at camping time the tent 

 would be erected and the cook would retire inside with his 

 provision bag and lamp ; whilst he was lighting the latter one 

 of the other members would fill the inner and outer cookers 

 with snow and pass them into the tent, so that a very few 

 minutes after the tent was up the lamp could be heard giving 

 forth its pleasant music, and one knew that its heat was already 

 acting on the frozen snow within the cookers. 



Without wishing to take the reader into abstruse problems, 

 I must here mention one of the physical properties of ice, 

 which has a very practical bearing on the sledge -traveller. It 

 may possibly be overlooked that it requires nearly as much 



