100 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



and these the Polar Bear lacked. The variety of food was also 

 small, and in the case of some items the party could have eaten in 

 a week what they, through their strict rationing, made to last a 

 year. If I remember rightly, their bacon allowance, for instance, 

 was less than a quarter of a pound per man per month. About the 

 only things they had enough of were sugar and flour, and I remem- 

 ber their telling me, with the enthusiasm of a great discovery, that 

 they had never imagined a "sugar sandwich" would taste so good. 

 On occasions when I was there the sugar sandwich came at midnight 

 — two slices of bread with granulated sugar between. 



This group, four men from Harvard and one from Leland Stan- 

 ford, impressed on me more forcibly than any other single instance, 

 although I have seen many cases of a similar kind, the superior 

 adaptability of young men of the college type as compared with 

 those of the type of sailor or ordinary laboring man. There were 

 also in the party one or two young high school boys from Seattle, 

 and Mr. Mott himself was an excellent sort. Accordingly, I heard 

 no grumbling, but some of my companions who associated more with 

 the sailors told me that there was a great deal of dissatisfaction 

 with the food. Much of the conversation of these men was about 

 what fine things they were used to eating. In other words, what 

 struck the college men as an adventure involving the interesting 

 discovery that a sugar sandwich could be as delicious as anything 

 they had ever eaten in Beacon Street, struck the sailors as a phys- 

 ical hardship and social indignity. 



Going east from the Polar Bear fifteen or twenty miles, we 

 came to the steam whaler Belvedere in the ice a mile or two off- 

 shore. She carried among other things supplies which she had 

 intended to land for our expedition at Herschel Island. She was 

 now so short of certain kinds of food herself that she had already 

 arranged with Dr. Anderson for the use of some barrels of salt 

 beef and salt pork of ours, for which she was to pay by giving the 

 expedition bacon the next year. As this bacon was to be sent in 

 from Seattle, its arrival in time to transfer to our ships at Herschel 

 Island in August, 1914, was very problematic. Considering it as 

 too much a bird in the bush, I asked Captain Cottle to give us in- 

 stead something which he had actually on hand, so he arranged pay- 

 ment in flour and canned milk, of which the Belvedere had a super- 

 abundance. 



It turned out that my distrust was well-founded, for although 

 the bacon had been ordered and an attempt made to send it in, it 

 did not arrive in time for connections at Herschel Island. As for 



