356 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



Europe and the amount eaten in the form of honey or sweet fruits 

 was negligible when compared with the present-day huge consump- 

 tion. Three hundred years ago sugar was the luxury of kings and 

 two hundred years ago it was a rarity in the diet of the ordinary 

 man. Even within our own time the per capita consumption of 

 sugar has increased enormously. And this article of food which 

 some people imagine to be a prime necessity and which others even 

 think to be essential to health, is really a newcomer in the diet even 

 with us. But as sugar has increased in favor, fat has lost caste. 

 The relation between the two has always been reciprocal — the more 

 sugar the less fat. 



If it were true that there is special need for fat in the diet of 

 the northern people it ought to follow that there is less need for it in 

 the tropics, and this is the common view. But it is well known in 

 Australia that in the early days before commerce attained great 

 proportions and before sugar and jams and the like became an im- 

 portant item in the diet, the "boundary riders" or sheep herders in 

 sub-tropical Australia used to select for killing the fattest sheep. 

 They would eat the fattest meat and if too much fat tried out they 

 would eat the melted grease or the tallow. But as commerce in- 

 creased and sugar began to come in they ate less and less of the fat 

 mutton until now you will see a sheep herder in the same climate 

 trim off the fat from his meat and leave it on the plate. 



My friend Carl Akeley hunts in tropical Africa. There is very 

 little sugar in the regular diet of the negroes he employs as carriers 

 and attendants. He has seen at the killing of a hippopotamus (al- 

 though I have never seen it at the killing of a seal or a whale) 

 the whole assembled crowd of natives go wild with joy in an orgy 

 of fat-eating. When the hippopotamus is killed they cut off the fat 

 in quivering strips and eat it until they are ill. So it may be nec- 

 essary to seek another explanation than the standard one of the 

 need for fat in cold climates to explain the polar bear's peculiar 

 habit of stripping the fat off a seal, somewhat as a small boy licks 

 the jam and butter off a slice of bread. 



At the southwest corner of Melville Island we saw the first polar 

 bear track since our landing at the southwest corner of Prince Pat- 

 rick Island. As I have remarked elsewhere, polar bears are very 

 rare animals north of 75° N. latitude in the western part of the 

 Canadian arctic, although they seem to be numerous enough in sim- 

 ilar latitudes farther east. Just before seeing the bear tracks we 



