156 THE LAND OF THE LION 
meat, will make it like that, such treatment can, and does, 
greatly improve it. 
On my first trip I had so much to learn and so short a 
time to learn it in, I never was able to tackle satisfactorily 
the larder question, though I came away convinced that 
it was not necessary always to eat such stuff as I had been 
obliged to put up with. ‘Then, too, | was misled, as who 
has not been before me, by the confident assertion of those 
who professed to know what they spoke and wrote about, 
that such and such parts of such and such animals were 
dainties. Even in the United States my experience in that 
line had not been satisfactory, and I had learned to cherish 
the sad doubt of the disillusioned. I had heard, for instance, 
of the deliciousness of beaver tail, and believed till one sad, 
hungry day I made an experiment on a goodly beaver tail, 
and I found that more nauseous, uneatable stuff a hungry 
man never tackled. One night I could not get back to 
camp, but had to make my foodless fire by the side of a big 
erizzly I had killed. Water was good, but I had not even 
a biscuit, and many a long mile I had gone that day. A 
sudden inspiration seized me. Who had not often heard 
of the deliciousness of soup made from bear’s paws? So 
one of the big skinned, humanlike paws was cut up, and 
part of it set to stew in my drinking cup. As it slowly, 
so slowly, stewed, there was a suspicious odour about it. 
But when it was done — well, one sip was enough, even for 
so keen set an appetite as mine. Then my cup needed 
double rinsing. One by one I sadly tried all those famous 
fabled dainties. Found moose moufle about the only part 
of a moose that was not good to eat. I make, I say one 
exception, and that is a good, strong one. It is in favour 
of buffalo hump. Buffalo hump is —alas, rather was — 
undeniably good. 
Well, here noted hunters spin the same unaccountably 
ridiculous yarns. Elephant trunk! Why you had better 
