41 



THE SEA. 



added since the wanderers came back, we have twelve constantly going, with the grease 

 and soot everywhere in proportion. I can hardly keep my charts and registers in any- 

 thing like decent trim. Our beds and bedding are absolutely black, and our faces 

 begrimed with fatty carbon like the Esquimaux of South Greenland." 



Still the scurvy kept a number of the men in an unserviceable condition. Some 

 of Kane's remarks on the use of raw meats apropos of their value in a medicinal 

 sense, are interesting : " I do not know," says he, " that my journal anywhere men- 

 tions our habituation to raw meats, nor does it dwell upon their strange adaptation to 

 scorbutic disease. Our journeys have taught us the wisdom of the Esquimaux appetite, 



ESQUIMAUX SNOW HOUSES 



and there are few amongst us who do not relish a slice of raw blubber or a chunk 

 of frozen walrus-beef. The liver of a walrus (awuktanuk) eaten with little slices of 

 his fat, of a verity it is a delicious morsel! Fire would ruin the curt, pithy expres- 

 sion of vitality which belongs to its uncooked pieces. Charles Lamb's roast pig was 

 nothing to awuktanuk. I wonder that raw beef is not eaten at home. Deprived of 

 extraneous fibre, it is neither indigestible nor difficult to masticate. With acids and 

 condiments it makes a salad which an educated palate cannot help relishing ; and as 

 a powerful and condensed heat-making and anti-scorbutic food it has no rival. . . 



"My plans for sledging, simple as I once thought them, and simple certainly as com- 

 pared with those of the English parties, have completely changed. Give me an eight- 

 pound reindeer-fur bag to sleep in, an Esquimaux lamp with a lump of moss, a sheet-iron 

 snow-melter or a copper soup-pot, with a tin cylinder to slip over it and defend it from 

 the wind, a good piece fie resistance of raw walrus-beef, and I want nothing more for a 

 long journey, if the thermometer will keep itself as high as minus 30. Give me a bear- 



