296 NEW LAND. 



They took up their places on the bags, and in two or three minutes 

 it was almost as warm as in an ordinarily comfortable room at 

 home. I do not think it possible for any one who has not tried 

 this mode of life to imagine the feeling of wellbeing which 

 percolates through one, so to speak, as one sits inside in the 

 warmth of the tent after having worked hard from early morning, 

 day after day, and week after week, in such severe cold. 



Olsen had orders for five new sets of cooking vessels. A set of 

 our cooking vessels consisted of a biggish cooking-pot, a smaller 

 one that could be placed inside it, a coffee-kettle to go in the small 

 pot, and outside the whole a ring which projected a couple of 

 inches below the bottom of the big cooking-pot, and could be 

 filled with ice. When the water in the pot boiled we had a 

 separate supply of warm water for the coffee- kettle, or for the next 

 course. 



The cookers we had brought from home, and which we had 

 used on a previous expedition, were complicated and difficult to 

 manipulate ; and, moreover, they took up too much room. It may 

 be that those which we constructed up there were theoretically 

 less economical in consumption of fuel, but they were more 

 practical in reality, and easier to manage, and I think that they 

 were quite economical enough. It proved, for instance, that when 

 we were prepared to give up our favourite dish of fried steaks, 

 which absorbed a great deal of heat, two men had quite enough 

 with two and a quarter gallons of oil for fifty days, for the cooking 

 of two courses of food twice daily, and for the melting of ice 

 sufficient to provide an abundance of drinking water at the cold 

 time of the year. Our ' Primus ' was reckoned to burn about eight 

 ounces of fuel in the hour, full pressure ; but we never used it at 

 full pressure, as it was extravagant, and also soon made the tent 

 too warm. 



Olsen also had an order for a new odometer. The wheel was 

 to be something like an American bicycle wheel, with a steel 

 outer ring surrounding a thin wooden one ; the spokes were to be 

 of wire, somewhat thicker than those of a bicycle wheel. The 

 mechanism was very much that of a patent log ; one hand gave 

 the mile, and the other every tenth part of a mile. 



