204 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



press. But when you have been without these things for 

 five or six years, as happened to me later, you not only 

 cease to long for them but actually find them much less 

 pleasant when you first come back to them than you 

 would if you had been eating them every day. If you 

 went without fruits and vegetables for ten years at a time, 

 you might imagine for the whole ten years that you were 

 longing for them. But if, like me, you first go without 

 them for a year and later for two years and eventually 

 for five years, you find that a total of ten years is ample 

 to cure you of all your hankering. It goes even farther 

 than that. I used to be almost a vegetarian by taste. At 

 the end of ten years in the polar regions I much preferred 

 a meal where both fruits and vegetables were completely 

 absent and meat the only food. 



We sailed pleasantly with the Belvedere to Flaxman 

 Island where we took aboard Captain Mikkelsen. We 

 then continued to Herschel Island where we arrived July 

 27th, which was up to that time the earliest date that a 

 ship had ever arrived there from the "outside world." 



