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over, rickets, scurvy, multiple neuritis, blindness from 

 corneal ulcerations in marasmic children, and other diseases 

 of insufficient nourishment were rife among a people en- 

 joying a bracing, pure air, undefiled by human or other 

 exhalations, and in a country entirely free of endemic 

 diseases. There were no milk-producing animals on all 

 our coasts except a couple of cows and a handful of goats. 

 The trading system and the people's poverty put even the 

 tinned article out of the question. We were wont to see 

 ill-fed mothers, without milk to suckle their babes, chewing 

 hard bread, and thus after predigesting it in their own mouths, 

 trying to maintain life in their wizened offspring, till they 

 should attain the age at which nature furnishes them with 

 the salivary glands, and enables them to convert "loaf" 

 into the assimilable sugars for themselves. 



Milk, milk, milk, seemed to us the great cry from the 

 coast. It seemed impossible to supply it from either 

 sheep or cows or goats on any large scale, since every 

 family is obliged to maintain at least half a dozen dogs 

 for hauling fuel and for travelling, and thus every village 

 had a throng of fifty to one hundred of these hungry, half- 

 fed beasts. The dogs, even at long distances from their 

 own homes, go hunting exactly like wolves in large packs, 

 and have killed the cattle as fast as it has been introduced. 

 Thus it seemed impossible that we could maintain cattle 

 and dogs together, and our medical staff had been compelled 

 to do the best it could with a scanty supply of tinned milk. 

 In any case, cows and goats need feeding in winter, and 

 imported hay cost us $40 a ton. A cow eats two tons, even 

 on a ration diet during our long winter, and it would 

 cost us therefore twice as much as the cow was worth 



