THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



cernment and requires no sauce to make the meal 

 palatable; indeed, all one wants is more, and this 

 is just what cannot be allowed if a party is to achieve 

 anything in the way of distance whilst confined to 

 man-haulage. It is hard for a hungry man to rest 

 content with the knowledge that the particular food 

 he is eating contains so much nourishment and is suffi- 

 cient for his needs, if at the same time he does not feel 

 full and satisfied after the meal and if, within an hour 

 or so, the aching void again makes itself felt, and he 

 has to wait another five hours before he can again 

 temporarily satisfy the craving. One of the main 

 items of our food-supply was pemmican, which con- 

 sisted of the finest beef powdered with 60 per cent, of 

 fat added. This is one of the staple foods in polar 

 work, and the fat has properties specially tending to 

 promote heat. Our pemmican for use on the long 

 sledge journeys was obtained from Messrs. Beauvais, 

 of Copenhagen, and was similar to the pemmican we 

 had on the Discovery expedition. Biscuits are a standard 

 food also, and in this matter I had made a departure 

 from the example of the previous expedition. We 

 found then that the thin wholemeal biscuits which 

 we used in sledging work were apt to break, and 

 it was difficult to make out the exact allowance for 

 each day, the result being that sometimes we used up 

 our supply for the week too early. I secured thicker 

 biscuits, but the principal change was in the composition 

 itself. The Plasmon Company supplied a ton of the 

 best wholemeal biscuit, containing 25 per cent, of plas- 

 mon; the plasmon tended to harden the biscuit, and, as 

 is well known, it is an excellent food. These biscuits 

 were specially baked, and, with an allowance of one 

 pound for each man per day, were a distinct advance on 

 the farinaceous food of the previous expedition. This 



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