SUGAR IN THE HOOSH 



afternoon to a mild blizzard, and we found pulling 

 against it very severe work. That morning we had quite 

 an unusual diversion. Mawson, who is a bold culinary 

 experimenter, being messman for the week, tried the 

 experiment of surreptitiously introducing a lump of sugar 

 into the pemmican. Mackay detected an unusual flavour 

 in the hoosh, and cross-questioned Mawson severely on 

 the subject. Mawson admitted a lump of sugar. 

 Mackay was thereupon roused to a high pitch of indigna- 

 tion, and stated that this awful state of affairs was the 

 result of going out sledging with " two foreigners." 

 This mild blizzard partly obliterated our old sledge 

 tracks by piling over them new sastrugi of fine hard snow. 

 We had a great struggle that day to make our sixteen 

 miles, but fortunately the blizzard slackened ofl* towards 

 9 P.M., and we just managed it. 



Owing to some miscalculation, for which I was 

 responsible, we discovered that we had no tea for this 

 week, our sixth week out, unless we took it out of the 

 tea-bag for the seventh week. Accordingly we halved 

 the tea in the seventh week bag, and determined to 

 collect our old tea-bags at each of our old camps as we 

 passed them, and boil these bags together with the 

 small pittance of fresh tea. And here I may mention 

 the tastes of the party in the matter of tea somewhat 

 differed. Mackay liked his tea thoroughly well and 

 long boiled, whereas Mawson and I liked it made 

 by just bringing the water to the boil; as soon as 

 we smelt the aroma of tea coming from underneath 

 the outer lid of the cooker we used to shut off the 

 Primus lamp immediately and decant the tea into the 

 pannikins. Mackay had always objected to this pro- 

 cedure when we were sledging along the sea ice where 

 water boils at about 212° Fahr.; now, however, he had 

 a strong scientific argument in his favour for keeping 



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