WE BEGIN OUR SLEDGING 
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inquired what pemmican was, which I had men¬ 
tioned several times. I explained what it was made 
of and what it was used for. She thought for a 
moment and then said, 4 ‘Well, what I don’t under¬ 
stand is how you shoot them.” 
Pemmican tins hold six pounds, marked so that 
you can tell how to take out exactly a pound, which, 
with tea and a pound of biscuit, is the standard 
daily ration per man. These tins are about four¬ 
teen inches in length, five in width and three 
in thickness. We would open a tin on one side 
and use up the contents; then we would open out 
the other side and flatten them all down to make a 
sheet. Plastered against an ice pinnacle to mark 
the trail or indicate a fault or the proximity of open 
water, these red or blue sheets of tin were visible 
against their white background for a mile and a 
half or two miles. This was one of the many things 
which I learned on my expeditions with Peary. 
Mamen had instructions to blaze his trail in this 
way so that he could find his way back. Marking 
the trail from the camp landward would now give 
the men training in ice travel. 
We had something resembling the typical “Jan¬ 
uary thaw” of the New England winter on the 
twenty-third. The air seemed to have a touch of 
springtime in it and there was open water about 
two miles to the south of us. 
