G22 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May i8, 1912 
as a bone,” yet susceptible of far more uses 
than our unsatisfactory canned oysters. 
Cakes of compressed Cathay strawberries are 
also obtainable—a grateful, nutritious and 
slightly-aperitive condensed fruit. 
COMPRESSED RICE. 
Rice is the food staple of the Orientals; and 
for travelers’ convenience there is marketed a 
rice-macaroni—macaroni is not an Italian word, 
as commonly supposed, but Oriental as are 
maravedi (a coin); saki (drink); padi (rice), 
litchi (fruit); sakari (sweets); also, hundreds 
of other semi-linking similarities might be 
quoted. The Orientals spell the word with a 
k—or rather their hieroglyphics give the power 
of a k—not c. This rice-macaroni is com¬ 
pressed, and an enormous saving of bulk 
effected. The loose stuff is so elastic and wiry 
that it seems to have a liking to stray ‘ all over 
the shop.” But an amount that would litter up 
the floor of a big-sized office can be compressed 
into a tolerable fit-the-pocket briquet. And it 
sta3's compressed. It is easily dissociated, per 
finger, as required. 
Those who care for rice in their dietary can 
get the briqueted rice-macaroni from any Ori¬ 
ental importer. A dropped and broken bag of 
rice is liable to cause profanity; certainly some 
loss. The compressed form obviates this. All 
conveniences that tend to the equanimity of 
one’s mind in camp are laudable. There is 
usually trouble enough around as it is! Rice- 
macaroni cooks immediately; rice grains re¬ 
quire much soaking or boiling. 
Compressed dried fruits have been known to 
the interior Asiatic traveler since the days of 
Marco Polo. Being both nutritious and slightly 
aperient, they are to this day used in lieu of 
drugs. Besides, in the matter of passing hos¬ 
pitality, how much more pleasant to dispense a 
few fruits to your guests than to hand round 
pills or medicines! 
Sun-dried bread-sheeting, resembling chamois 
leather somewhat, is a product of Central Asia; 
likewise, the sun-made “dipped” stringed wal¬ 
nuts. 
UNSALTED VS. SALTED GOODS. 
The flowery republic’s—for we might as well 
now call it thus—ripened eggs are also found 
preserved for years unsalted. They are jet 
black almost throughout, of nutritious taste, but 
require getting used to. Although having eaten 
scores of them myself. I would sooner always 
prefer the fresh article. 
The use of saltless foods by campers also 
requires getting used to. As Nessmuk has 
written: “Learn to do without.” That is, how¬ 
ever. while sounding so simple, a hard thing 
to learn. “An egg without salt,” says an 
Iberian proverb, “is like a kiss without a mus¬ 
tache.” Yet in time the flavor of things can 
be more appreciated without salt than with. 
Besides, salt is not a food; it helps lower the 
temperature in winter and increase it (by thirst) 
in summer; it destroys part of the nutritive 
processes of food; it attracts moisture unduly, 
and thus needlessly increases weight of things 
to be carried; further, the kidneys are taxed to 
get rid of this worthless foreign element. For 
over a decade I have practiced doing without 
salt, and feel the better for it. 
Persons camping near the sea, with plenty of 
seaweed available, should know that, in emer¬ 
gency, some common seaweed added to the 
soup-stock enriches it, as steady boiling re¬ 
solves it into gelatin, which all helps as a food 
base. Compressed seaweed is indeed obtainable 
at various Gotham importers. No American 
camping-book notes seaweed as a passing con¬ 
tribution to the food supply in case of need, 
yet our friends the Jon-Chins have had it since 
the epoch of Yenkis-kan, “the white captain.” 
It is a feature of Oriental preserved foods 
carried by caravan parties, that not a particle 
of salt is used in the preserving process. They 
are just thoroughly sun-dried—that’s all. 
“There’s a reason.” Centuries of experience 
in caravaning over waterless wastes has taught 
them that salted-preserved foods would but 
add to the terrors of thirst in dry seasons. I 
have known in Mexico of the thirst-horror; no 
reader who has not had a touch of it can real¬ 
ize its delirium. So all Oriental sun-dried fish 
has not a particle of salt, nor their strip-meat, 
if intended for caravan parties, some of which 
consist of 15,000 camels, and stretch, always 
single file, through some fifteen miles of space, 
taking about half a dozen hours to pass a given 
point. 
EDIBLE “stone” FISH. 
That piece of “fossil” resembling a sharpening 
stone is from the Oriental mainland, and be¬ 
comes, after soaking and cooking, a juicy sal¬ 
mon-steak. It is obtainable from Chinese and 
Nipponese importers in Manhattan, and costs 
ninety cents per pound—the highest price fish- 
food on the market. It has only been sun- 
dried, minus an iota of salinity, from a strip 
of salmon; the desiccation contracts and hardens 
it to a horn-like substance. It is always ex¬ 
tremely cleanly to handle, and may be carried 
loose in the pocket. 
BRICK TEA OF RUSSIAN TRAVELERS. 
Our friends the Cibiriaks and Ruskis have 
been using compressed brick-tea these centuries. 
A three-pound slab slips snugly into a great 
coat pocket. Just try to stow away three 
pounds of loose tea in your pocket, and notice 
the protrusion! The compressed tea is so hard 
that it more resembles some stone tiling. It 
is sometimes vigorous work to break off, with 
an iron bar, a thimble-size nugget—sufficient 
for a pot of tea. In fact, the tea-slab itself is 
often used, at a shift, for a make-do mallet 
about camp, and nails may be hammered in 
with it—and it is often hard on the nails, too! 
There is only one railroad traversing Siberia, 
so there is still a vast amount of traveling to 
right and left of this line by the native wheeled 
vehicle known as the tapantac (pronounced 
tarantac)—dubbed by one much-traveled Yankee 
scribe as “enough to shake your insides out!” 
—and the low-lying sani, or sled. When thus 
traveling, Russian officers have been wont to 
indite messages en route, using that tea-slab as 
a provisional writing tablet resting on the 
knees. 
This brick tea is the great standby of the 
Siberian trapper. He saves and accumulates 
the exhausted tea leaves for a single purpose: 
dries them, then drops a couple of handfuls 
into each of his camel-hair, matted-felt boots 
to absorb the perspiration. They do this faith¬ 
fully. Night time, the trapper pours out the 
tea leaves (which feel quite damp with the re¬ 
tained perspiration), places them near the stove 
tO' dry out, and in the morning they are replaced 
for more duty. Thus day after day. Here in 
America we use bran or oats or warm ashes 
to draw out the moisture from sodden foot¬ 
gear in wintry weather, always a menace to 
health, and ever an unsanitary discomfort. But 
you have to have about camp the bran or oats— 
or where are they to come from?—and some 
of the ashes may slip in so hot as to perma¬ 
nently wrinkle the leather boot or shoe here 
and there. Whoever has gone through the 
misery of a wrinkled-by-heat ill-fitting shoe a 
couple of hundred miles from the nearest relief 
station, will be cautious about the warm-ashes 
dodge in future. Besides, look at the floury 
ash mess always! Try the Siberian trappers’ 
old tea leaves. 
The problem of properly and rapidly drying 
out the interior of boots—particularly rubbers— 
is yet an unsolved one. One cumbrous device 
is to carry along a pair of the semi-porous 
soapstone lasts, but these must be heated first, 
and care taken not to overheat them. Then it 
means also the addition of some pounds’ weight 
to your kit. They cannot be recommended. It 
is indeed a “vicious circle,” the trying to dry 
out quickly damp or wet footgear. I have often 
known it to take about three days in camp to 
properly dry sodden boots. 
The secret of the Siberian trapper’s remedy 
is simple: The leaves contain a percentage of 
tannin, or tannic-acid, which absorbs moisture 
with avidity. 
GERMANIA. 
The Deutschlanders produce a vast quantity 
of camping-out conveniences. Their erbswurst 
or pea-meal sausage, so-styled, is a copy of the 
centuries-old Scotch oat-bread sausage. The 
erbswurst is really a sausage of compressed 
powdered salt, with some pea-meal added. It 
is not W'orth carrying on a trip. I have had 
experience with it for years, spasmodically. 
Avoid it! Buy your own pure pea-meal loose. 
But the smoked pears of Teutonic farm¬ 
houses! Now, those are something! They are 
wrinkled, dried up, uninviting-looking objects, 
but improve vastly on stewing, and are used, in 
fact, for all the purposes for which we Ameri¬ 
cans use stewed prunes. The smoked pear is, 
like ham, of agreeably smoky flavor, and is 
slightly aperitive; hence its use by old 
Deutschers in the Rhineland. 
How much better for the camper to so 
arrange his diet and fare to keep normal than 
to carry along cathartics or drugs of the “nas- 
tioria” type! The latter possess no nutrition, 
and are a weight and encumbrance—and sup¬ 
posing the bottle breaks and musses up your 
tobacco; whereas, a properly balanced diet is 
life-sustaining, and keeps one in even health. 
Any reader or camper, present and prospec¬ 
tive, can experiment to suit himself on suitable 
foods, and will finally wind up by “hitting it” 
to a nicety as to a perfectly-balanced fodder 
supply. 
The North Dakota Board of Fish and Game 
Control is trying to protect the few scattered 
antelope that are still to be found in the bad 
lands of that State, and a number of ranchmen 
are assisting in the work. 
