Farthest North.

Manawatu Herald, 27 July 1897, Page 2

Farthest North.

**> XI I CURIOUS COOKING. In the hut the cookery was as simple as possible. Dr Nansen saya "It consisted in boiling bear's flesh and soup in the morning, and frying steak in the evening. We consumed targe quantities at every meal, and, strange to pay, we never grew tired of thin food, but always ate it with a ravpnnus appptite. We sometimes either ate blubber with it, or dipped the pieces of meat in a little oil. A long time might often pass when we ate almost nothing but meat, and scarcely tasted fat ; but, when one of us felt inclined for it again, he would, perhaps, fish up some pieoes of burnt blubber out of the lamps, or eat what was left of the blubber from which we bad melted the lamp oil. We called these cakes, and thought them uncommonly nice, and we were always talking of how delicious they would have been if ■ye could have had a little sugar on them." some yearnings. Laying in tbe dark at the hut in the inhospitable Artie seas, Dr . Nansen, in February gives expres- . sion to some of the thoughts which troubled them. " Our life was ngj, indeed, altogether luxurious. Ho#we longed for a change in the ■iniformity of our diet. If we could have had a little sugar and farinaceous food, in addition to all the excellent meat we had, we could have lived like princes. Our thoughts dwelt longingly on great platters full of cakes, not to mention bread and potatoes. Uow we would make up for lost time when we got baok ; and we would begin as soon ac we got on board the Tromso sloop. Would they have potatoes on board ? Would they have fresh bread ? At worst, even bard ship's bread would not be so bad, especially if we could gee it fried in sugar and butter. But better even than food would be the clean clothes we could put on. And then books— only to think of books ! Ugh, the clothes we lived . in were horrible ! and when we wanted to enjoy a really delightful hour we would set t) work imagining a great, bright, clean shop, where tbe walls were hung with nothing but new, clean, soft woollen clothes, from which we could pick out everything we wanted. Only to think of shirts, vests, drawers, soft and warm woollen trousers, deliciously comfortable jerseys, and then clean woollen stockings and warm felt slippers — could anything more delightfal be imagined ? And then a Turkish bath I We would sit up sid- by side in our sleeping bag for hours at a time and talk of all these things." ATTEMPTS AT WABHING. "I have never before understood what a magnificent invention scap really is. We made all sorts of attempts to wash the worst of the dirt away ; but they were all equally unsuccessful. Water had no effeot upon all this grease."' Something was found, and that was to thoroughly lubricate the hands with warm bearsblood and train-oil, and then scrub it off with moss. The hands became white and soft. When there was none of this to be had the next best plan was found to scrape the skin with a knife. WASHINO (?) CLOTHES. It was a sheer impossibility to get their clothes olean. "We boiled our shirts in the pot hour after hour, but took them out only to find them just as full of grease as when we pot them in. Then we took' to wringing the train oil out of them. This was a little better; but the only thing that produced any real effeot was to boil them, and then to scrape them with a knife while they were still ', warm. By holding them in our teeth and our left hand and • stretching them out, while we scraped them all over with the right hand, we managed to get amazing quantities of fat out of them; and we could almost have believed that they were quite clean when we put them on again after they were dry." NO BARBERS. " In the meanwhile onr hair and beard grew entirely wild. It is true we had scissors and could nave out them ; but ft our Bupply of olofcbes was by no maans too lavish, we thought it kept us a little warmer to have all this hair, which began to flow down over our shoulders. But it was coal-black like our faces, and we thought our teeth and the whites of our eyes shone with an uncanny whiteness now that we oould see each other again in the daylight of the spring."