PEMMICAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 678, 1 June 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

PEMMICAN

FARE FOR HARDY EXPLORERS NOW MADE FROM SEAL MEAT

NOT A TABLE DELICACY ■ EMMICAN is still the j principal food of Arctic j So Sir Douglas Maw- ■ son assured a news- ■ paperman at Australia House, high above the teeming Strand, where he was planning the details of his next expedition to the loneliest places in the south Polar seas. Pemmican! What memories for most of us of boyhood tales of Red Indians, of Canadian fur trappers, of the Klondyke, and desperate dog j teams on the trail to Forty Mile. “But surely,” said the reporter, “the resources of modern science have got beyond pemmican. Doesn’t it have j to be made out of dried bear meat or caribou?” Sir Douglas smiled and said: Certainly that used to be in the old tales, but now the Hudson Bay trappers make their pemmican out of seal meat, and an English firm Is drying beef-steaks to powder. When every scrap of moisture is gone the meat dust remaining is mixed with a cer tain proportion of fat and put in tins That is pemmican. Of course, when we get to the be-

Dried bear and fat used to go to the making of good pemmican in the old days, explains Sir Douglas ylaicson. We progress. Today the succulent seal contributes steak to the pemmican-makers. low zero latitudes we just knock the tins away and carry the pemmican around loose, in bags. A handful of it, a little warm water, and there is a meal. The Discovery’s Airplane The Discovery, that famous ship of Captain Scott’s epic Antarctic voyage, will house the new expedition. She is being overhauled at the London Docks, will he fitted to carry an airplane and scientific apparatus, and will leave for Hobart, Tasmania, m August.