The First Crossing Of Greenland Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ...to with vigour, and did full justice to this nourishing and wholesome dish, with which we were more than satisfied. The two Lapps, had they said anything at all, would have called us heathens, for, as they explained one day afterwards, it was only heathens and beasts of the field that ate meat raw. But at the time they said nothing, but maintained an attitude of dumb despair at the fate which had thrown them into the society of savages, who had, as they often used to say, " such strange ways, quite different from those of the Lapps." They could scarcely endure to see us eating. I could, of course, easily have cooked some of the meat for them, but we had to be sparing of the spirit. We were likelv to want it all later on, and it was only two or three times during our wanderings in the floe-ice that we allowed ourselves the luxury of cooking anything. As a rule all our food was cold, and for drink we had either plain water, of which we had an abundance in larger and smaller pools on the floes, or else a mixture of water and preserved milk, which made a pleasant and refreshing beverage. This time the Lapps were treated to tinned beef instead of the horseflesh, and they seemed quite consoled for the first disappointment, the beef being pronounced by Balto to be " good clean food." How common it is to see things in this life turned completely upside down by prejudice!' In connexion with the above I will quote an answer Balto gave one day after we reached home to some one who asked what his worst experience had been in the course of his travels. ' The worst thing, ' said Balto, ' was once when we were drifting in the ice and were just being carried out into the Atlantic. I asked Nansen whether he thought we should get to land, and he said ..".