Part 20 (1/2)
The carbohydrates are compounds of carbon with hydrogen and oxygen in a certain proportion, e.g. cane-sugar and starch.
Mineral matters are inorganic, being chlorides, carbonates or phosphates of calcium, sodium and pota.s.sium.
Theoretically, any of the three cla.s.ses of foods mentioned might be thought to supply adequate energy, if taken in sufficient amount.
Practically, however, protein and carbohydrate are essential, and it is better to have a mixture of all three. So, in concentrating foods for sledging, the largest possible proportion of fat, compatible with other considerations, is included.
Ordinarily, a normal man consumes some four or five pounds weight of solid food per diem, of which 50 per cent., it is rather surprising to learn, is water. When sledging, one has the satisfaction of knowing that all but the smallest quant.i.ty of the food dragged is solid nutriment.
The water is added when the meals are cooked. It is just in this artificial addition that the sledging ration is not perfect, though as a synthesis it satisfies the demands of dietetics. Food containing water, as cooked meat oozing with its own gravy is a more palatable thing than dried meat-powder to which boiling water has been added. In the same way, a dry, hard biscuit plus liquid is a different thing from a spongy loaf of yeast bread with its high percentage of water. One must reckon with the psychic factor in eating. When sledging, one does not look for food well served as long as the food is hot, nouris.h.i.+ng and filling. So the usage of weeks and a wolfish appet.i.te make hoosh a most delicious preparation; but when the days of an enforced ration are over, the desire for appetizing well-served food rea.s.serts itself. The body refuses to be treated merely as an engine.
The daily polar sledging ration for one man has been concentrated to a figure just above two pounds in weight, For instance, in recent Antarctic expeditions, Scott, in 1903, used 34.7 ozs., Shackleton in 1908 used 34.82 ozs. and our own amounted to 34.25 ozs. Exclusive of tea, pepper and salt, Shackleton's ration and that adopted by Wild at the Western Base and ourselves in Adelie Land were identical--34 ozs.
Reverting to earlier explorers, for the sake of comparisons, McClintock in 1850 brought his minimum down to 42 ozs., Nares in 1875 to 40 ozs., Greely in 1882 to 41.75 ozs., and Abruzzi in 1900 to 43.5 ozs.
Our allowance was made up as follows, the relative amounts in the daily sledging ration for one man being stated: plasmon biscuit, 12 ozs.; pemmican, 8 ozs.; b.u.t.ter, 2 ozs.; plasmon chocolate, 2 ozs.; glaxo (dried milk), 5 ozs.; sugar, 4 ozs.; cocoa, 1 oz.; tea,.25 oz. It will be instructive to make a short note on each item.
Plasmon biscuit was made of the best flour mixed with 30 per cent. of plasmon powder. Each biscuit weighed 2.25 ozs., and was made specially thick and hard to resist shaking and b.u.mping in transit as well as the rough usage of a sledging journey. The effect of the high percentage of plasmon, apart from its nutritive value, was to impart additional toughness to the biscuit, which tested our teeth so severely that we should have preferred something less like a geological specimen and more like ordinary ”hard tack,” The favourite method of dealing with these biscuits was to smash them with an ice-axe or nibble them into small pieces and treat the fragments for a while to the solvent action of hot cocoa. Two important proteins were present in this food: plasmon, a trade-name for casein, the chief protein of milk, and gluten, a mixture of proteins in flour.
The pemmican we used consisted of powdered dried beef (containing the important protein, myosin) and 50 per cent. of pure fat in the form of lard. The large content of fat contributes to its high caloric value, so that it is regularly included in sledging diets. Hoosh is a stodgy, porridge-like mixture of pemmican, dried biscuit and water, brought to the boil and served hot. Some men prefer it cooler and more dilute, and to this end dig up snow from the floor of the tent with their spoons, and mix it in until the hoosh is ”to taste,” Eating hoosh is a heightened form of bliss which no sledger can ever forget.
Glaxo is a proprietary food preparation of dried milk, manufactured in New Zealand. It is without doubt an ideal food for any climate where concentration is desirable and asepsis cannot be neglected. The value of milk as an all-round food is well known. It contains protein as casein, fat as cream and in fine globules, carbohydrate as lactose (milk sugar) and mineral substances whose importance is becoming more recognized.
At the Western Base, Wild's party invented glaxo biscuits; an unbaked mixture of flour and dried milk, which were in themselves a big inducement to go sledging. At the Hut, making milk from the dried powder required some little experience. Cold water was added to the dried powder, a paste was made and warm or hot water poured in until the milk was at the required strength. One of the professional ”touches” was to aerate the milk, after mixing, by pouring it from jug to jug.
b.u.t.ter, although it contains nearly 20 per cent. of water is a food of high heat-value and is certainly more easily digested than fat, such as dripping, with a higher melting-point. Ours was fresh Victorian b.u.t.ter, packed in the ordinary export boxes, and carried to the Antarctic on the open bridge of the Aurora. With a sheath-knife, the sledging cook cut off three small chunks of two ounces each from the frozen b.u.t.ter every day at lunch. To show how the appet.i.te is affected by extreme cold, one feels that b.u.t.ter is a wholesome thing just in itself, being more inclined to eat a pound than two ounces.
Sugar--the carbohydrate, sucrose--has special qualities as a food since it is quickly a.s.similated, imparting within a few minutes fresh energy for muscular exertion. Athletes will support this; in fact, a strong solution of sugar in water is used as a stimulant in long-distance running and other feats of endurance. Wild, for instance, found as a matter of experience that chocolate was preferable to cheese as a sledging food, even though similar weights had approximately the same food-value.
Cocoa and tea were the two sledging beverages. The cocoa was used for two meals, the first and the last in the day, and the tea for lunch.
Both contain stimulating alkaloids, theobromine and caffeine, and fat is a notable const.i.tuent of cocoa. Of course, their chief nouris.h.i.+ng value, as far as we were concerned, lay in the glaxo and sugar added.
Lastly, plasmon chocolate is a preparation of pure chocolate (a mixture of ground cocoa, white sugar and starch) with the addition of 10 per cent. of plasmon.
As food for the dogs, there was nothing better than dried seal-steaks with the addition of a little blubber. Ordinary pemmican is readily eaten, but not appreciated by the dogs in the same way as seal meat.
To save weight, the meat was dried over the stove without heating it sufficiently to cook it. By this measure, almost 50 per cent. in weight was saved.
The Hut was all agog with movement and bustle on the days when rations were being made up and packed. Starting from the earliest stage in the process, there would be two men in the outer Hut grinding plasmon biscuit into powder. One would turn away for dear life and the other smash the biscuit with a hammer on a metal slab and feed continuously into the grinder. The atmosphere would be full of the nauseous vapours of blubber arising from dishes on the stove where seal meat was drying for the dogs. Ninnis and Mertz superintended in this department, in careless moments allowing the blubber to frizzle and diffuse its aroma through the Hut.
Inside, spread along the eighteen-foot table would be the weighers, the bag-makers or machinists, and the packers. The first made up a compound of cocoa, glaxo and sugar--cocoa compound; mixed glaxo and sugar and stirred together, pemmican and biscuit--pemmican compound. These were weighed and run into calico bags, rapidly supplied by several machinists farther along the table. In spare moments the weighers stowed chocolate, whole biscuits, b.u.t.ter and tea into 190 sacks of various sizes. Lastly, the packers had strong canvas tanks, as they were called, designed to hold food for a week and a fortnight respectively. Into these the rations were carefully distributed, b.u.t.ter in the centre, whole biscuits near the top. Then the tanks were tightly closed, and one man operated with palm and sail-needle, sewing them up with twine. At the same time, a side-line was run in pemmican which was removed semi-frozen from the air-tight tins, and shaved into small pieces with a strong sheath-knife.
b.u.t.ter, too, arrived from the refrigerator-store and was subdivided into two-ounce or pound lumps.
Meanwhile, other occupations were in full swing. An amateur cobbler, his crampon on a last, studded its spiked surface with clouts, hammering away in complete disregard of the night-watchman's uneasy slumbers. The big sewing-machine raced at top-speed round the flounce of a tent, and in odd corners among the bunks were groups mending mitts, strengthening sleeping-bags and patching burberrys. The cartographer at his table beneath a shaded acetylene light drew maps and sketched, the magnetician was busy on calculations close by. The cook and messman often made their presence felt and heard. In the outer Hut, the lathe spun round, its whirr and click drowned in the noisy rasp of the grinder and the blast of the big blow-lamp. The last-named, Bickerton, ”bus-driver” and air-tractor expert, had converted, with the aid of a few pieces of covering tin, into a forge. A piece of red-hot metal was lifted out and thrust into the vice; Hannam was striker and Bickerton holder. General conversation was conducted in shouts, Hannam's being easily predominant.
The sum total of sounds was sufficient for a while to make every one oblivious to the clamour of the restless wind.
CHAPTER XI SPRING EXPLOITS
If the ”winter calms” were a delusion, there were at least several beautifully clear, moderately calm days in June. The expectation of colder weather had been realized, and by the end of the month it was a perceptible fact that the sun had definitely turned, describing a longer arc when skimming the distant fleets of bergs along the northern horizon. Thus on June 28 the refracted image of the sun rose into visibility about eleven o'clock, heralded by a vivid green sky and damask cloud and by one o'clock had disappeared.
On the same day every one was abroad, advancing the wireless masts another stage and digging ice-shafts. Stillwell commenced a contoured plane-table survey of the neighbourhood of Winter Quarters. He continued this with many breaks during the next few months and eventually completed an accurate and valuable map, undeterred by the usual series of frost-bites.