icult to masticate. With acids and condiments, it makes a salad
which an educated palate cannot help relishing; and as a powerful and
condensed heat-making and anti-scorbutic food, it has no rival. I make
this last broad assertion after carefully considering its truth. The
natives of South Greenland prepare themselves for a long journey, by a
course of frozen seal. At Upper Navik they do the same with the narwhal,
which is thought more heat-making than the seal; while the bear, to use
their own expression, is 'stronger travel than all.' In Smith's Sound,
where the use of raw meat seems almost inevitable from the modes of
living of the people, walrus holds the first rank. Certainly this
pachyderm (Cetacean?) whose finely condensed tissue and delicately
permeating fat (oh! call it not blubber) assimilate it to the ox, is
beyond all others, and is the best _fuel_ a man can swallow." The
gastronomic capabilities of the Esquimaux and of other northern races,
and their fondness for fatty food, are exhibited in a sufficiently
strong light in the following statements:--

Captain Parry weighed and presented to an Esquimaux lad the following
articles:--

lb. oz.

Frozen seahorse flesh 4 4
Wild seahorse flesh 4 4
Bread and bread dust 1 12
Rich gravy soup 1 4
Water 10 0
Strong grog 1 tumbler.
Raw spirits 3 wine glasses.

This large quantity of food, which the lad did not consider excessive,
was consumed by him within twenty-four hours. According to Captain
Cochrane a reindeer suffices but for one repast for three Yakutis, and
five of them will devour at a sitting a calf weighing 200 lbs. Mr.
Hooper, one of the officers of the _Plover_, in his narrative of their
residence on the shores of Arctic America, states that "one of the
ladies who visited them was presented, as a jest, with a small tallow
candle, called a purser's dip. It was, notwithstanding, a very pleasant
joke to the damsel, who deliberately munched it up with evident relish,
and finally drew the wick between her set teeth to clean off any
remaining morsels of fat."

The partiality for certain kinds of food, and disgu