We experienced one storm of thirteen days' duration
during the latter part of January and early part of February, and found
but thirteen days during which we could travel in the latter month.
It was almost our daily experience now to lose one or more dogs. They
got plenty of reindeer meat, but it was usually fed frozen, and has but
little nourishment in it in that state for cold weather, when fat and
warming food is required. A seal-skinful of blubber each week would
have saved many of our dogs; but we had none to spare for them, as we
were reduced to the point when we had to save it exclusively for
lighting the igloos at night. We could not use it to warm our igloos or
to cook with. Our meat had to be eaten cold--that is, frozen so solid
that it had to be sawed, and then broken into convenient-sized lumps,
which when first put into the mouth were like stones--or cooked with
moss gathered from the hill-sides and the snow beaten off with a stick.
Meat will freeze in a temperature a little below the freezing-point,
but it is then in a very different condition from the freezing it gets
at from sixty to seventy degrees below zero. Then every piece of meat
you put in your mouth has first to be breathed upon to thaw the
surface, or it will stick to your tongue and sides of your mouth and
lips like frosty iron, and with the same disagreeable results.
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