The meat became our staple food for seven months without change. It was a delicious product. It has a flavor slightly sweet, like that of horseflesh, but still distinctly pleasing. It possesses an odor unlike musk but equally unlike anything that I know of. The live creatures exhale the scent of domestic cattle. Just why this odd creature is called "musk" ox is a mystery, for it is neither an ox, nor does it smell of musk. The Eskimo name of "ah-ming-ma" would fit it much better. The bones were used as fuel for outside fires, and the fat as both fuel and food.
At first our wealth of food came with surprise and delight to us, for, in the absence of sweet or starchy foods, man craves fat. Sugar and starch are most readily converted into fat by the animal laboratory, and fat is one of the prime factors in the development and maintenance of the human system. It is the confectionery of aboriginal man, and we had taken up the lot of the most primitive aborigines, living and thriving solely on the product of the chase without a morsel of civilized or vegetable food. Under these circumstances we especially delighted in the musk ox tallow, and more especially in the marrow, which we sucked from the bone with the eagerness with which a child jubilantly manages a stick of candy.
ARCTIC WOLF
WITH A NEW ART OF CHASE IN A NEW WORLD OF LIFE
THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE SUNSET OF 1908—REVELLING IN AN EDEN OF GAME—PECULIARITIES OF ANIMALS OF THE ARCTIC—HOW NATURE DICTATES ANIMAL COLOR—THE QUEST OF SMALL LIFE
XXVII
Coming of the Second Winter
In two months, from the first of September to the end of October, we passed from a period of hunger, thirst and abject misery into the realm of abundant game. The spell for inactivity had not yet come. Up to this time we were too busy with the serious business of life to realize thoroughly that we had really discovered a new natural wonderland. The luck of Robinson Crusoe was not more fortunate than ours, although he had not the cut of frost nor the long night, nor the torment of bears to circumscribe his adventures. In successive stages of battle our eyes had opened to a new world of life.