“But you must have bread or some substitute,” said Tom.
“I do not find it necessary. When I have access to starchy foods—of which there are many in tropical and subtropical forests if one knows how to find and utilize them—I eat them with relish, but when they are not to be had I get on very well without them. You see man is an omnivorous animal, and can live in health upon either starchy or flesh foods. It is best to have both, of course, unless the starchy foods are perverted as they so often are in civilized life, and made ministers to depraved appetites.”
“May I ask just how you mean that?” asked Dick.
“Yes, certainly. The starch we consumed last night in the form of sweet potatoes was altogether good for us; so is that we are taking now in these ship biscuits. But if the flour we are eating had been mixed with lard, sugar, eggs, milk and the like, and made into pastry, we should be greatly the better without it.
“However, I’m not a physician, equipped to deliver a lecture on food stuffs and their preparation. I was betrayed into that by your question. I was explaining the extreme smallness of my personal needs. After food, which costs me nothing, comes clothing, which costs me very little.”
“Why certainly you are expensively dressed for woodland wandering,” said Dick. Then instantly he began an apology for the reference to so purely personal a matter, but Rudolf Dunbar interrupted him.
“No apology is due. I was voluntarily talking of my own personal affairs, and your remark was entirely pertinent. My garments are made of very costly fabrics, but as such materials endure all sorts of hard usage and last for a very long time, I find it cheaper in the end to buy only such; more important still is the convenience of it, to one leading the sort of life I do. Instead of having to visit a tailor three or four times a year, I have need of his services only at long intervals. The garments I now have on were made for me in London three years or so ago, and I have worn no others since. In the meanwhile I have been up the Amazon for thousands of miles, besides visiting Labrador and the southern coast of Greenland.
“That brings me to my principal item of expense, which is the passage money I must pay in order to get to the regions I wish to explore. That costs me a good deal at each considerable removal, but in the meanwhile I have earned greatly more by my work.
“But pardon me for prosing so about myself. I’ll say not another word now, so that you young gentlemen may be free to make whatever use you wish of this superb day. I shall spend the greater part of it in figuring some specimens with my colored crayons. Good morning!”