"Then, Doctor, all is for the best."
"True, but still an Esquimaux meal may well astonish us. While wintering at Boothia Land, Sir John Ross was always surprised at the voracity of his guides; he says somewhere that two men—two, you understand—ate in one morning a whole quarter of a musk-ox; they tear the meat into long shreds, which they place in their mouths; then each one, cutting off at his lips what his mouth cannot hold, passes it over to his companion; or else the gluttons, letting the shreds hang down to the ground, swallow them gradually, as a boa-constrictor swallows an animal, and like it stretched out at full length on the ground."
"Ugh!" said Bell, "the disgusting brutes!"
"Every one eats in his own way," answered the American, philosophically.
"Fortunately!" replied the doctor.
"Well," said Altamont, "since the need of food is so great in these latitudes, I'm no longer surprised that in accounts of arctic voyages there is always so much space given to describing the meals."
"You are right," answered the doctor; "and it is a remark which I have often made myself; it is not only that plenty of food is needed, but also because it is often hard to get it. So one is always thinking of it and consequently always talking of it!"
"Still," said Altamont, "if my memory serves me right, in Norway, in the coldest countries, the peasants need no such enormous supply: a little milk, eggs, birch-bark bread, sometimes salmon, never any meat; and yet they are hardy men."
"It's a matter of organization," answered the doctor, "and one which I can't explain. Still, I fancy that the second or third generation of Norwegians, carried to Greenland, would end by feeding themselves in the Greenland way. And we too, my friends, if we were to remain in this lovely country, would get to live like the Esquimaux, not to say like gluttons."
"Dr. Clawbonny," said Bell, "it makes me hungry to talk in this way."