Secrets of Polar Travel

by Robert E. Peary

Left to right: Compressed tea, condensed milk, pemmican, oil, alcohol, dog pemmican, and ship biscuit

If it were possible to obtain strong hot tea or coffee instantly on a sledge-journey in extreme low temperatures, there would be little use for spirits. But when every drop of water must be melted from ice at temperatures of minus sixty degrees or lower, and then raised to the boiling point, it takes time. And when a member of the party has seriously injured himself or has fallen in the icy water, something is needed on the instant to brace his system and keep him from too serious a reaction until a snow igloo can be built to shelter him.

Tobacco is equally or more objectionable in polar work. It affects the wind endurance of a man, particularly in low temperatures, adds an extra and entirely unnecessary article to the outfit, vitiates the atmosphere of tent or igloo, and, when the supply gives out, renders the user a nuisance to himself and those about him.

Of all the items which go to make up the list of supplies for a polar expedition, the one which ranks first in importance is pemmican. It is also the one which starts the most instant interrogation from the average person. I usually find that the character of this absolutely indispensable food is most quickly grasped if I describe it as a dry mince-meat.

Pemmican is understood to be of Indian origin, originally made of the meat and fat of the buffalo, and its name, from the Cree language, means ground meat and grease. It is said that in the days when buffalo herds were numerous the Indians and half-breeds made large quantities of pemmican in the autumn hunting, cutting the buffalo meat in long, thin strips, which were dried in the sun and wind, then, mixed with buffalo fat, were pounded into a mass.

Too much cannot be said of the importance of pemmican to a polar expedition. It is an absolute sine qua non. Without it a sledge-party cannot compact its supplies within a limit of weight to make a serious polar journey successful. Perhaps I should modify that by saying to make a north polar journey possible, as the conditions in the north are such as to make a successful journey in that region a severer test of refinement in methods and supplies and equipment than anywhere else. With pemmican, the most serious sledge-journey can be undertaken and carried to a successful issue in the absence of all other foods.

Of all foods that I am acquainted with, pemmican is the only one that, under appropriate conditions, a man can eat twice a day for three hundred and sixty-five days in a year and have the last mouthful taste as good as the first. And it is the most satisfying food I know. I recall innumerable marches in bitter temperatures when men and dogs had been worked to the limit and I reached the place for camp feeling as if I could eat my weight of anything. When the pemmican ration was dealt out, and I saw my little half-pound lump, about as large as the bottom third of an ordinary drinking-glass, I have often felt a sullen rage that life should contain such situations. By the time I had finished the last morsel I would not have walked round the completed igloo for anything or everything that the St. Regis, the Blackstone, or the Palace Hotel could have put before me.

Even the Eskimo dogs were at times obliged to yield to the filling qualities of pemmican, and anything that will stay the appetite of a healthy Eskimo dog must possess some body. I recall an instance where my powerful king dog discovered a tin of pemmican that had had a hole punched in it in some way. The maddening smell of the luscious beef fat through the hole spurred him to drive his iron jaws through the tin until he had ripped it like a can-opener and reached the contents. Had the tin contained ordinary meat, the twelve pounds would have been merely an appetizer for him; but when I found him later, he had voluntarily quit, with only a portion of the pemmican eaten. And—though this may not be believed by others who have had experience with Eskimo dogs—he would eat nothing more that day.

Pemmican is the only food for dogs on a serious polar sledge journey; and there is nothing as good as walrus meat to keep dogs in good condition during the autumn and winter at headquarters previous to the sledge journey. I found a special brand of bacon which I obtained in hundred-pound cases one of the best substitutes for the walrus meat.

On my last expedition as an insurance against lack of time or poor luck in walrus hunting, I took on board several tons of whale meat in bulk at one of the Labrador whaling stations.